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Project TimeTrack

TimeTrack records the time spent on a project's tasks, meetings and agent runs in one ledger, and reads it in the unit the project plans in: hours against a budget on Milestones, points against capacity on Sprints. Approvals, freezing and billing carry every hour from the task to an invoice-ready export.

The room Owner sets TimeTrack up and approves changes. Everyone always sees their own time in full; who sees anyone else's time is the owner's choice. Cost rates and margin are visible only to company owners and admins.

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TimeTrack is turned on per company by Qik. If you don't see TimeTrack in a room's apps, ask your Qik contact to turn it on for your company. It is offered in project rooms and ordinary rooms, never in one-on-one or private rooms.

How to set up TimeTrack in a room​

  1. Open the room and select TimeTrack from the dock or the apps picker. A room that has not been set up opens on the six-step setup.
  2. Shape — answer What shape is the work?
  3. Capture — choose How is time captured?: Timer only, By hand only or Both (recommended, with the timer starting on its own).
  4. Visibility — choose Who sees whose time?: Only you, You and the hosts or Everyone sees everyone. You can also name extra people who can see it.
  5. Ladder (Milestones and Boards) or Points (Sprints) — set The estimate ladder of hour choices offered on a task, or The scale and what One point equals.
  6. Billing — choose No money, Per-person rates or One rate for this room, then the defaults: Task work is billable by default, Meeting time is billable, Hours must be approved before they can be billed, and the Currency.
  7. Review — check the summary, optionally Bring in the last 30 days of meetings and agent runs already recorded, and select Turn on TimeTrack.

The owner can reopen these settings from TimeTrack at any time and select Save settings.

Hours or points​

The room's method decides the unit. You see it in Room settings › Tasks, where each method shows hours or points.

  • Milestones read in hours. Each milestone shows Logged, Remaining and a Forecast at completion that counts tasks nobody has estimated yet at the milestone's own median.
  • Sprints read in points. The report shows Committed against Capacity — taken from each person's working calendar and frozen at sprint start — with the Commitment ratio, Hours / point and Meeting drag.

Switching the method keeps every number: points are minutes read at the ratio each sprint was planned with.

tip

After three finished sprints, the room is told what a point really costs here, with an Apply button. It is never applied on its own, and finished sprints keep the ratio they were planned with.

How to set a budget on a milestone​

  1. Open TimeTrack and select the Milestones tab.
  2. Select the milestone, then select Set one next to the budget.
  3. Enter the Budgeted hours and set Warn at (80% by default).
  4. Turn on Stop logging at 100% if nobody should add time past the budget.

The report then shows Hours against budget. With billing on, it also shows Revenue and Effective rate, and Margin for company owners and admins.

Approvals, freezing and billing​

Time on a milestone or sprint climbs one ladder to the invoice: open, frozen, approved, locked, billed.

  1. Approvals — changes hosts make to estimates, budgets and freeze rules apply at once, are marked provisional with the old figure beside it, and count for nothing in billable totals until the owner approves them in the Approvals tab.
  2. Freeze time — on a milestone or sprint, select Freeze time to stop new logging. Entries already on it can still be corrected, and running timers are stopped with their time kept. Select Unfreeze to reopen it.
  3. Locked — a locked period is closed. A later correction writes an adjustment in the current period, so history holds and a mistake is still fixable.
  4. Billing — the Billing tab shows what is Invoiceable, Held from billing and Excluded, and Export downloads an invoice-ready file. Meeting and agent minutes are captured and shown, and kept off the invoice unless you choose otherwise.

Rates​

The Rates tab appears once billing is on. A rate has two halves: the Bill rate is what the client pays, and the Cost rate is what the hour costs the business. Rates can be set for the company default, a designation (job title), or a person, and the most specific one wins, filtered by the date it takes effect (In effect from). Rates are set by company owners and admins.

Company-wide time​

At company level, TimeTrack shows every tracked room and every person across them, grouped by reporting head. Reporting heads see their reportees; company owners and admins see everyone. See Reporting heads.