Project time tracking that shows where every hour goes

Project time tracking for teams that bill clients

Project time tracking answers a simple question: how many hours did this project take, and who worked on it? The answer matters for invoices, for planning the next project and for spotting problems while they are still small. Without it, most teams guess, and the guesses are usually optimistic.

zeitfair is built for this job. It links every entry to a client, project or task, shows the totals in reports and keeps the data in the EU. It does not monitor activity, and it does not rank people against each other.

What a project time tracker needs to do

Most teams need five things from project time tracking:

• Structure. Projects, clients and tasks that match how the work is sold and delivered.
• Easy entry. A timer for live work and manual entries for time that was missed.
• Reliable records. Entries that can be corrected, with a trace of what changed.
• Clear totals. Hours per project, per client and per team, exported when needed.
• Trust. People should know what is recorded and why.

If a tool fails on any of these, project data quickly becomes unreliable. Hours get logged to the wrong project, or not at all, and reports lose their value.

Set up projects, clients and tasks

Structure matters more than the tool. Before anyone logs time, agree on a short list of clients and projects, and a small set of task types, such as design, development, review and meetings. Too many categories make entries inconsistent, and reports become hard to read.

Keep the hierarchy simple

A workable setup usually has three levels:

1. Client. The company or internal department the work is for.
2. Project. A defined piece of work with a start, an end and a planned number of hours.
3. Task. The type of work done within the project.

Keep names stable. Renaming a project midway makes year-on-year comparison harder, so create a new project for a new scope instead.

Log time close to the work

Entries are most accurate on the day they happen. Ask people to start the timer when they begin a task and stop it when they switch. For work done away from the screen, a short manual entry at the end of the day is enough. A weekly check of open entries catches forgotten timers and missing projects in a few minutes.

Be honest about what the numbers mean. A timer started and left running for a whole afternoon is not accurate project time, and a manual entry rounded up to the nearest hour is not either. Agree on a simple rule for each case, such as stopping the timer at lunch or logging a fixed block for meetings, and apply it to everyone. Consistent rules matter more than precise ones, because consistency is what makes totals comparable from one project to the next.

Billable hours and invoicing

Many teams separate billable from non-billable time: client delivery on one side, internal work such as admin or training on the other. The cleanest way to do this is to give client work its own projects and keep internal work under separate internal projects. Reports then show the split without extra steps.

Agree on rounding rules before you invoice. Decide whether you round to the nearest quarter hour, to the minute, or to the entry, and apply the same rule to every client. Export the project totals as CSV for your invoicing tool, and review them with the project lead before anything goes to the client.

Budgets and overruns

A budget gives a project a limit, and hours are how you see whether the project is keeping within it. Write down the planned hours for each project at the start. Then review progress in the project report once a week, and compare the logged total with the plan.

The review is most useful when it is early. A project that is 60 percent through its hours but only 40 percent through its scope needs a conversation now, not at the end. Discuss changes to scope with the client while there is still room to adjust, rather than absorbing the extra hours quietly.

Utilisation and team reports

Managers often need to know whether a team has room for the next project. Team reports show logged hours per person and per team, so you can see where time goes. Combine them with absences that have been approved in zeitfair, and you have a clearer picture of available capacity.

zeitfair reports at team and project level. It does not produce individual scores or rankings, because hours logged to a project say little about how well someone works. If you want to calculate utilisation, use the exported totals and your own planning method. The aim is to plan work sensibly, not to measure people against each other.

Privacy, GDPR and works councils

Project time data is personal data, because hours can be linked to named employees. Under GDPR, the design choices matter as much as the features:

• Collect what planning and payroll need. Projects, clients, tasks, hours and absences are usually enough.
• Be transparent. Tell employees what is recorded, for what purpose, and who sees it (Articles 5 and 13).
• Set retention rules. Keep records only as long as the legal retention period requires.
• Sign a processor contract. A provider that processes data for you needs a data processing agreement (Article 28).

In Germany, introducing a time recording system is usually subject to works council co-determination. The Federal Labour Court ruled on 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21) that such systems generally require the works council's involvement. In the UK, involve employees and any recognised trade union before rollout. Under the EU Working Time Directive, as interpreted in CJEU case C-55/18 (14 May 2019), employers must use an objective, reliable and accessible system to measure daily working time.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check your own obligations with a lawyer or data protection officer before you roll out a new system.

Choosing project time tracking software

Use this checklist when comparing tools:

Be cautious with tools that promise to measure productivity through screenshots or activity scores. They create legal risk under GDPR and often damage trust, which makes accurate project hours harder to get.

Get started with project time tracking

Start with one team and two or three active projects. Set up the clients and tasks, agree on a daily entry habit, and review the project report every week. zeitfair is free for up to 3 users, so you can test the workflow before you choose a paid plan. Paid plans start at 3.90 euros per user per month.

For the wider picture, see our guide to time tracking, or read about employee time tracking for the employee side of the same workflow.