Time Tracking for IT and Professional Services Teams
TimeRewards gives IT and professional services teams a clear, real-time view of how hours are consumed and tracked. Track hours across clients, projects, support work, and internal initiatives, while keeping billable and non-billable time clearly separated. Monitor utilization throughout the life of a project, identify issues early, and take corrective action before they become costly overruns.
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Hours, Expenses, Invoices. One Record.
Time, expenses and invoices usually live in three tools, and every month someone stitches them back together. In TimeRewards they are one record: the hours you track and the expenses you capture are the same data your invoice is built from.
Tracking billable and non-billable hours across teams and projects.
Use timers or manual entries to track hours for every client and project.
Billable and internal work stay separable all the way to the report.
Four time entries totalling 7 hours 24 minutes. At first no entry is assigned to a client, so the billable share of the day is unknown. With TimeRewards each entry is coded to its client and the day splits into 6:04 billable and 1:20 internal.
Handling client-specific expense tracking and approvals.
Capture and approve client-specific expenses, ensuring accurate reimbursements.
Expenses reach the invoice already approved, against the right client.
An expense report of two items totalling 1,050 dollars, stuck at the first approval step for six days with a receipt missing and no client assigned. With TimeRewards the receipt is attached, both expenses are assigned to Northwind, and the report walks through review to approved.
Creating accurate, client-ready invoices quickly.
Generate professional invoices with one click, reduce errors and speed up payments.
A client question about a line has an answer sitting behind it.
A draft invoice for Northwind. Approved time of 840 dollars and approved expenses of 1,050 dollars connect to two invoice lines totalling 1,890 dollars, and the create invoice button becomes available once every line is backed by its entries.
One record, from the first hour to the final invoice.
Trusted by teams since 2004 across consulting, IT services, agencies and professional practices
What Is Billable Utilization?
Also known as utilization rate
Billable utilization is the share of an employee’s available hours that goes to client-billable work. No metric is watched more closely in professional services and IT delivery, and none depends more on the accuracy of the time records behind it.
When hours are reconstructed from memory at the end of the week, or non-billable work goes uncaptured, the number that guides staffing and margin decisions turns unreliable exactly when it matters most.
Three Things It Is Not
Utilization Is Not the Same as Hours Worked
Two engineers can each log 40 hours and show completely different utilization. One spends the week on a single client’s support contract. The other splits it between an internal tooling project and admin. As weekly totals the entries look identical. Broken down by client, project, and task, they tell opposite stories.
Utilization Is Not a Target to Maximize
A 100% utilization rate leaves no room for internal work, professional development, or operational flexibility. Chasing it treats the metric as a scoreboard rather than a planning tool. Build it on accurate client, project, and task-level time data, then hold it against a deliberate, sustainable target.
Utilization Is Not Something You Calculate Once a Quarter
A quarterly figure only tells you what already happened. Reviewed continuously, by client, project, and task, utilization lets managers spot staffing gaps, workload imbalances, and delivery risks while there is still time to respond.
Going deeper on the mechanics: how to track billable hours, and where the line falls between billable and non-billable work.
Nine Ways TimeRewards Gives You More Control
Each challenge has a corresponding settings-level solution in TimeRewards. The controls below use the product’s actual feature names.
Spreadsheets Don't Hold Up as a System of Record
Excel timesheets rely on manual entry, fragment into disconnected versions across a team, and leave no audit trail when numbers change, forcing admins to chase, check, and reconcile files by hand.
TimeRewards replaces the spreadsheet with one structured, fully auditable system, capturing every entry by client, project, and task in real time and cutting admin overhead to nearly nothing.
Complete Audit TrailOne Person, Multiple Types of Work
A typical workday may span several client projects, a support engagement, and an internal initiative. If the timesheet cannot accommodate that level of detail, employees are forced to assign time to the closest available category, reducing the accuracy of the underlying data.
Flexible Timesheets / Unlimited Projects and TasksTimesheets Submitted Late
Following up on missing timesheets creates unnecessary administrative overhead. More importantly, time reconstructed several days after the work occurred is inherently less reliable than time recorded while the details are still fresh.
Configurable Email RemindersBillable and Non-Billable Time Are Not Clearly Separated
When billable status is only determined at the invoicing stage, billable hours can be written off without the underlying utilization data ever reflecting the loss. Recording the distinction at the point of entry, not after the fact, gives an accurate view of both delivery costs and utilization.
Flexible Billing and Pay Rates (Professional and above)Multiple Billing Rates and Rate Cards
TimeRewards supports multiple billing rates and rate cards at the client and contract level, so the same employee can be billed at different rates depending on the engagement.
