Monthly

See where your meeting hours went each month

At the start of each month you get last month's meeting hours broken down by client or category.

Runs: Monthly
Apps: Google Calendar
AI: Not needed
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: on the 1st of each month, total last month's meeting hours by client name in the event title (Acme, Globex, Internal) and email me the breakdown.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A consulting firm bills three clients by the hour and also runs internal projects, but the only record of where time went is the partners' calendars. At month end someone scrolls back through four weeks of events, guessing which "sync" belonged to which client, and totals the hours on a scrap of paper. The invoice ends up based on memory, which usually means undercharging, and the retainer client who asks for a breakdown waits days to get one.

At the end of each month, ClickRuntime lists last month's Google Calendar events, groups them by a keyword in the title or by event color, adds up the durations and emails a table of hours per client or category. There is no AI step, so the same events always give the same totals.

Freelancers and agency leads use it to check billing, and managers use it to see how much of the team's month disappeared into meetings.

What you get out of it

Invoices reflect time actually spent
Hours come from the calendar rather than from recollection, so a client who used eleven hours is billed for eleven and not for the round number someone remembered. Over a year, that difference in accuracy can add up to real revenue that would otherwise go unbilled.
Retainer conversations get facts
When a client asks where the retainer went, you can send a table by category instead of promising to look into it. That response takes minutes and builds confidence, because the numbers are consistent from one month to the next.
Meeting load becomes visible
Seeing that internal meetings took forty percent of the month is a different experience from feeling busy. Managers can cut standing meetings or move them to shorter slots, based on a measured number rather than a vague complaint.
Scope creep shows up early
If one project quietly grows from ten hours a month to twenty-five, the monthly table shows it after one cycle. That gives you a prompt to renegotiate scope or price, before a fixed fee turns into an unprofitable commitment.
No timesheet discipline required
Calendar events already exist, so nobody has to remember to log time at the end of each day. People who dislike timesheets still get a usable breakdown, and the report covers everyone whose calendar is connected.

How it works

What happens, step by step

On the first of each month ClickRuntime reads all of last month's events in your Google Calendar.
It groups the meetings by client or category based on their titles, such as Acme or Internal.
It adds up the hours in each group.
You get an email with the hours per group for the month.

Before it runs live

Connect Google Calendar

What you get

RunsMonthly

See where your meeting hours went each monthtoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Meeting hours for September 2026Acme: 18.5 h Internal: 12.0 h Globex: 7.5 h Other: 3.0 h

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Google Calendar steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

monthly_time_spent_report.pyexample

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from collections import defaultdict
from datetime import date, datetime, timedelta
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, notify

CLIENTS = ["Acme", "Globex", "Internal"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    cal = build("calendar", "v3", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    first = date.today().replace(day=1)
    prev = (first - timedelta(days=1)).replace(day=1)
    items = cal.events().list(calendarId="primary", timeMin=f"{prev}T00:00:00Z", timeMax=f"{first}T00:00:00Z",
                              singleEvents=True, maxResults=2500).execute()["items"]
    hours = defaultdict(float)
    for e in items:
        if "dateTime" not in e["start"]:
            continue
        client = next((c for c in CLIENTS if c.lower() in e.get("summary", "").lower()), "Other")
        span = datetime.fromisoformat(e["end"]["dateTime"]) - datetime.fromisoformat(e["start"]["dateTime"])
        hours[client] += span.total_seconds() / 3600
    lines = [f"{c}: {h:.1f} h" for c, h in sorted(hours.items(), key=lambda x: -x[1])]
    notify.email_me(f"Meeting hours for {prev:%B %Y}", "\n".join(lines))
    return dict(hours)

FAQ

Common questions

How does it decide which client an event belongs to?

It matches a keyword in the event title, such as the client's name, or the color you assign to that client's meetings in Google Calendar. Events matching nothing fall into an Other row, so you can see what is left uncategorized and adjust the keywords.

Are declined or cancelled events counted?

No. Declined events and cancelled meetings are skipped, so the totals reflect time you actually held. All-day events such as holidays are normally excluded too, since counting them as twenty-four hours of meeting time would distort every figure.

Does it include work that is not on my calendar?

No. It can only count what is in Google Calendar, so heads-down work with no event is invisible. People who want that included usually block time for client work on the calendar, which also protects the time and makes the report more complete.

What permissions does it need?

read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (monthly). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Hourly or daily