Time is one of the most important yet limited resources available to a company. Using your team’s time effectively can make or break your project’s delivery and profitability.

For businesses that charge customers on the basis of time, tracking of time spent and generating timesheet reports to invoice them is a vital ability. Using Rocketlane, you can track time spent on project tasks, activities, submit timesheets for approval, and even specify billable vs non-billable hours - a useful analysis for service providers.

Enabling time tracking on Rocketlane

To enable time tracking for your projects on Rocketlane, 

1. Go to Settings → Time tracking. The feature is disabled by default. Turn it on - you can find it on the top right corner of the screen
   
   

2. Set the number of hours per week that each individual of your team puts into work, in the Team member’s capacity field

3. Select the Working days for your team

4. Next, set the day and time of the week that your team is expected to submit their timesheets

5. Use the Send reminders option to configure when you want to send reminders to your team to fill their timesheets

6. If you are tracking multiple tasks in parallel, or if there are multiple activities that you want to track, use the Time entry categories option to create and them and your team members can fill the time spent against each of the categories created. You just need to type in the category name and click Add
   
   
   

7. Use the Approval settings to select who approves the timesheets of your team members. The approvers are usually managers or supervisors of the team members. If you don’t set the Approvers, the approval request will go to the account admins
   
   
   

8. You’ll find the clock icon added to the left side panel once you enable the feature.
   
   

Using Timesheets

To view timesheets on Rocketlane, click the clock icon on the left side panel

The Timesheets screen appears. If you’re a manager/admin, you’ll have two tabs: 
My timesheet, and Approvals:

Tasks and Activities already added to the timesheet will appear under My timesheet.

Adding tasks to the timesheet

1. Click Add tasks

2. Select the project to which the required task is linked
   
   

3. You can further filter for tasks: Completed, In progress, Submitted last week, and All tasks

4. From the tasks that get listed, select the tasks that you want to include in the timesheet
   
   
   

Adding activities to the timesheet

Projects are bound to have ad hoc activities that aren’t initially accounted for at the beginning. Rocketlane provides an option to track time for them too.

To do this,

1. Click Add activity
   The activity form that appears:
   
   
   

2. Select the project to which you want to link the activity to. If the activity does not need to be linked to a project, select Non-project activity from the Project name menu

3. Provide a name for the activity

4. Pick a category under which the activity would fall

5. Check the option Billable if the activity is billable

6. Click Add time entry to save the activity
   
   
   
   

Filling in the timesheet

Filling in the timesheet is easy and quick.

Simply click on the time field under any day of the week, and fill in the hours you’ve put in for any particular task:

Once you’ve filled in your timesheet, click Submit week for approval to submit the sheet to your supervisor/manager and they’ll be notified. 

Note: Any change you make post-submission will be automatically updated for the Approver.

You can also fill in the time you put in, at the task level.

To do this,

1. Go to the task,

2. Click the clock icon
   
   

The time entry form appears

3. Fill in the time

4. Check the Billable option if the task is billable

5. Select the category to which you want to link the task

6. Add notes, if any

7. Click Add time entry

Here’s how it’ll reflect in your timesheet:

Approving Timesheets

To approve the timesheets submitted by your team, 

Go to Timesheets → Approvals

This tab lists your team members, the submission status of their timesheets, and the approval status. You’ll also find the overall time tracked, the team’s capacity, and the percentage of billable hours: 

For team members who haven’t submitted their timesheet, you can give them a nudge by clicking the Send reminder option available against their name

To approve a timesheet, you can either

1. Click the Approve option available against each team member who’ve submitted their timesheet, or

2. If you’d want a detailed view, open their timesheet by clicking their name, check the information, and click the Approve button on the bottom right corner
   
   
   
   

3. If you have any questions for the individual, you have an option to start a conversation with them using the Message button available at the bottom. Everyone who’s been added as an approver can view and participate in this conversation

Note: Once you’ve approved a timesheet, the team member will not be able to modify it. If a team member wants to make changes, they need to use the Withdraw option at their end, make the necessary changes, and re-submit their timesheet.

Time tracking in Templates

Enabling time tracking on your Rocketlane account adds time tracking options to your templates.

1. To configure these settings in your templates,

2. Go to Templates → select the relevant project template

3. Click the task for which you want to track the time invested

4. You’ll find a section called Time entry settings
   
   
   

   1. This section allows you to mark the task as billable

   2. You can also map it to a category that you want to link it to (refer to the previous section to learn how to create and enable categories for time tracking)

Timesheet Reports

You can find timesheet-related reports under Reports → Time tracking report.

You’ll find a snapshot of the total time tracked, the share of billable hours and non-billable hours, how the time is spread across the different categories for which you’re tracking time.

You can view the report for projects, your team, or the categories.

You can click a specific project/team member/category for a detailed report of the time spent on that project/category or by the specific team member.

To view the report for a specific period, click the calendar option and select the required time period from the dropdown menu:

Exporting data

To export a timesheet report, use the Export option on the top right corner of the screen

The report will be exported in CSV format.