Plain time tracking app
- Time is measured but never used
- No link to project, phase and category
- No billing, no payroll export
- Utilisation only via an Excel analysis
Project hours that run alongside.
Project hours are the time a staff member books specifically against a project, a phase or a task. teamspace turns every entry into a data source for utilisation, margin and fees. Part of online time tracking, with no module surcharge.
Context
Why not just a stopwatch app?
teamspace
- Every hour carries project, phase and category
- Billable or internal decided right away
- Fees, payroll and utilisation from one entry
- One system instead of a silo solution
What an entry records
An entry carries more than an hour.
Beyond date and duration, every project hour records what it is booked against and whether it is billable. The category is the small field with the biggest effect: the utilisation ratio later hangs on it.
Book Today Analysis
Log project time
Project · Phase
Relaunch Client A · Concept
Duration
2:30 h
Stopwatch
00:42:21
Category
billable internal non-billable
Activity description
Homepage wireframes, review with the client.
Book Save as draft
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Project, phase or task
What the time is booked against. At phase level the plan-vs-actual comparison becomes meaningful.
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The category decides billability
Billable, internal or non-billable. A division can additionally be enforced when the time is billable.
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Draft while the project is still open
Half-finished entries stay visible in the sidebar. A description can be made a mandatory field.
Why log hours
Why project hours get logged.
The question comes up at every rollout: why should staff book project hours on top of attendance? Three answers that hold up in practice.
For the fee invoice
- Without clean entries there is no honest invoice to the client.
- On a time-and-materials basis the entry is the billing base.
- On a fixed price the margin only becomes checkable from it.
For record-keeping duties
- Consulting, grant-funded and HOAI projects require an hours record.
- In audits and tax inspections it is the evidence base.
- In a dispute the rule is: no record, no claim.
For project steering
- Plan-vs-actual per phase, up to date daily.
- Utilisation per person and team instead of only at quarter end.
- Anyone who does not know where the hours go is steering blind.
“I save a lot of time writing invoices.”
Attendance and project
One entry, two views.
Attendance time and project time are two different things that many companies capture twice. In teamspace both arise from one entry.
- Attendance time counts start, end and breaks. This supports a record in the sense of the ECJ ruling of 14 May 2019 (C-55/18) and the German Federal Labour Court (BAG) ruling of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21).
- Project time records the project object and the category, so it serves steering.
- Where attendance differs from the booked project time, the time matrix flags it.
Anyone who clocks in at 09:00 and books onto a project feeds both views in parallel. On a switch only the project time changes, attendance keeps counting. In the evening you clock out once and both views are consistent.
Billability
Three categories decide utilisation.
Every entry carries a category. It sounds like a detail, but it is the lever that moves utilisation and margin.
- Billable: the hour goes into the fee invoice to the client.
- Internal: sales, admin, training, everything the company pays for itself.
- Non-billable: delivered on the client project but, by agreement, not invoiced, for example as a goodwill gesture or when over budget.
The utilisation ratio is the ratio of billable hours to target working time. In consultancies, agencies and IT firms this is the figure by which management measures profitability. Categories can be filtered, analysed and set to a quarter-hour increment.
Capturing in everyday work
Time lands where the work happens.
Time tracking is tedious but important. In teamspace it therefore runs alongside rather than being a task in its own right.
Stopwatch
The stopwatch runs in the background.
One click starts the measurement, one click ends it. More precise than any estimate in the evening.
- Live stopwatch in the browser, even when you are not looking at it
- Quick entry from a task, ticket or project, with the right reference
- Copes with calls, interruptions and the switch to the next project
Drafts
Half hours do not get lost.
If the project is not yet decided, the entry stays parked as a draft, visible in the sidebar.
- Draft pre-filled from the current ticket
- All of today's entries to the right of every screen
- In the evening the state is still exactly as it was
Templates
Routine books itself like yesterday.
Save recurring activities as a template, copy a whole day via a reference day.
- Top projects and most recently booked times as input aids
- Transfer a reference day's entries proportionally onto other days
- Adjust only the differences, the rest is already there
Part of online time tracking
Project hours are one use case of time tracking.
The digital timesheet, activity record, travel expenses and overtime run in the same system as project hours. One capture feeds the hour balance, project analysis and payroll data at once. The overview page shows how the whole module fits together.
To online time trackingFrom click to invoice
From the project click to a fee line.
- 1
Pick a project, start the stopwatch
Staff pick a project, phase or task and click Start. The stopwatch runs, attendance time runs in parallel.
- 2
Describe the activity
A short description per entry, mandatory for engagements with an activity record. Templates speed up the routine.
- 3
Break or switch
Switching to the next project takes one click: the old entry closes, the new one begins. Breaks are captured separately.
- 4
Correction with audit trail
Typos and mis-bookings can be corrected after the fact. Every change records editor and timestamp.
- 5
Approval and analysis
At period end managers approve the hours. Utilisation, margin and fee preview update, the invoice emerges from the approved hours.
Correction
Corrections stay traceable.
Typos, mis-bookings or late capture are unavoidable in practice. teamspace documents every correction instead of quietly overwriting it.
- Editor with login, whether staff member or manager.
- Timestamp to the second, old and new value.
- Edit deadlines per staff member, for example one week or until the fourth day of the following month.
In the activatable GoBD mode, approved periods can be locked against later entries. After the weekly or monthly lock-down no one can get into a closed month, only finance administration can still make changes.
First call
Does this fit your hourly rates and engagements?
In 30 minutes we go through your project structure and the interface to invoicing. By the end you can see where booked hours turn into clean fee lines.
Reporting
Reports are ready before month end.
