Getting started · 3 of 5

Set your max hours (and your rate)

By Brittany Downey, founder of Margin · August 2026

Quick one. Out of the box, Margin assumes a traditional 40 hour week. Let's make it yours. Open Settings (top right) and set two things.

1. The hours you want to work in a week

Your ideal full week. Once it's set, the colors on your Plan grid mean something: green when a week is under your number, yellow when you're getting close, red when you're over.

You can leave it at 40 and block your personal and family time into the grid too, so your week still reflects reality even when your client work is only 20 or 30 hours. Or set it lower. It's your week.

Margin's capacity settings: target weekly hours and the green, yellow, and red thresholds — Target weekly hours plus the thresholds that drive the grid's colors.

2. Your target hourly rate

The rate you'd be happy to earn for your time. Margin uses it to show you which projects are actually paying well, and which ones aren't, once you have some hours tracked.

Margin's hourly rate settings with green, yellow, and red rate thresholds — Green means healthy. Red means the scope crept.

Margin is a capacity planner for people who run a business and a life from the same desk.

Start planning →