Agency time tracking that shows where every project stands

Timers or manual entries, against the right job

Start a timer when you pick up a job and stop it when you are done, or add an entry by hand with the date and the hours. Every entry belongs to a job, so time lands on the same record as the brief, the creative versions and the plan, instead of in a separate spreadsheet.

My time shows your entries for the week, and you can step back to earlier weeks to check or finish them. A running timer carries on if you refresh the page, so an accidental reload does not cost you an afternoon’s hours.

A clear approval step

Entries move from draft to submitted to approved. People with permission to approve time see their team’s submitted entries in one place and approve them, so the hours that reach budgets and invoices have been checked by someone who knows the work.

On Plus, approving time is its own agency role permission, separate from logging your own time and from seeing financial information. Your team can record their hours without seeing rates, and finance can rely on what has been approved.

• Draft: logged and still being edited
• Submitted: ready for review
• Approved: checked and available for invoicing on project work

Project time against plan and budget

Each project can have a budget made up of planned hours, an hourly rate, a project fee and a currency. The project view then shows hours logged against hours planned, alongside the rate and the fee, so account leads can see whether a job is on track while there is still time to act.

The project fee is kept separate from the hourly rate. A fixed-fee project can still track its hours against the plan without those hours changing what the client pays.

Retainer time, handled properly

Retainers work differently, and Simplr treats them that way. Time tracking for retainer clients is optional and off by default. If you turn it on, those entries are internal: they show where the effort goes but never become an invoice line and never change the fixed retainer fee.

There are no hour caps or overage charges on retainers in Simplr. The agreement sets the fee; time tracking simply helps you understand the work behind it.

From approved time to invoice

When it is time to bill a project, approved time is ready to use. In billing, choose a week and select the approved, billable time to include in an invoice draft; the rates and currency come from the project budget.

Saving the draft reserves those entries, so the same hours cannot end up on two invoices, and invoiced time is locked. If an unissued draft is deleted, its time is released again. Logging time never moves a job forward on its own: progress follows the workflow stages and approvals.