Platform · operations

Time that is confirmed rather than reconstructed

Almost all bad time data has the same origin: somebody rebuilding their week on Friday afternoon from memory and a calendar. Everything downstream — utilisation, project margin, work in progress, revenue recognition on fixed fee — inherits that inaccuracy, and no amount of reporting sophistication repairs it.

w0w3w6w9w12w15w18DiscoveryData mappingConfigurationReconciliationUATGo livetodayBudget$186,000Burned to date$104,200Forecast at complete$171,400Project margin38.4%
Drafted from calendar and activityLoaded cost from payrollWIP ties to the ledger

What it does

Six things, specifically.

Capture that people use

Timers, weekly grids, mobile entry, and agent-drafted timesheets built from calendar and activity for confirmation rather than recall.

Plans and structure

Phases, tasks, milestones, and dependencies on a schedule that understands working calendars rather than raw elapsed days.

Loaded cost by role

Salary or contractor cost, employer taxes, benefits, and an overhead allocation using a method you configure — applied per person rather than as a blended rate.

Work in progress

Unbilled time and cost as a real balance that ties to the ledger, rather than a schedule maintained alongside it that agrees by convention.

Forward utilisation

Allocation across the next eight to twelve weeks against a target per role, with over-commitment flagged before it becomes a delivery problem.

Billing from the plan

Time and materials, fixed fee by milestone, retainers with rollover, and capped engagements — invoiced from the records that track delivery.

Friday reconstruction is the root cause

When we measure time accuracy before an engagement, the pattern is consistent: entries are round numbers, they cluster on Friday, and they total suspiciously close to the expected week. That is not dishonesty — it is what recall produces when somebody reconstructs five days from memory.

The fix is not enforcement. Daily reminders and manager chasing produce entries that are timelier and no more accurate. What works is reducing the task from recall to confirmation: the agent proposes a week from calendar entries, document activity, and ticket updates, and the person corrects it.

Round numbers clustered on Friday totalling almost exactly forty hours is not a compliance problem. It is what memory produces, and chasing harder does not fix memory.

Loaded cost is what makes margin real

A margin number built on billed rates tells you about pricing. A margin number built on loaded cost tells you about profitability, and the two frequently disagree about which engagements are worth having.

Loaded cost means salary, employer taxes, benefits, and an overhead allocation, applied per person rather than blended across the team — because a tier-one task done by a junior and a migration run by a senior engineer cost materially different amounts. Blending them makes both project margin and utilisation unreliable in opposite directions.

The allocation method is configurable and appears on every margin report, so the number is auditable rather than a black box somebody has to trust.

WIP as a balance, not a schedule

Unbilled work in progress is a real asset and in most service firms it lives in a spreadsheet that reconciles to the ledger monthly, approximately. Holding it as a subledger that ties to a control account continuously means the balance is defensible and the movement is explainable — which matters at year end and matters more if you are ever audited.

Limits

Where this does not help.

Not a delivery tool

Sprint boards, story points, and developer workflow belong in Jira, Asana, or Linear. We read from them and add the cost and margin layer rather than asking teams to move.

It cannot fix historic time data

Two years of reconstructed timesheets cannot be made accurate retrospectively. Margin on completed engagements will inherit whatever the data was, and we will say so rather than presenting it confidently.

Not resource optimisation

We show allocation, capacity, and over-commitment. Automatically solving a staffing puzzle across constraints is a different product and we do not pretend to it.

Questions

What people ask.

Do we have to move off our project tool?
No. We read tasks and assignments from Jira, Asana, Linear, Monday, or ClickUp and add cost, billing, and margin. Moving delivery teams for a finance requirement is how rollouts fail.
How does agent-drafted time work?
It proposes a week from calendar entries, document activity, and ticket updates. The person confirms or corrects it, which takes minutes rather than the Friday reconstruction.
Can we keep Harvest or Toggl?
Yes. We read time from them and apply loaded cost and margin. Firms adopting our capture usually do it because they want the agent-drafted week rather than because we asked.
How is overhead allocated?
By a method you configure — headcount, revenue, or direct labour — and the method appears on every margin report so the number is auditable.
Does it handle retainers?
Yes, including burn against fee, rollover rules, expiry, and overage handling that matches how the contract is actually written.

Find out what margin looks like on real cost.

A month of timesheets and a payroll summary is enough to show you margin on loaded cost rather than billed rates.