The Time Tracking Module in Catacloud
The time tracking module lets employees log hours, link them to projects and customers, and gives managers an overview with the ability to approve and invoice hours. The module is found under Time Tracking in the main menu.
The module is not pre-installed on new companies. To activate it, click the grid icon in the top left corner and select Modules and integrations. Go to Modules in the left menu, find Time Tracking and click to install.
Logging hours
Click + New time entry in the top left to open the registration form.
Type – choose between Work, Time off in lieu, Holiday, Sick leave, or Other absence.
Activity – select which activity the work relates to (e.g. Research, Control, Accounting). The list is set up by the administrator. The activity is used as the product line if hours are passed to an invoice. It is optional to select an activity – hours can be logged without one.
Date – pre-filled with today's date. Change if needed.
Time – enter a from–to time (hh:mm — hh:mm), or type the number of hours directly in the Hours field. Click Start timer to start a live timer.
Project – link the time entry to a project. Optional.
Customer – link the time entry to a customer. Required for billing.
Description – describe what was done. You can also add an internal note via Add an internal note.
Assigned to – shows the logged-in user. Managers can change this to log hours on behalf of another employee.
Billable – enable to mark the hours as billable. When toggled on, a separate field appears where you can enter the number of billable hours – this can differ from actual logged time (e.g. 7.5 hours logged, but only 6.0 hours billable). Billable hours require a customer to be selected.
Click Save hours to save the entry, or Start timer to start the timer.
Logging hours without an activity/product
It is perfectly possible to log hours without selecting an activity. Hours without an activity will not have a product line attached if they are later billed, and are suited for internal time tracking where invoicing is not relevant. Activities should be selected when hours are intended as the basis for a customer invoice.
Logging hours on a project
Link a time entry to a project by selecting a project in the Project field. This registers the hours against the project so they can be followed up in the project overview. Project and customer are independent fields – you can link to only a project, only a customer, both, or neither.
Time entries linked to a project appear in the approval list with the project name as reference. The activity on the time entry (e.g. Control or Research) describes what type of work was done within the project.
Billing hours to customers
Hours marked as billable and linked to a customer automatically appear in Invoice basis under Invoicing. This is the flow for billing hours:
Log hours with Billable enabled and link to the correct Customer. Select the activity that corresponds to the service being billed.
Go to Invoicing → Invoice basis. Here all un-invoiced hours are shown grouped by customer, with number of hours, activity (product), price and description.
Check the hours you want to invoice and click Invoice customer in the panel that appears at the bottom. The invoice is created automatically with the selected lines.
Before invoicing you can adjust how the lines appear on the invoice via Settings:
Merge lines – merges all hour lines into one combined line on the invoice
Specify date – shows the date per line
Specify person – shows which employee logged the hours
Specify description – includes the description from the time entry (on by default)
You can also select Mark as invoiced to mark hours as invoiced without creating an invoice in the system – useful if the invoice was sent another way.
My hours
My hours shows your personal timeline in weekly view. Logged hours appear as blocks in the timeline. Deficit or surplus per day is shown under each day (e.g. -8h 0m for a day with no logged hours, or +0h 30m for a day with 30 minutes overtime).
Navigate between weeks with the arrows, or click This week to return to the current week. You can switch between Timeline and list view at the top of the screen.
Employees – manager overview
Under Employees you see a table overview of all employees' hours per day, broken down by week. You can filter by department and project. Click the arrow next to an employee to see hour details per day.
Approving hours
Under Time approval managers see all time entries in a list view with columns for Date, Person, Project/Customer, Time, Hours, Billable hours and Description. You can filter by employee, week and status (all statuses, approved, not approved).
Click the edit pen on the right of a row to open and edit the time entry. Approved hours are shown with a padlock and marked "Hours are approved and locked".
Holiday & absence
Under Holiday & absence a calendar overview shows all employees' holidays and absences. Absence is registered as a regular time entry by selecting Type: Time off in lieu, Holiday, Sick leave, or Other absence. Absence is approved the same way as work hours.
The holiday balance is updated automatically according to the settings configured in Administration.
Settings
Time tracking settings are found under Administration → Module settings → Time tracking. Here you configure:
Standard working week – define working days, start time, end time, and capacity per day. Default is Monday–Friday, 09:00–17:00 (8 hours per day, 40 h total). Enable Lunch deduction for automatic deduction. Click + New working week to add a new profile from a specific date.
Time tracking setup – set the Start date for when the system begins calculating expected hours. This affects the display of deficit and surplus in the timeline.
Holiday and public holidays – enter the Month for holiday addition (typically 1 January or 1 June), Holiday balance added annually (number of holiday days), and enable Use public holidays with a selected country to automatically mark public holidays.