Time Tracking

Time Tracking Overview

Open Time Tracking from the sidebar. Everything you log is attached to a project or a maintenance contract, so those hours can later be measured against what the work earns.

Day, Week, and Team views

Time Tracking has three views you switch between at the top of the page:

• Day - log hours one day at a time using a quick composer. Best for entering time as you go.
• Week - a grid for the whole week where you fill in hours per project or contract per day, then submit the week.
• Team - a manager view that shows everyone's week at a glance, for reviewing, reminding, and reopening timesheets.

The view you land on depends on your access: managers who can see the team start on the Team view, while everyone else starts on the Day view.

Who can log time

To log your own time, your account needs to be linked to an employee record. Belvak usually links you automatically by your email address; if it has not, you will see a note that your account is not linked yet and an administrator can connect it for you. Managers with employee access can log time on behalf of a chosen teammate without needing their own link.

Permissions you need

Access to Time Tracking is controlled by your role's permissions:

• Open Time Tracking - needs view access to time tracking.
• Log, edit, or delete entries - logging needs add access, editing needs edit access, and deleting needs delete access.
• Submit a week or mark it as nothing to submit - needs add or edit access.
• The Team view, reminders, and reopening - the Team view is unlocked by employee view access, and sending reminders or reopening a week needs time-tracking edit access.
• See cost and margin - needs employee view access, plus access to the specific project, contract, or client whose numbers you are viewing.

You can configure who gets each of these in roles and permissions.

How time connects to projects and profitability

Every entry is tied to one project or one maintenance contract. Once hours are logged, Belvak multiplies them by each employee's hourly cost to show labor cost and margin on the project, contract, and client. That is how a busy project that looks healthy on revenue can still turn out to be low-margin once the hours behind it are counted.

Asking the assistant about hours

You can ask the built-in AI assistant questions about logged hours, such as how many hours went into a project. Cost and margin figures are not answered through the assistant; you view those on the project, contract, and client screens described below.

Logging Time in the Day View

The Day view is the fastest way to record time. It shows a strip of the last several days with each day's total, a composer for adding entries, and the list of entries for the selected day.

Opening the Day view

Go to Time Tracking and choose the Day view. Use the day strip or the Prev, Next, and Today buttons to move between days. The header shows the Day total for the selected day.

Logging hours against a project or contract

In the composer, switch between Project and Maintenance, pick the specific project or contract, enter the hours, and click Add. Each entry belongs to exactly one project or one contract.

Logging for a teammate

Managers with employee access get an employee filter. To add time for someone, pick that specific employee first, then use the composer. While the filter is set to All employees the add button is disabled, with the prompt "Select an employee to add time", because every entry has to belong to one person.

Adding notes to an entry

Each entry has an optional notes field. Use it to describe what the time was spent on so timesheets are easy to review later.

Editing and deleting entries

Click an existing entry to edit it, then click Save. To remove an entry, use its delete action. If the entry has a note, Belvak asks you to confirm first, since deleting the entry also deletes its note.

Hour limits and valid increments

Hours are entered in quarter-hour steps. A single entry can be between 0.25 and 24 hours, and the total across all entries on one day cannot exceed 24 hours.

Weekly Timesheets

The Week view is a grid for filling in a whole week at once. It is the view most people use to review and submit their hours.

The weekly grid

Each row is a Work item (a project or contract) and each column is a day of the week, with a Total column on the right and a Week total in the header. Click a cell to enter hours: an empty cell creates an entry, changing a value updates it, and clearing a cell deletes that entry.

Adding a work item row

Use the + Add work item row to add a project or contract to the week, then fill in hours across the days. A work item can only appear once in a given week.

Copying last week

If your work is similar week to week, click Copy last week to bring forward the same work item rows (without their hours) so you only need to fill in the new numbers.

Cells with more than one entry

If a day already has more than one entry for the same work item, that cell is read-only in the grid and shows "Multiple entries this day. Edit them in the Day view." This prevents the grid from accidentally merging separate entries; open the Day view to edit them individually.

Viewing all employees at once

Managers with employee access can switch the employee filter to All employees to see a read-only week grid grouped by person. It is a quick way to glance across the team without opening the Team view, and you cannot edit hours while it is showing everyone.

Moving between weeks

Use Prev, This week, and Next to move between weeks. Your changes save as you type, so there is no separate save button.

Submitting and Reopening Timesheets

Submitting a week tells your manager the hours are final and locks them so they cannot be changed by accident.

Submitting your week

When your hours are complete, click Submit week and confirm. The week then becomes locked and read-only. If a manager later reopens it, the button changes to Submit again so you can resubmit after making changes.

Timesheet statuses

• Draft - the week has not been submitted yet.
• Submitted - you submitted the week and it is locked.
• Reopened - a manager unlocked the week so you can edit and resubmit it.
• No work this week - the week was marked as having nothing to submit.

Weeks submitted under an older version of the app may still show an Approved badge; managers can reopen those too.

Reopening a submitted week

Only a manager can reopen a submitted week, and they must include a note explaining what to change. That note is emailed to you and shown on the reopened week, so you know exactly what to fix before submitting again.

Nothing to submit this week

If you genuinely had nothing to log (for example, you were on leave), use Nothing to submit this week to mark the week complete without inventing hours. This is only available for weeks that have no hours logged; a week that already has entries must be submitted instead.

