Time Tracking

Flowtly Editorial Team2 min

Flowtly Projects provides comprehensive time tracking capabilities, an integral part of project management. The /project-tracking UI page is the primary interface for users to record their work times against specific projects, enabling accurate monitoring, reporting, and invoice generation. Integration with holiday planning is facilitated through the /project-holiday-planner UI page.

Key Capabilities

  • Work Time Recording: Users can log time spent on various project types, including Fixed-price, Time & Material, Non-billable, and Internal projects. This functionality is part of the overall project creation and management features.
  • Invoice Generation: Recorded work times directly contribute to the generation of invoices from project data.
  • Budget Linkage: Time tracking data is linked to project budgets for financial oversight and profitability analysis.
  • Team Management: Project Managers (ROLE_PROJECTS_MANAGER, ROLE_PROJECTS_LEAD) can oversee and review time logged by their team members, supporting overall team management.
  • Holiday Integration: Approved holidays managed through the /project-holiday-planner page can be reflected in time planning, supporting accurate work time allocation.

How to Track Time

Users assigned to a project can log their hours directly within the system.

To create a new time entry:

  1. Navigate to the /project-tracking UI page.
  2. Select the relevant project from your assigned projects. Project types available include Fixed-price, Time & Material, Non-billable, and Internal.
  3. Enter the amount of time spent on the project.
  4. Save the time entry.

Multiple time entries can be added for a single day.

Example use cases

  • An employee logs daily hours spent on a Fixed-price project, ensuring accurate time records for project delivery and subsequent invoice generation.
  • A Project Manager (ROLE_PROJECTS_MANAGER) reviews team members' time entries for a Time & Material project to prepare for client invoicing and monitor budget linkage.
  • An ROLE_ACCOUNT_MANAGER uses tracked time data for Non-billable projects to analyze overall resource allocation and project profitability.
  • A team member records time on an Internal project, providing data for profitability analysis and internal reporting.

Connection map

Planned vs actualRefers toDerived fromPart of
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
purchase-order-line estimated against time-entry. budget covers project. counterparty defaults to project. invoice billed from project. project is of type project-type. project identified by project-reference. project staffed by person. project-rate rates person. project-rate applies on project. time-entry tracked against project. task belongs to project. project-folder groups project. project linked to budget. project-template creates project. project measured by project-kpi. project-phase is a child project of project. project needs role. booking planned vs actual time-entry.estimated againstcoversdefaults tobilled fromis of typeidentified bystaffed byratesapplies ontracked againstbelongs togroupslinked tocreatesmeasured byis a child project ofneedsplanned vs actualOOrder line — One line of a purchase order: a role priced by the hour with the hours estimated for it, or a deliverable priced as an outcome. A deliverable carries no hours at all.Order lineTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entryBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent — or, when it went out some other way, recorded as delivered.InvoicePProject type — Fixed-price, Time & Material, Non-billable or Internal. It decides how the project's tracking and reporting behave.Project typePProject reference — An optional key a project carries so systems outside Flowtly can name it. Unique within the organisation, and never reused once it has been given to a project.Project referencePPerson — An employee. The central record the rest of the workforce data hangs off — profile, documents, leave, benefits, rates.PersonMMember rate — A team member's billing or cost rate on a project. Rates are per member, so the same person can cost differently on two projects.Member rateTTask — A unit of work inside a project.TaskPProject folder — A grouping of projects, for organisations running more than a handful.Project folderPProject template — A reusable blueprint for a project: its phases, task lists and tasks, with timings held as day offsets rather than dates. It carries no client, no team and nothing financial.Project templatePProject KPI — A measure attached to a project, either filled in by hand as dated readings or computed from the project's finances, optionally compared with a target.Project KPIPPhase — A stage a project runs through. A phase is itself a child project, so everything true of a project is true of a phase.PhaseRRole — One job to be done on a project. It may be open, partly filled, filled or over-filled, and it exists whether or not anyone is booked on it.RoleBBooking — One person committed to a role, or directly to a project, for a stretch of time — at a percentage of their time, or for a number of hours on each chosen day. A booking is a plan, not a record of work done.Booking

Related terms