Project hours produce a service firm's steering reports. They are not a weekly snapshot but update with every entry.
- Utilisation per person and team.
- Margin per project and client, calculated continuously from internal rates and booked times.
- Plan-vs-actual comparison per phase and task, planned against delivered hours.
- Fee preview before period end, with the hour values of the open invoice.
Anyone who notices on the 10th of the month that a project is drifting off course can react. Anyone who only sees it at month-end close can only explain it.
Billing
From the hourly rate to a fee line.
Approved project hours automatically become the billing base in the teamspace invoicing software. The category steers the path there: only billable hours land in the fee line.
- Hourly rates per person and project are applied at billing, and a separate price list can be stored per client.
- Flat rates and fixed-price components sit alongside the time-and-materials hours.
- Activity record per client emerges from the same hours, as a PDF attachment to the invoice.
Excel export and manual transfer fall away. Anyone who does not have the hours cleanly in the system sells them, at the latest in the invoice run, more cheaply than planned.
What matters
Three things that make the difference.
Highlight 1
Logging on project, phase and task.
Only at phase level does the plan-vs-actual comparison become meaningful, and time and materials, fixed price and flat rate mix within one invoice.
Highlight 2
Three routes, one data base.
Browser with a stopwatch, an installable app on iOS and Android or a tablet at reception, all on the same data base.
Highlight 3
In the same system as invoice and payroll.
The approved hour flows on without an export into fees, payroll data and controlling, with no CSV and no interface upkeep.
Scope of functions
Project time tracking functions at a glance.
Booking
- Live stopwatch in the browser
- Installable web app on iOS and Android
- Quick entry from a task, ticket or project
- Several days at once via the time matrix
- Copy entries via a reference day
- Drafts for entries still open
Structure
- Booking on project, phase and task
- Category: billable, internal or non-billable
- Division as an additional analysis axis
- Hourly rates per person and project, price list per client
- Flat rates and fixed-price components
Analysis
- Utilisation per person and team
- Margin per project and client
- Plan-vs-actual comparison per phase
- Fee preview before period end
- Hand-over to invoicing and prepared payroll data
What it is about
What project hours are and why they decide the margin.
Project hours are the time a staff member has actually spent on a project, a phase or a task. Unlike pure attendance time they carry an additional piece of information: the project object. At the press of a button you can see who worked how long on which job, whether that time is billable and what margin results from it.
For service firms that work by hourly rate or fixed price, project hours are the commercial data core. From them flow fee invoices, utilisation reports and margin analyses. Clean capture is therefore not a question of accounting but of profitability.
A note on the most common worry at rollouts: "We don't want to monitor people's hours." Understandable. Two points on that. First, this can be separated technically, analyses can be set per team rather than per person. Second, in practice it is usually the other way around: staff feel better when their work is documented and does not disappear into the manager's head. Sustained overload becomes visible in the report, not only when someone goes off sick.
Use cases
Get more out of the time you capture.
Six further use cases of the same system, each focused on a concrete question around the hour.
Digital timesheet
Replace the Excel template with a cloud application with an activatable GoBD mode.
Learn moreActivity record
Hours record per client as a PDF at the press of a button.
Learn moreTravel expense accounting
Meal allowances automatically by duration and country, receipts included.
Learn moreTrack overtime
Plan vs actual live, premiums by collective agreement, payout or time off in lieu.
Learn moreManage leave and sickness
Request, approve and offset absences in the hour balance.
Learn moreCapture time by check-in
Clock in and out at a terminal, in the app or in the browser.
Learn moreRelated modules
Three modules access the hour directly.
The captured hour does not end in time tracking. It flows on into the project, into the invoice and into payroll preparation. Here are the shortest routes there.
Project management
Booked hours land on project and phase and carry plan-vs-actual, margin and utilisation.
- Booking on project, phase and task
- Plan-vs-actual and margin up to date daily
- Utilisation per person and team
Invoicing software
Approved hours become the billing base without an export, with hourly rates, flat rates and travel expenses.
- Partial, instalment and final invoices
- ZUGFeRD and XRechnung
- Hand-over to DATEV Unternehmen online
HR software
Hours, overtime and absences flow prepared into payroll, with no double upkeep.
- Export prepared payroll data
- Leave and sickness in the same system
- Overtime balances per staff member
Frequently asked questions on project hours
What is the difference between attendance and project time?
Attendance fulfils the recording of start, end and breaks. Project time serves commercial steering, namely which project and whether it is billable. teamspace runs both views from one entry, with no duplicate capture.
Can project hours be logged after the fact?
Yes, with an audit trail. An edit deadline can be set per staff member, after which a time can no longer be changed. Approved periods can be locked against later entries, so no one books into closed months.
How do project hours affect the invoice?
Project hours that are approved and booked as billable automatically become the billing base in the teamspace invoicing software. Hourly rates per person and project are applied, flat rates added, and the fee preview runs alongside.
Can project hours come straight from tickets or tasks?
Yes. From the teamspace service desk and from project management tasks, time can be booked directly without switching tools. This matters especially for IT service providers.
Can staff see their own project hours?
Yes. In their own overview staff see their project hours for the current week, broken down by project, with a daily distribution. Other colleagues' hours are not visible.
Where are project hours stored?
In two geo-redundant, ISO 27001 certified data centres in Frankfurt am Main, exclusively in the EU. teamspace is Made in Germany and GDPR-compliant. The contracting party is 5 POINT AG, a German public company headquartered in Darmstadt.
Does this fit your project structure?
We discuss your project structure, your hourly rates and the path from entry to invoice. A short call shows whether teamspace fits the way you work.