Why a week is locked

A submitted week is locked so its totals stay final. You may also be asked to handle the previous week first: if your prior week has logged hours that are not submitted, Belvak prompts you to submit that week before logging the current one (an empty prior week does not block you). There is no separate approval step for you to wait on; once you submit, the loop is simply submit and, if needed, a manager reopen.

Managing Team Timesheets

The Team view gives managers one place to see every employee's week, chase missing timesheets, and reopen weeks that need changes.

Opening the Team view

Choose the Team view in Time Tracking (it is available to users with employee access). It lists each person with their Status, logged Hours against their expected hours, and Last activity.

Status filters and Last week

Filter the roster by status with the All, Missing, Submitted, Reopened, and No work tabs, and use Last week to jump back a week. This makes it easy to see, for example, only the people who still have not submitted.

Reviewing a submitted week

Use Review on a row to open that person's week in a drawer broken out by day, with their total hours, so you can check the detail behind a submission.

Sending reminders

Click Remind on an individual, or use Remind missing to email everyone who has not submitted. Reminders need time-tracking edit access.

Reopening or submitting for someone

From a row you can Reopen a week (you must add a note, which is emailed to the employee), Submit for employee on their behalf, or use Mark as nothing to submit for an empty week.

Terminated employees

A terminated employee appears in the roster only for weeks where they have logged hours or a submission, with a Terminated tag, so their history stays visible without cluttering the current roster. You can still review and reopen those weeks. To set up who is on your team, see employee profiles.

Project Profitability and Labor Cost

Logged hours feed labor cost and margin onto your projects, contracts, and clients, all shown in your workspace's default currency.

How labor cost is calculated

Labor cost is the logged hours multiplied by each employee's hourly cost. It appears on the Financials tab of a project or contract, on the client's Financial tab, and in the Time logged card on the employee's record.

Project margin and budget burn

A project's margin is its revenue minus its labor cost. Revenue is the project's expected value (for a recurring project, the amount earned to date rather than the full lifetime value). When a project has an hours estimate, Belvak also shows a budget burn percentage so you can see how much of the planned effort has been used.

Maintenance coverage windows

For a maintenance contract, margin is measured to date: Belvak adds up labor and fee from the contract's start through the current billing period (the fee is the recurring amount times the number of periods that have elapsed so far), rather than projecting the whole contract.

Client labor rollup

On a client, Belvak rolls up labor across all of that client's project and contract time. It is set against revenue from the client's expected project value plus the maintenance invoices billed to date, so it reflects work delivered rather than the full value of every contract.

Spotting low-margin projects

The Overview page includes a Lowest-margin projects card that surfaces the projects where labor is eating into the return, so you can catch an unprofitable engagement early instead of at the end.

Who can see cost and margin

Cost and margin are sensitive, so they are hidden unless you have employee view access, and you also need access to the specific project, contract, or client. When a figure relies on a currency conversion that is not available, Belvak shows a dash or a short caveat (such as "Some labor costs could not be converted to the workspace currency") instead of a misleading total.

Employee Cost Rates and Capacity

The hourly cost behind labor numbers comes from each employee's pay and working hours. You can fine-tune both.

How an hourly cost is derived from salary

For a salaried employee, Belvak normalizes their pay to a monthly figure and divides it by their expected monthly working hours (160 per month by default, or based on their expected weekly hours when those are set). The result is the hourly cost used for labor and margin.

Setting an hourly cost override

On the employee's compensation settings you can set an explicit hourly cost override with an effective date when the salary calculation is not the rate you want to use. Overrides apply going forward: to new entries (and to entries whose employee or date you later change). They do not retroactively recalculate hours that were already logged.

Expected weekly hours and capacity

Setting an employee's expected weekly hours does two things: it scales their hourly cost (for example, a part-timer's pay is spread over fewer hours) and it sets the expected-hours target their logged hours are compared against in the Team view.

Per-work and unpaid roles

Employees with no fixed salary (for example, per-work roles) have no automatic hourly cost. Their hours still count toward totals, but they will not contribute a cost until you give them an hourly cost override.

Time logged on the employee record

Each employee's record has a Time logged card showing their recent hours and, for users who can see cost, the matching labor cost. It is a quick way to check an individual's recent activity.

Exporting Timesheets and Reminders

Two tools help you close out the week: a CSV export for payroll or record-keeping, and automatic Monday reminders so timesheets do not slip.

Exporting timesheets to CSV

From the Team view, use Export timesheet CSV to download time for a date range (up to 366 days). It is handy for payroll, billing reconciliation, or sharing records outside Belvak.

What the export includes

The export lists logged time with the record numbers shown in Belvak. Cost columns are included only for users who have employee view access, so the file respects the same cost visibility rules as the rest of the app.

Weekly reminder emails

When enabled, Belvak emails a reminder every Monday morning to anyone who has not submitted the previous week, so nudging the team does not depend on someone remembering to do it.

Turning reminders on or off

Weekly reminders are off by default. Turn them on with the Automated timesheet reminders switch in Settings > Preferences.

Sending a manual reminder

Whether or not automatic reminders are on, a manager can send a reminder at any time from the Team view using Remind or Remind missing. Sending reminders needs time-tracking edit access.