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.

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.

Submitting a Full Week at Once

For teams that need formal weekly sign-off (common where timesheets feed payroll or client billing directly), the Timesheet Sheet groups a week's entries into a single record with its own approval workflow, shown as a matrix grid: projects/tasks down the side, days of the week across the top.

Timesheet Sheet Statuses

• New – just created for the period, not yet touched.
• Open – the employee is actively filling it in.
• Waiting Review – submitted; sitting with the manager for approval.
• Approved – manager has signed off; entries are now considered final for that week.

Filling In the Grid

1. Go to Timesheets > My Timesheet Sheets (or it auto-creates for the current week).
2. Add a row per project/task you're working on this week.
3. Enter hours directly into each day's cell — the row and column totals update live, alongside your expected weekly hours from your working schedule.
4. Click Submit (or the equivalent confirm action) once the week is complete and accurate.

Manager Review

Managers see a queue of sheets Waiting Review, open each, and either Approve or send it back for correction. Once approved, treat the week as closed — if a correction is genuinely needed afterward, that should go through the same review process again rather than quietly editing an approved sheet.

Unusual Days

Days that don't match an employee's normal working calendar (public holidays, approved time off) are flagged automatically on the grid so a reviewer can see at a glance why a day has 0 hours instead of having to check the Time Off app separately.