Project time tracking basics for small teams

A normal timesheet tells you how long people worked. Project time tracking tells you what they worked on. That one extra piece of information changes what you can do: bill a client accurately, see a job going over before it is finished, and quote the next one from evidence rather than a feeling. It also has a reputation for being tedious. It doesn't need to be, if you keep the setup small.

Who needs it, and who doesn't

You will get value from tracking time by project if any of these are true:

• You charge clients by the hour, or quote fixed prices based on an estimate of hours.
• The same people work for several clients or jobs in a week.
• You need to report hours to someone: a client, a funder, a head office.
• You suspect some kinds of work cost more than they earn, but can't show it.

If everyone does the same job in the same place all week, such as a single shop or cafe, a plain timesheet is enough. Don't add projects just because the option is there.

Design a project list people will actually use

The most common mistake is too much detail. A list with a project for every task feels thorough on day one and is ignored by week three, because picking the right line takes longer than the work. Aim for a list a new starter could learn in two minutes.

Three rules keep a list healthy. Name projects the way people say them out loud. Give every hour a home by including at least one internal project, so nobody has to choose a wrong one. And close projects when the work is finished, so the list stays short.

Get started in six steps

1. 1Write down your current jobs and clients. Group small bits of work into one project per client where you can.
2. 2Add one or two internal projects for work no client pays for.
3. 3Mark each project billable or not, and add a bill rate and a budget in hours if you have them.
4. 4Decide who can put time on each project. Limiting a project to the people working on it keeps everyone's list short.
5. 5Agree how time is recorded: pick the project at clock-in, or fill in hours per project at the end of each day.
6. 6After two weeks, look at the totals with the team and fix anything that was confusing.

Clock in to a project, or fill in a weekly grid?

Both work. Choose by how your day runs. If people do one job per shift or per visit, picking the project at clock-in is the least effort and the most accurate. If people switch between several pieces of work in a day, a weekly grid with a row for each project and a column for each day is kinder: they enter 3 hours here and 4.5 there, ideally at the end of each day rather than on Friday from memory.

A worked example: watching a budget

The sums are simple. The value is in doing them every week. A budget you only check when the job is finished tells you what went wrong. A budget you check weekly lets you do something about it.

What to look at each week

• Hours against budget for every open project, and which ones are past 75%.
• Hours with no project, or sitting in the wrong one. Fix them while people still remember.
• How much of the week went on internal work. Some is healthy; a sudden jump is worth a question.
• Projects with no time recorded. Either the work has stopped or people are putting the hours elsewhere.

Keeping the data honest

Project data is only as good as the habit behind it. Record time on the day, not from memory at the end of the week. Make it normal to say 'I wasn't sure where to put this' rather than guess. And be clear that project hours are used to run jobs better, not to judge who is busiest. If people think the numbers will be used against them, the numbers will quietly become fiction.

How ClockinBee handles it

In ClockinBee you add a project by typing a name. You can add the client, choose the Type (Billable, Non-billable or Internal overhead), and optionally set a bill rate an hour and a budget in hours or money. Each project is open to everyone or only to the people you pick, and can be limited to the locations it runs at; people see only the projects they can use.

People choose a project when they clock in or add hours, and the weekly timesheet grid shows a row for each project and a column for each day for filling in a whole week. An automation can remind you when a project is near its budget. Reports include profit by project, showing hours, labour cost, billable value and margin, and approved hours go to payroll through the export for your payroll system. Closing a project stops new time being added while keeping its history.

Common questions