Time Tracking and Timesheet Software, Built to Your Rules

Project time and working time are two different problems

“Time tracking” covers two needs that often have to live in one system, even though their rules differ.

• Project time: agencies, law firms, consultancies and IT companies want to know how many hours a project consumed, how many can be billed and whether the budget is running out. What matters is allocation to client and task, rates and profitability reporting.
• Employee working time: manufacturing, retail, construction and field teams must record clock-in, clock-out, breaks, overtime and absence for payroll. Here working-time schemes, reference periods and labour-law compliance matter.

Labour law in many EU countries, including Poland, requires employers to record working time, and a 2019 CJEU judgment (case C-55/18) held that employers should measure daily working time. We design the system to capture the data required, while the rules themselves, such as working-time norms, reference periods and overtime calculation, are confirmed by your HR team or lawyer.

Typical features

Capturing time

A timer in the browser, mobile or desktop app, manual entries, and a weekly timesheet grid with copy-last-week and suggestions from the calendar. The most-used screen has to be fast, so we design it first.

Allocation and rates

Client, project, task, activity type and cost centre, with a billable flag. Rates per person, role, project or client with effective dates; each entry stores the rate valid on the day worked, so a later price change does not rewrite history.

Approval and period locking

Staff submit the week, a manager approves or rejects with a comment, and the closed period is locked. A change after closing needs a correction request and is kept in the history.

Attendance, shifts and overtime

Clock-in and clock-out through the app or a terminal using a PIN, QR code or card, breaks, the shift roster as context, overtime and night-hours calculation by configured rules, and absences pulled from the HR system.

Reminders and reports

Alerts for missing entries and unsubmitted timesheets; reports on utilisation, billable ratio, budget burn, overtime and absence; exports to payroll, invoicing and accounting.

Views for each role

Employees see their week and gaps. Managers see team timesheets awaiting approval and deviations from the roster. HR sees payroll and absence summaries, finance sees billable hours and project profitability, and leadership sees team utilisation and overtime trends. Each role gets only the data it needs to decide.

Edge cases to settle in the specification

Time systems fail on details. Before coding starts we write down the expected behaviour in situations such as:

• a shift that runs past midnight or across a daylight-saving change;
• staff and projects in different time zones;
• rounding rules and minimum billing increments;
• a rate change in the middle of a reference period;
• corrections to hours already exported to payroll or invoiced to a client;
• a timer running on a phone and a laptop at the same time;
• entries made without signal and synced later.

Integrations and technology

Time tracking rarely stands alone. We most often connect it to:

• project management, either built in or external, for example through the Jira API;
• HR and payroll software, through an API or an import file in the format it accepts;
• invoicing and accounting, with billable hours as invoice lines;
• Google or Microsoft 365 calendars, for entry suggestions from meetings;
• the identity provider (SSO) and HR system, for the list of employees, managers and absences.

A typical stack is a React or Vue web app, a Node.js, .NET, Python or PHP backend and PostgreSQL, plus a React Native or Flutter mobile app with local storage for offline work when field staff need it.

GDPR, employee monitoring and audit trail

Working-time data is employees' personal data, and sometimes includes their location. We recommend proportionate choices: location captured only at the moment of clocking in, with the employee's knowledge, rather than continuous tracking; no screenshots or keystroke logging unless your lawyer confirms a legal basis. Broader monitoring may require a data protection impact assessment.

Every edit, approval and export leaves a log entry recording who changed what, when and why. Managers see only their own team, and data retention periods are set according to the rules that apply to you.

How rollout works

1. Rules inventory: working-time schemes, overtime, rounding, approval path and billing rules.
2. Specification with data model, edge cases and export formats.
3. Entry screen design tested with a few employees.
4. Iterative build and testing on real data from past periods.
5. Parallel run: one pay or billing cycle handled the old and new way, with totals compared.
6. Launch with a written correction policy and manager training.

Reaching the first parallel run typically takes weeks to a few months, depending on the number of rules and integrations. The biggest schedule drivers are multiple working-time rule sets, an offline app, clock-in terminals and payroll integration.

What the client provides

• Current timesheets, spreadsheets or an export from your existing tool.
• Working-time, overtime and rounding rules confirmed by HR.
• The approval path: who approves whose hours and who deputises for an absent manager.
• Projects, clients and rates, plus rules for marking hours as billable.
• A sample payroll import file or the payroll system's API documentation.
• Data from at least one closed period for testing and the parallel run.

Price and options

The indicative floor is $4,900. Example options:

• Essential: timer and manual entries, projects and tasks, weekly approval and CSV export;
• Recommended: adds rates and profitability reports, reminders, project tool and calendar integration, and period locking with corrections;
• Scale: adds attendance with rosters and overtime rules, an offline mobile app, clock-in terminals, payroll integration and SSO.

Terminal hardware, third-party licences and hosting are not included. The full table of price anchors is on our pricing page.

Hours most often feed project management software, invoicing and billing and an HR portal. Construction crews are covered separately under workforce management. Every service in this group is listed in the SaaS and white-label category, and you can describe your needs through the contact page.

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Frequently asked questions