Timesheets

Understanding How Time Is Actually Spent

Timesheet Analysis

Go to Projects > Reporting > Timesheet Analysis (or the Timesheets app's own reporting menu).

• Dimensions: Employee, Project, Task, Customer, Date, Billable/Non-Billable.
• Measures: Hours, Billable Hours, Cost, Revenue (if invoiced).

Utilization Rate

Billable hours ÷ total available working hours, per employee or team — the standard metric for a services business to judge whether staffing levels match demand. Track it over time rather than for a single week; short-term dips are normal, sustained low utilization is a staffing or pipeline problem.

Estimate Accuracy

Compare a task's Planned Hours against its actual logged hours across many tasks to see whether estimation is systematically too optimistic (or pessimistic) — feed that back into how future quotes/estimates are built.

Missing Timesheets

Filter for employees whose logged hours for a period fall well short of their expected working hours — usually means time simply wasn't entered yet, not that they didn't work, but it's worth chasing before it becomes a billing or payroll gap.

Best Practices

• Log time daily rather than reconstructing a whole week from memory on Friday afternoon — accuracy drops fast with delay.
• Keep task-level descriptions specific enough that a client invoice line makes sense on its own.
• Review and approve weekly sheets promptly — a backlog of unapproved sheets delays both invoicing and payroll.
• Reconcile total billable hours invoiced against Timesheet Analysis's billable-hours total each billing cycle.

Logging Time From a Task

1. Open any task with Allow Timesheets enabled on its project.
2. Go to the Timesheets tab → Add a line.
3. Enter Date, a short Description of what was done, and Hours.
4. The task's total logged time updates immediately, alongside its Planned Hours for comparison.

My Timesheets

Projects > My Timesheets (or a dedicated Timesheets app menu) shows every line you've personally logged across all projects, in a single list/grid you can filter by week or project — useful for entering time at the end of each day without hunting through individual tasks.

Non-Project Time

Time that isn't tied to a project task (general admin, internal meetings) can still be logged against a generic internal project/analytic account set up for that purpose, so total logged hours reconcile against total worked hours even for non-billable, non-project activity.

Turning Logged Hours Into an Invoice

When a project's Billing Method is set to Timesheets rate (see the Projects course), every hour logged against it becomes billable at the rate configured on the linked Sales Order line.

The Flow

1. A Sales Order with a time-and-materials service product is confirmed — this creates/links the project.
2. Employees log hours against the project's tasks as work happens.
3. From the Sales Order, click Create Invoice → choose Timesheets (or "Delivered quantities") to pull in all uninvoiced logged hours at the agreed rate.
4. Review the invoice — individual timesheet descriptions can appear as invoice line detail, which is often exactly what a client wants to see for a T&M engagement.

Billable vs Non-Billable

Not every hour on a billable project should necessarily be charged to the client (e.g. internal rework, a goodwill fix). Mark individual timesheet lines as non-billable so they're excluded from the invoice while still counting toward the project's true internal cost and profitability.

Fixed-Price vs Time-and-Materials

On a fixed-price project, timesheets still matter for internal cost tracking and profitability even though they don't directly drive the invoice amount — compare logged hours × cost against the fixed fee to see whether the project is actually profitable, separate from what gets billed.