TimeRewards applies the correct rate automatically based on the client or contract, not a flat rate tied to the employee.
Custom Ratecard Bill Rates (Professional and above)Limited Visibility Into Employee Utilization
Without a clear view of how employees are allocating their time, staffing decisions end up based on assumptions rather than actual workload data. Managers need to see where capacity is going before they can make informed resourcing decisions.
Monitor Employee UtilizationProject Overruns Are Identified Too Late
A fixed-fee project can exceed its budget well before the issue surfaces in a formal review. By the time the variance is caught, the pain is already unavoidable: absorb the extra cost internally or raise it with the client after the fact.
Budget vs. Actuals Reporting (Professional and above)Time and Expenses Are Managed Separately
When time lives in a dedicated time-tracking system but expenses are tracked separately, in a spreadsheet or a separate expense application, project reviews require reconciling data across sources by hand, adding administrative work and making it harder to see the complete cost of a project.
Multi-Level Approval Workflow / Expense Tracking (Professional and above)Invoices Are Reconstructed Manually
Manual invoicing often means turning spreadsheets or reports into client invoices by hand at the end of each billing period, with different clients requiring their own templates or supporting documentation. When a client questions a line item, the underlying time record can be difficult to trace and validate.
Powerful Invoicing (Professional and above)What to Look for in Professional Services Time Tracking Software
Six questions to ask any time tracking provider, including TimeRewards. A system that cannot answer these questions clearly may not provide the data required to manage utilization, project costs, and billing effectively.
Can One Entry Include a Client, Project, Task, and Billable Status?
If any of these elements is missing, the reporting required later cannot be reliably reconstructed from the time data captured at entry.
Is Non-Billable Time Tracked Deliberately as Billable Time?
A system that focuses only on billable hours cannot provide a complete view of delivery costs, internal work, or the capacity being consumed outside client engagements.
Does the System Help You Forecast a Budget, or Only Report on It?
Ask what happens as a project approaches its budget, not only what the final report looks like after the budget has been exceeded.
How Many Approval Levels Does It Support?
Many professional services firms require both project-level review and financial approval. If the system supports only one approval stage, additional review typically moves into email or another application thereby creating a disconnected workflow.
Are Time and Expenses Connected Before Invoicing?
Reconciling time and expenses only at invoice preparation means that work is being done manually, every billing cycle.
Can a Client Question Be Traced Back to the Original Time Entry?
An invoice line is defensible only when the underlying record documents who recorded the time, which project and task it was associated with and an audit trail capturing when it was recorded or modified.
TimeRewards addresses all six requirements. The preceding section identifies the corresponding product controls.
Every Type of Work, Captured in One Place
Each time entry captures the client, project, task, and billable status at the point the work is recorded. This creates a consistent underlying record that can support utilization analysis, project costing, and invoicing without reconstructing the information later.
Where Does the Project Stand?
Budget versus actuals reporting uses the same approved time records that support invoicing, providing a consistent view of project progress, cost, and billing. Rates can be configured by employee and project, allowing fixed-fee and time-and-materials engagements to be captured and billed within the same system without relying on separate spreadsheets.
Working it out by hand today? Start from the billable hours template, or add up a week with the time card calculator.
What Happens During the First Week of the Month?
Billing operates against a fixed deadline. Hours must be complete, approved, and correctly coded before invoices can be issued. Every missing entry or discrepancy discovered at that stage creates additional work for delivery and finance teams, often after they have already moved on to the next billing cycle.
When a client asks about an invoice line item, the team needs to establish exactly how the charge was generated. Without a complete record, that can mean reconstructing weeks of activity from memory, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems.
TimeRewards keeps the underlying record organized as work is recorded. Filter by client and reporting period to view the associated hours, approval status, rates, and expenses in one place, ready for reporting or invoicing.
What Happens After Approval?
Approved time provides the underlying record used for invoicing, payroll, and project reporting. TimeRewards integrations transfer that information to connected systems without requiring manual re-entry.
Every integration, with what moves and which plans include it.
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Simple Per-User Pricing, With No Annual Contract
Establish accurate time records and gain visibility into utilization from the start.
$9.99per user / month* Start Free TrialBring approvals, expenses, invoicing, and budget reporting into one workflow.
$14.99per user / month* Start Free TrialSupport complex operations with custom integrations, automation, and a dedicated contact.
$24.99per user / month* Contact Sales* Minimums and conditions apply. Compare all features and plan details on the pricing page.
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