Project time recording: record and bill project times
Record, book and bill project times with a complete solution for recording your employees' project times.
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What is project time recording?
Project time recording refers to recording and accurately posting working hours to individual projects, sub-projects or work packages. Employees log their attendance times and assign them to the relevant projects, so that project times can be evaluated, verified and billed.
In projectfacts, project time recording is part of an all-in-one solution: from the recorded project hour and the proof of performance through to the invoice, everything runs in a single system.
What sets good project time recording apart
- Separating billable and non-billable times so that only the services relevant to the customer appear on the invoice
- Quick recording via time matrix, templates and stopwatch for recurring work and tasks that need to be billed precisely
- Internal and external approval processes for the recorded project times
- Project controlling and efficiency analysis with a target/actual comparison and earned value analysis
- Project hours recording as the basis for proofs of performance, timesheets and project billing
- GDPR-compliant time recording, developed in Germany
Hours that are never recorded are lost revenue
The most expensive mistake in project time recording is not the hour booked incorrectly, but the hour never booked at all. Forgotten phone calls, travel time and quick conversations in between appear on no proof of performance, and therefore on no invoice.
Example calculation with freely chosen assumptions
The following calculation is an example based on freely chosen assumptions, not a measured figure from a customer project. Enter your own values to arrive at your own order of magnitude.
Suppose that in a team of 20 employees, just 2 billable hours per person per week go unrecorded. At 47 working weeks a year and an hourly rate of 100 €, that gives:
20 × 2 × 47 × 100 € = 188,000 € of unbilled revenue per year.
Even half an hour per person per week still amounts to 47,000 € a year in the same calculation.
Where the gap opens up
The gap usually opens up at the interface. A team records its times in one tool and writes its invoices in another. Whatever is lost in the transfer goes unnoticed, because it does not show up as missing in either list.
In projectfacts, recording, proof of performance and project accounting sit in one system. Every hour booked lands automatically on the proof of performance and from there on the invoice, with no intermediate step and no loss in transfer.
Online attendance time recording and project time recording
Project time recording is one of the central components of projectfacts. Employees record their attendance times and then post them to projects. You can easily record, bill and verify project times with the software.
Attendance time
The attendance time reflects when, where and for how long your employees have been working. They can log in online at any time, whether they are in the office, working from home or on their smartphone. Thanks to the cloud connection, your employees can record times anywhere and at any time.
Project time
The recorded attendance times can be flexibly booked to projects. For example, an 8-hour day can be divided between two projects of 4 hours each. Of course, any other division is also possible. Times can be booked to entire projects, sub-projects or work packages.
Advantages of project time recording for your project management
By linking project management and project-related time recording, you benefit in two ways. On the one hand, the recorded project times allow comprehensive analyses, e.g. of employee utilisation and project profitability. On the other, project hours recording forms the basis for billing and timesheets.
Project efficiency
It is often difficult to assess whether a project is being handled efficiently. projectfacts helps you with this assessment by providing you with all the relevant data. This is based on key financial figures and project times recorded by your employees. The target/actual comparison shows you how you are progressing towards your goals:
- How much time has been spent on sub-projects so far?
- How much time is left to complete outstanding tasks?
- Are the recorded project hours within the targeted corridor?
Project accounting
With projectfacts, you can bill project times with ease. Your employees book attendance times to the tasks they are working on. This can be used to create proofs of performance that you can check internally or forward to the customer. The project times you record can be taken directly to billing. The software automatically reminds you when a new invoice can be issued.
Test our project time recording software now
Benefit from seamless documentation, greater efficiency and simpler billing for your customer projects. See the advantages of project time recording for yourself.
Enquire nowFrom project time recording to billing
Projects require a large number of invoices with countless individual items: some are fixed-price positions, others are effort-based. With projectfacts, we have an ideal solution for mixed billing. Take advantage of another benefit of the integrated system with our software.
Verifying project times
Customers often want a proof of performance, and projectfacts generates these automatically. They contain all the activities recorded by your employees and the associated project time, broken down by the respective sub-project or work package. Internally booked hours are not shown if they are not to be invoiced to the customer. To this end, projectfacts consistently distinguishes between billable and non-billable services.
Billing project times
If you use projectfacts for project time recording, you have an ideal basis for invoicing. Thanks to the time and project-specific booking by your employees, all project hours end up on the correct invoice. You can decide for yourself what you want to invoice and when, or you can be automatically informed when you can issue the next invoice. A suitable document can then be generated with just one click.
Project hours recording: record, verify, bill
Project hours recording is the project-related logging of hours worked. Every hour is assigned to a project, sub-project or work package, and carries the information of whether it is billable or arises internally.
It is precisely this assignment that later determines what can be billed. In projectfacts, the recorded project hours automatically produce proofs of performance, from these timesheets and from these the project accounting. You will find what it costs in the price overview.
