“Your team logs hours every day. But if those hours are not connected to projects, billing, and resource plans — they are just numbers in a form nobody reads until month-end.“
Blog Highlights
- Hours management software should be about far more than just tracking time. Time that is logged needs to relate to the relevant project, client, contract, billing category and resource allocation category.
- Billable time is lost when time tracking software isn’t linked into a firm’s project plans and billing processes. As many as 8-12% of billable time are leaked through time misreporting and misallocation across IT services firms.
- SOW-timed entries, timesheet approval workflows, dashboards that report on progress in real time, AI driven time management guidance, resource utilisation integration need to come with the correct software.
- Kytes timesheets can be linked directly to individual tasks, projects, SOW lines, as well as billings and utilization dashboards. This process eliminates manual month-end reconciliations and helps to improve billings accuracy.
- Kytes enable businesses to reclaim 12% more billable hours as the platform links your time directly to billing. The team is not doing more, it is simply identifying the work better.
Why Timesheet Compliance Is Not Enough
An IT services firm boasted 95% timesheet compliance. Everyone filled it out. Everyone approved it. It still took the billing department four days at the end of every month reconciling time spent with client contracts.The timesheet management software was functioning as designed. It just had no integration with the project plan, resource schedule or client billing system. Time was logged. Revenue continued to bleed.That’s the timesheet challenge in a nutshell. Tracking time isn’t managing time. The right solution ties every recorded hour to the project, client, and resource utilization to which it belongs – and does so seamlessly.
Why Most Time Tracking Software Stops Short
Billable time lost between systems. Your team members log six hours for a client engagement, three of which spent on something that fell outside of the SOW. Your system doesn’t know this; all six hours are automatically recorded, until three weeks later when someone from the billing team, assuming anyone ever sees it, notices.
Billable time leakage is not a personnel issue.
It’s a systems issue. Real-time data identifying who is working on what-and if that work can be billed-requires a time management solution, ideally one that’s integrated with the project layer. This is no place for the time sheet form the team completes every Friday afternoon before the clock runs out. Auto-tracking eliminates the compliance gap.
When the time system prompts employees to log time based on the projects to which they are assigned, the input is far more accurate and comprehensive.
Tracked time accurately matches reality, instead of relying on what someone can recall from days or weeks prior. It’s common for 8 to 12 percent of all billable time in IT service companies to fall to either under-reporting or misclassification-that’s a huge portion of the profit, a cost you don’t need to incur.
What Timesheet Management Software Must Actually Deliver
SOW-linked time logging
Each hour can be attributed to a specific task, project, and client SOW. It isn’t just a project name. The deliverable within that SOW. We ensure that we accurately capture our billable time – and control, rather than hide, our non-billable time.
Approval workflows with project context
The person responsible for approving a timesheet should see the context of the work, the SOW, and the billing category along with the hours logged. When a timesheet approval workflow is designed in this manner, any errors can be flagged during the time entry and approval stage, before billing reconciliation.
Real time dashboards for utilisation and billing
Project managers will see what portion of their teams time is billable, which clients and projects use the most time, and where they may have a gap between time that has been tracked against project plan.
Artificial intelligence that prompts and learns
An AI-powered timesheet solution proactively creates time entry proposals that go beyond simple employee recall of their work. The system reads from calendars, assigns tasks, and uses other project context to create entries so you team only have to review and confirm. Machine learning allows it to learn with each use.
Integration with resource utilization software
Timesheet data will automatically feed in the resource utilization software. Utilization Dashboard is updated when hours are confirmed. Revenue forecast is updated when billable hours are confirmed. No manual reconciliation required.
User friendly desktop app and mobile access
Your team log hours based on where they work; be it the field, off-site, on client visits etc. Easy access from both desktop & mobile application keeps timesheet submission high & admin time low.
How Kytes Connects Time to Revenue
In Kytes every timesheet entry refers to a single task, project, and Sow line item. Kytes checks entries against the project plan. The system confirms the time is billable and marks the time as non-billable. This updates the client billing automatically; month-end reconciliation no longer required.
AI-Prompted Time Submissions
Kytes AIs prompt the team based on their project allocation. Time logs are more thorough and accurate. Missed entries become few and far between. The information reflected on the timesheets is reality work, not remembered work.
Real Time Resource Utilisation
The resource utilization layer, found adjacent to the timesheet module, provides an instant update of the utilization heatmap as soon as a team member logs some time. The delivery head will instantly know who is over allocated, who has time available and who is eating up their project hours.
Approval Workflows with Full Context
Kytes route timesheet approvals to the correct manager – with full project background. The manager sees the task, SOW line item, billing type and hours in a single view. Mistakes are caught at source before they make it to an invoice.
Our customers bill 12% more hours with Kytes on average, post-implementation. Not because their people work more hours. Because Kytes connected their time and their billings for the very first time, automatically and with 100% accuracy.
Our clients span across Pharma, CRO/CDMO, GCC, EPC, as well as IT/Engineering services providers.
Time is value delivery in every industry, and every billable minute/hour must be tied to a project, client, and revenue.
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