Why do billable hours and project expenses keep slipping through the cracks?

How does the app keep time and expense data where billing can actually reach it?

What does Time & Expense Tracking give your team?

• Daily, weekly, plus project-based time entry formats. Team members log the way that matches their work pattern. A field tech logging after each job and a consultant logging weekly both use the same system without compromise.
• Billable versus non-billable flag on every time entry. The distinction is made at the moment of logging. That means billing reconciliation starts from clean tagged data rather than from a pile of unlabeled hours someone has to sort through before the invoice can go out.
• Expense submission with receipt attachment on every record. A photo of the receipt attaches at submission. Finance reviews it alongside the expense record rather than chasing a paper envelope days later.
• Configurable approval workflows with spending limits by role. The right approver sees the right submissions automatically. No manual triage queue. No expenses approved by the wrong person because the form went to a shared inbox.
• Locked periods that prevent retroactive edits after billing closes. Once a period is locked, the record is final. No quiet corrections after an invoice goes out. The audit trail reflects what was approved and when.
• Live connection to invoicing so approved hours populate billing directly. The data that went into the system during the work period is the data that appears on the invoice. No export step. No copy-paste from a spreadsheet summary.
• Cumulative cost summaries by person, team, or project at any point in the period. A project manager checking budget burn on Thursday sees the actual numbers through Thursday, not a weekly batch summary from Monday.
• System-wide audit trail for compliance and payroll verification. Every time entry and every expense record carries a timestamp and a user stamp from the moment it was submitted through the moment it was approved. Payroll audits and billing disputes stop requiring someone to reconstruct the history from email threads.

What changes operationally after deploying this app?

• Billable hours stop disappearing between project completion and invoice generation because the tagging happens at entry, not during a billing review that runs days later.
• Expense reimbursements process faster because receipts are attached at submission and routed automatically rather than collected manually and matched to records after the fact.
• Project budget overruns get caught mid-project rather than discovered when the final cost summary lands. The cumulative cost view is current as of the last approved entry.
• Billing disputes resolve faster because the time and expense records that generated each invoice line are one search away, with timestamps, approvals, plus the original receipt attached.
• Payroll verification and compliance audits stop requiring someone to reconstruct what was submitted from email threads and spreadsheet exports. The audit trail is already there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can team members log time against multiple projects and clients in the same entry session?

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Yes. A single daily or weekly entry session can include time tagged to multiple clients, projects, plus task categories. Each line carries its own billable flag and project association. The summary view for the period shows the split across all tagged projects automatically, so a team member who splits their day between two client engagements logs once and the system allocates correctly to both.

How does the approval workflow work, and who approves what?

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Approval routing is configurable by role, department, plus spending limit. A field technician's time submission routes to their direct project manager. An expense over a defined threshold routes to a finance lead rather than stopping at the first approver. PCG configures the routing rules during deployment to match how your organization actually approves things. No shared inbox. No one manually deciding which submission goes where each morning.

What happens to time and expense data after a billing period is locked?

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Once a period is locked, the records within it become read-only. No retroactive edits, no quiet corrections. The approved totals that fed the invoice are preserved exactly as they were at the time of billing. If a correction is genuinely needed, it gets made as an adjustment in the next open period with its own audit record rather than altering historical data. Finance teams and auditors can rely on locked period data as a stable reference point.

Can expenses be flagged for reimbursement to an employee rather than billed to a client?

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Yes. Each expense record carries a disposition flag that marks it as client-billable, internal reallocation, or employee reimbursement. The reimbursement flag routes the record through the payroll or accounts payable workflow rather than into client billing. Both paths use the same submission form and the same receipt attachment process. The distinction is made at entry, not sorted out manually when payroll runs.

How does this connect to our invoicing process?

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Approved time entries and billable expense records feed directly into the Invoices module in FireFlight. When a billing cycle opens, the hours and expenses already tagged to a client project are available to pull into the invoice without a manual export or a separate reconciliation step. The invoice reflects what the team actually logged and what was approved during the period, not a separate summary someone assembled from multiple sources.

Can we see labor costs and expense totals in real time during an active project?

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Yes. The cumulative cost view for any project reflects approved entries as of the current date, not a weekly batch summary. A project manager checking budget burn mid-week sees the actual approved labor and expense totals through the last completed approval cycle. If a project is tracking above its budget at the current rate, that is visible before the billing period closes, not after the invoice has already been sent to the client.

How long does deployment take for a team that is currently tracking time in spreadsheets?

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For teams migrating from spreadsheets, the typical deployment covers configuration of your project structure, approval routing, plus billable rate setup, then a staff walkthrough using Ikhana's on-screen guidance. Most teams reach live entry submission within two to three weeks of starting deployment. Getting the full billing cycle integration running, including the live connection to invoicing plus approval routing, typically lands in weeks rather than months. PCG has handled this transition for firms ranging from small project teams to regional multi-department operations.