Hourly project
An hourly project is one charged on the effort spent rather than on an agreed total for a defined scope. The classification sits on the engagement itself, and it determines what the time record must support: effort detailed enough for somebody outside the team to follow.
Calling a job hourly rather than fixed changes little about the delivery. It changes a great deal about the record.
On a fixed job, the hours are a learning tool. Nobody outside the firm reads them. On an hourly one they face outward, and the bar they must clear is somebody else's understanding.
The person logging time needs to know which kind they are on. Otherwise they write the same terse entries for both, and only one of the two is good enough.
The practical consequence is a tighter logging discipline on these engagements. Log on the day, attribute to the right project, and write entries that mean something to a reader who was not there. Hours reconstructed on Friday for an hourly engagement are the worst combination available.
Attribution gets stricter too. On a fixed engagement, an hour filed against the wrong project is an internal accuracy problem. On an hourly one it is a charge against the wrong client, and that is a different category of mistake with a much shorter fuse.
Where this shows up in PeopleMuster
PeopleMuster carries Hourly as a flag on the project, beside the billable flag, so the team logging time can see which kind of engagement they are on.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between hourly and time and materials?
In practice they overlap heavily. Time and materials is the contract model; hourly is how a project is classified and charged within it. Some firms use the terms interchangeably.
Does an hourly project need more detailed time entries?
Yes. The entries face outward. An entry that means something only to the person who wrote it fails the one test that matters on this kind of engagement.
Should hourly entries be approved before a client sees them?
Yes. Approval catches the wrong-project entry before it becomes a charge to the wrong client. PeopleMuster timesheets move from draft to submitted, with an approvals queue for managers.