Tracking billable hours against the work they were spent on

What problem does this solve?

Businesses that bill for time need two things: accurate hours, and a clear link between those hours and the work. In many teams, time is logged in a separate tracker at the end of the week, from memory, with vague descriptions such as "client work".

That makes billing slow and disputes likely. When a client asks what the hours were spent on, someone has to match timesheet lines to tasks by hand. Internal work and billable work blur together, so it is hard to see whether an engagement is profitable.

Who has this problem?

• Agencies that bill clients by the hour or need to know the real effort behind a fixed fee.
• Consultancies and professional firms where time is the product.
• Accounting and audit firms that track hours per client file.
• Internal teams that want to see where their week goes, even without billing anyone.

How is it usually handled?

The common setup is a dedicated time tracker, or a shared spreadsheet, separate from the project tool. People fill it in on Friday afternoon. A manager checks it, and someone copies the totals into the invoicing tool.

What are the limits of that?

• Time is disconnected from work. The tracker does not know which card or task the hours belong to.
• Memory is unreliable. End-of-week entries are estimates, not records.
• Approval is informal. Checking happens by email or not at all.
• Two systems to maintain. Projects and clients have to be set up twice, once in each tool.

How does Emitii solve it?

Emitii keeps the Timesheet as a tab inside each space, next to the Board and Tasks. It is on by default in Project and Internal spaces and can be turned on in Client spaces. The timesheets feature page covers it in detail.

• Quarter-hour entries. Each entry has a date, hours in 15-minute steps and a description. Time is recorded after the work is done.
• Billable or non-billable. Every entry carries one flag, so client work and internal work separate cleanly.
• Linked to the work. An entry can point at a card or a to-do, and the card shows its own time log.
• Weekly submit and approval. Each person submits their week. People with "Can manage" access to the space's timesheet approve or reject it, and "Reopen this week" allows corrections.
• Views for different questions. "By day" shows what each person logged day by day, "By work" groups hours by card and to-do, and Team scope shows the whole space for managers.
• CSV export. Hours export to CSV with their billable flag for your spreadsheet, payroll or invoicing tool.

By default, guests do not see the Timesheet, so a client in the same space does not see your internal hours. A space can open it in its Guest access tab, either for a guest's own hours or for team hours read only. Inside a space, Emit can log, edit or submit time for you, and it asks for approval before saving anything.

What does the workflow look like?

1. Create a space per client or engagement and make sure the Timesheet tab is on.
2. Agree the rules: what counts as billable, and how detailed descriptions should be.
3. Log time daily against the card or to-do, marking each entry billable or non-billable.
4. Submit the week every Friday.
5. Approve or reject as the space manager, and reopen a week if something needs fixing.
6. Export to CSV at the end of the billing period and bring the hours into your invoicing tool.

The agency template includes a timesheet setup, and consulting firms and accounting firms show how different businesses use it. The glossary entry on timesheets explains the concept.

Good habits for accurate hours

A few team rules make timesheet data much more useful. Log time at the end of each day while the work is fresh. Link every entry to a card or to-do, so the "By work" view shows where the effort went. Write descriptions a client could read, because they often end up on an invoice. Decide which activities are billable, such as client calls, before the first week, and write the rule in a pinned post. Finally, approve weeks promptly, so corrections happen while people still remember.