Last updated November 6, 2026
Every person on the team should log time because job costs, quotes and hiring decisions all rest on total hours, and a gap in the log makes each of them wrong. Leave one person out and a losing job can look profitable. The person left out is often the most expensive one.
What goes wrong if only some people log time?
If only some people log time, every job looks cheaper than it was, and you carry that error into the next quote.
Here's an invented example. A six-person design studio wins a fixed-fee job at €18,000 and aims to earn €100 for every hour spent. The staff log 150 hours. The director spends about 60 more on client meetings and reviews, and doesn't log them because "I'm not billable".
| Hours counted | Earned per hour | Against the €100 target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff hours only | 150 | €120.00 | €3,000 above |
| Everyone's hours | 210 | €85.71 | €3,000 below |
It's the same job. The first row says the price was right. The second says the next one like it should be quoted at €21,000, about 17% more. And in real life nobody would know the 60 hours. They appear in this table only because the example is invented.
The guide to budget vs actual hours shows how to keep this comparison running during a job, and lump sum vs hourly covers what it means for how you price.
What can a firm decide once everyone logs time?
Once everyone logs time, a firm can answer several questions that otherwise run on opinion. Each one needs a different slice of the same record, and each goes wrong in its own way when hours are missing.
| Decision | Whose hours it needs | Without them |
|---|---|---|
| Is this fixed fee paying? | Everyone on the job | The job looks better than it was |
| What should we quote next time? | Everyone, by stage | You quote from memory, and memory forgets the revisions |
| Can we take this job in March? | Everyone, including internal time | You overbook the people you can't swap |
| Do we need to hire? | Everyone, including admin | You hire on a feeling of being busy |
| Are our rates right? | Everyone, paid and unpaid hours | Your charge-out rate rests on a guess at the billable share |
| Did we bill what we worked? | Anyone on an hourly job | Hours never reach the invoice |
That last row is the one people usually have in mind, and it's the smallest of the six. If that's your main concern, read how to track billable hours next.
Should non-billable staff log time too?
Yes, non-billable staff should log time, though far more coarsely than people working on client jobs. A bookkeeper or office manager needs three or four codes, such as finance, office, sales support and client admin, and a couple of minutes a day.
Their hours do two jobs. They separate being busy from being busy with paid work, because a firm where admin has quietly doubled feels the same as one where sales have doubled. They also show which clients cost more than the invoice suggests, when one account takes a disproportionate amount of chasing and correcting. Without that, those clients look as profitable as the others. The guide to billable vs non-billable hours has a way of setting up the split.
Is logging time worth what it costs?
Logging time is usually worth it for a firm that sells hours or fixed fees, and you can test that with a sum using your own figures.
Here's an invented one. Six people spend 5 minutes a day logging time, over 230 working days. That's 6,900 minutes, or 115 hours a year. At an internal cost of €50 an hour, the record costs €5,750 a year. The job above was underquoted by €3,000, so catching two like it a year pays for the whole thing. If you can't picture two such jobs, you may not need this.
| Your business | Worth logging by job? |
|---|---|
| Consulting or other hourly work | Yes. The record is the basis of the invoice |
| Fixed-fee projects, such as design or marketing agencies | Yes. It's how you learn what to quote |
| Monthly retainers | Yes. It shows which retainer is being overserved |
| Shops or cafés on shifts | Rarely. The rota and the till tell you more |
| One person selling fixed-price products | Rarely. There's only one person to ask |
There's one further test. If nobody will look at the record within a month of it being written, stop collecting it until someone will. Time logged and never read is a tax on your team.
How do you get people to log time without resentment?
People log time reliably when they can see what it's for and when the person at the top does it too. In practice that comes down to a few habits.
- Start with the directors. A rule that exempts the boss tells everyone else it doesn't matter.
- Log the same day. Rebuilding a week on Friday afternoon is guesswork with decimals.
- Don't demand false precision. The nearest 15 minutes is enough for most work, and the billing increment chart converts minutes to units.
- Show the results. Once a month, show one job's hours against its fee. People keep records they've seen used.
- Never punish an honest number. Tell someone off for logging 30 hours on a 20-hour task and next time you'll get 20, and your job costs will be wrong from then on.
Here's wording you can adapt for the announcement:
From Monday, everyone logs their hours, me included. A few minutes at the end of the day is enough: project, task and hours. We're doing this to price jobs properly and to see when we're taking on too much. It isn't to check how long anyone takes, and nobody gets in trouble for an honest number.
Then put the rules in writing with a timesheet policy, and use a team timesheet template for the layout.
Logging time in ERPFlow
ERPFlow doesn't have a timer or timesheets today. Time tracking, including converting tracked time into invoices, is coming soon.
What ERPFlow has now is a time spent field on each card in Projects, typed in as hours and minutes. Totals add up per project and, where a board is linked to a customer, per customer. That tells you how much a job took overall. It doesn't record who spent the hours, so the per-person record this guide argues for has to live in a spreadsheet.
Recorded time doesn't become invoice lines either. Hourly work goes on an invoice as a quantity and a rate that you enter yourself. The guide to logging time as a team member shows how cards work.