Hours reach the invoice without retyping.
Someone chases the team for their hours and types them into an invoice. In Ekeko your people book their week in the hours app, a colleague approves it, and the approved hours become a draft invoice.
Ekeko's time tracking is for companies whose people book hours on projects. They fill in the week in the hours app, an approver checks it and fixes the hourly rate, and the approved hours become a draft invoice. Fixed price jobs are invoiced in terms, and reminders and budget alerts follow up for you.
What's all in there?
Hours are booked once and approved once and the invoice is built from what was approved.
Your people book hours on their phone as they work, in one grid.
Hours get written down on Friday from memory, and someone has to collect them. In the hours app a person adds the project posts they work on, then types a duration in a cell, such as 1:30 or 90min, or starts a timer. On a phone each day is a list.
Without it: the real hours are guessed at the end of the week, and the office invoices whatever happens to arrive.
Every week is checked before a single hour is billed.
A week of hours reaches the invoice unchecked. A person hands in the week, which locks its hours, and an approver approves it or sends it back with a reason the person can read and fix. The office can also enter and submit a week for someone, and an approver can be limited to the weeks of the projects they manage.
Without it: a mistyped week ends up on the invoice, and the customer is the first to notice.
The hourly rate is picked for you and stays fixed after approval.
Rates differ per customer and per contract, and someone has to remember which one applies to which hours. When an hour is approved, Ekeko takes the rate from the post, then the contract, then the customer and last your default hourly rate, and writes it on the hour. A later change never reprices an approved hour.
Without it: a rate change halfway through a project quietly reprices hours you already approved, and the invoice no longer matches what you checked.
Approved hours become a draft invoice without anyone retyping them.
At month end someone adds up the hours per customer and types them into an invoice. Hours to invoice lists the approved hours per customer and project, and the preview shows one line per post and rate, rounded up to your billing step (15 minutes by default). Create the draft and the hours on it are locked.
Without it: an hour slips through unbilled, or the same hour lands on two invoices because two people invoiced the same project.
A fixed price job is invoiced in terms, like a deposit and a balance.
You agreed one price for the whole job, so the hours people booked on it say nothing about what to invoice. Give a post a fixed price and plan its terms, for instance a deposit and the balance. Each term becomes a draft invoice when you start it, and the planned day only flags it as due.
Without it: the booked hours of a fixed price job end up on an hourly invoice, and the deposit waits until somebody remembers it.
Late weeks are chased for you, and a budget warns you at 80 percent.
Somebody has to remind the team to hand in their hours, and a post can pass its budget unnoticed. Every Monday, a person using the hours app who has not handed in last week gets a reminder and approvers get a summary. The project manager is told at 80 percent of a post's hours budget and again at 100.
Without it: the office sends the Monday chasing messages by hand, and a post runs well past its budget before anybody sees it.
Frequently asked questions
The hours app opens in the browser on a phone and can be put on the home screen. Each day shows as a list there. Saving needs a connection, because hours are written straight to the server. Time on a work order is booked in the field app.
Deciding needs the right to approve hours, and you can limit an approver to the weeks of the projects they manage. Whoever holds that right may also approve their own week, and the week then shows it. Several weeks can be approved at once.
The hour keeps the rate it had when it was approved. A change to the post, contract, customer or default rate only applies to hours approved afterwards. If no rate is known, the hour is still approved and Hours to invoice names the post.
Give a post a fixed price and plan its terms, such as a deposit and a balance. Other posts of the project can still be billed by the hour. The hours on a fixed price post stay bookable and count against its budget, but never reach Hours to invoice.
When an invoice bills hours, its PDF gets a separate page called Time specification, with the hours per post, day and person and a total. It shows no rates or amounts. It lists the time worked, so it can differ from the invoiced quantity because of rounding.
Ready to invoice your hours without retyping them?
In the demo we book a week on a phone, approve it and turn the hours into a draft invoice.