A dedicated time tracking tool or an integrated solution?
Anyone looking for project time recording usually compares two different kinds of software. One records times very well and stops there. The other carries the recorded hour through to the invoice.
Both have their place: for pure team time tracking, a specialist tool is enough, and it is often quicker to introduce and cheaper. But as soon as you want to bill the hours you record, you need more than the recording itself. What matters then is what happens after the hour is booked.
What sets the two approaches apart
Who is project time recording with projectfacts for?
Project time recording in projectfacts is designed for service providers who do not merely document their project hours but also bill them.
A good fit if
- You invoice your customers for the project hours you have worked
- You need to keep billable and internal times cleanly apart
- Your customers expect proofs of performance alongside the invoice
- You want to keep an eye on target and actual per project or work package
- You would rather run recording, proof and billing in one system than in three tools
Less of a fit if
- You only want to record attendance times for payroll
- You need pure team time tracking with no project reference and no billing
- You are looking for a clocking-in system for industrial shift planning without a project structure
Online project time recording made easy
Just as important as good functionality of project hours recording is its usability. Even the best approaches often fail because they are cumbersome or counter-intuitive. That is why project time recording in projectfacts was designed for simplicity and speed right from the start. As a result, employees record and book their working days in less than five minutes. We achieve this with a user-friendly web interface and processes that are as simple as possible. This makes project time recording quick, easy and intuitive.
Time matrix
One example of "simple processes" is a tool that we have named the time matrix. It is ideal for booking recurring work quickly and according to fixed rules.
Templates
Employees often have daily routines that are repeated. So that they do not have to record their activities from scratch every time, they can create templates and reuse them.
Stopwatch
Whenever exact billing of project times is required, the stopwatch helps you. Activate it at the start of work, switch it off again at the end and record the time directly.
Further features of the project time software
Project time recording offers you many other advantages that make work easier for you and your employees:
Billable services
With our project time software, you can differentiate between billable and non-billable times. This distinction is often needed for invoicing. As a result, internally booked times do not appear on the invoice, but only those that the customer should actually pay for.
Interval billing
projectfacts is the solution for billing that takes place in specific cycles. Do you want to invoice your customers for services in quarter or half-hour cycles instead of to the minute, for example? No problem with projectfacts. This lets you create invoices for support in your service centre in next to no time.
Working time models
Our project time recording can be applied to all common working time models: whether trust-based working hours or overtime regulations, or special arrangements for project work at weekends and on public holidays. All of these agreements can also be integrated into the projectfacts time recording system.
Approval processes
Set up internal and external approvals for the recorded project time. This means that the customer only sees exactly what is relevant to them on the timesheet. Project times are approved directly in the software. The reviewer receives a notification, and the employee is notified in the system immediately after approval.
Record and bill project times with one software
With projectfacts, you can rely on an integrated software solution for recording and billing your employees' times. From documentation to billing, all in one system.
Enquire nowEfficiency analysis with the help of project time recording
With projectfacts, you can not only record your project time. You can also analyse it, for example by customer, employee or activity. These project efficiency analyses are particularly valuable. You can see at a glance which customers are responsible for what proportion of your project-related employee hours. Unprofitable projects can be identified immediately, and you have the opportunity to take countermeasures. Several tools are available to you for this purpose:
You can also recognise when certain work packages frequently lead to a large volume of hours. Employees who are currently under particular pressure can be quickly identified and scheduled differently in future. Integrated project time recording allows you to react flexibly to projects and optimise your employees' workload.
- Project controlling with earned value analysis
- Diverse target/actual comparisons
- Dynamic capacity planning and analysis
"projectfacts is the billing basis for a large part of the consulting revenue at kwsoft®. It is a very strategic tool for us."
– Jochen Schorn, Project Manager in Consulting, kühn & weyh SoftwareProject time recording and the duty to record working hours
Two decisions shape the legal position in Germany. On 14/05/2019, the European Court of Justice required member states to oblige employers to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system for measuring daily working time (Case C-55/18). On 13/09/2022, the Federal Labour Court ruled that employers are already obliged under existing German law to record their employees' working hours (Decision 1 ABR 22/21).
Both decisions concern working time, not the project-related allocation of hours. projectfacts supports you in implementing the duty to record working hours by capturing attendance times, storing them and keeping them available for evaluation. How you meet the requirements in your own company is set out on the time recording obligation page.
Project time recording at a glance
All-in-one solution
Easily record project times online with one software
Verify performance
Create proofs of performance & timesheets automatically
Bill project times
Bill project times directly to the customer
Evaluate project times
Automatic analyses and reports on the efficiency of your projects
Internal & billable times
Separate internal and billable working hours
Approval of times
Approval processes for recorded project times to suit your requirements
Still have questions? We have the right answer!
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