Billable hours tracking, project by project
Billable hours tracking works best when nobody picks a category each day. In PeopleMuster, every project is flagged billable or non-billable when it's created, and the hours people log inherit that flag. You get a clean split of client time against internal time, by project and by department, with no spreadsheet in between.
Internal work grows quietly. Tooling, recruitment help, a rebuild nobody scheduled. Client work gets squeezed without anyone deciding it should be.
Ask people to tag each entry and you'll get as many rules as you have staff. One person calls a client call billable, another logs the prep for it as admin. Putting the flag on the project settles that: log to the project and the category comes with it.
Here's the sum it all rests on. A full-time year is 52 weeks of 40 hours, which is 2,080 hours. Take out holidays and leave, multiply by the share of time that's billable, and you have the hours a person can bill in a year. Deltek's Clarity A&E study (12 May 2026) put staff utilisation at just under 60%, which shows how far that figure can sit below 2,080.
The review that pays for itself is quarterly. Internal projects get opened for a good reason and then stay open, and the non-billable share drifts up without a decision. Read the by-project breakdown against your list of open projects and you'll catch it.
Why one record instead of two
The billable split is where an agency learns what it really spends its people on. Project flags are delivery data, and the hours are logged by employees against their own week. Both sit in one database, which is why you can read the proportion without an export.
What is switched on
- Projects
- The flag lives on the project, alongside fixed price or hourly.
- Daily recap and timesheets
- Hours are logged per project, so the classification is inherited rather than chosen daily.
- Utilization reporting
- The by-project breakdown is how the proportion is read over a period.
- Resource allocation
- The capacity grid filters by billable, which shows the split in the plan rather than in hindsight.
- Clients
- Billable work belongs to a client record, which is how it groups.
What the week looks like
Project setup
Flag the project billable or non-billable when you create it. Every hour after that is counted on the right side.
Daily
People log to projects. Nobody picks a category, which is why the split stays consistent.
Weekly
Filter the capacity grid by billable to see how next week is shaped, as well as how last week went.
Month end
Read the by-project and by-department breakdowns. The proportion is the conversation.
Quarterly
Review which projects are flagged non-billable and close the ones that have finished.
Questions people ask
How do you track billable hours?
Flag each project billable or non-billable, have people log their day against projects, then read the hours reports by project. In PeopleMuster that's the whole method: the flag lives on the project, so every logged hour arrives already sorted.
Can one project have both billable and non-billable time?
The flag sits on the project, so its hours inherit it. Where one engagement has both kinds of work, run them as two projects under the same client.
What is the fixed price or hourly flag for?
It records how the work was agreed, as a label on the project record, so you can read the portfolio by commercial shape.
Can we report billable hours by department?
Yes. Hours reports break down by project and by department, and the department comes from the person record. A team that splits out reports separately from the month its records change.
Can I see next week's billable split before it happens?
Yes. The capacity grid filters by billable and non-billable, so you see how next week is planned as well as how last week went.