In any organisation, everything starts from logged time: time-and-materials invoices, project margin, the capacity plan, part of payroll. Yet the timesheet is often a Friday-evening chore, filled in from memory, handed in late and chased by hand by a manager who has better things to do.
The problem is not your teams’ discipline. It is the cost of entry. A timesheet that takes ten minutes is a timesheet handed in late, and late data holds up everything that depends on it. That is why AlibeeZ starts from a simple goal: a timesheet completed in three clicks.
What the timesheet shows
The panel above illustrates a week of timesheet entry in AlibeeZ. The rows are the activities the person is assigned to (here a core system rebuild and an application maintenance contract), the columns are the days of the week. The entry unit in this example is the half-day. Friday is locked: an approved day of paid leave is already there, and project time cannot be booked on it. At the bottom, the total confirms the week is complete, five days out of five.
Nothing on this screen has to be built by the employee: they check and complete what is already there.
Three clicks: how entry gets shorter
It starts from current assignments
The timesheet does not open on a blank page. It picks up the person’s current assignments: the projects and activities they are staffed on appear on their own. No project code to look up, no risk of booking time to a closed project or a colleague’s. The assignment decided upstream, in activity steering, becomes the structure of the timesheet.
It remembers last week
An employee on a time-and-materials engagement rarely has a week very different from the previous one. AlibeeZ remembers it: last week’s split is the starting point, and the employee only adjusts what has changed.
It includes what is already known
Approved leave is already placed on the sheet, and that day can no longer take project time. That mechanism, which links entry to the absence module, is covered in our article on absences and leave in AlibeeZ.
It can come from elsewhere
If your technical teams already log time on Jira issues, that time feeds the AlibeeZ timesheet, attached to the right project and activity. Employees log time where they work. An in-house tool can also push time through the API: it then goes through the same checks as if it had been entered on screen.
The right granularity, activity by activity
Not every activity needs the same precision. A time-and-materials engagement is billed by the day; technical support is tracked by the hour; some services are measured by volume delivered rather than time spent. Forcing a single unit on everyone either weighs down entry for those who do not need it, or loses precision where it matters.
In AlibeeZ, the entry unit is set per activity, among five granularities:
| Unit | Typical use |
|---|---|
| Day | Time-and-materials engagement, the lightest entry |
| Half-day | Someone split between two activities |
| Quarter-day | Finer tracking without going down to the hour |
| Hour | Activities where technical traceability demands it |
| Work unit | When what counts is volume delivered, not time spent |
The same person can log full days on their main engagement and hours on a support activity, without changing screens. How time is rounded is one of the business rules you configure, with no development.
Reminders rather than a lock
Many tools handle late entry with a period close: past a certain date, nothing more can be entered. AlibeeZ makes the opposite choice. There is no close that would freeze entry; missing timesheets are obtained through reminders.
- The employee gets an alert and an automatic reminder when time has not been entered.
- Their manager sees who has not filed yet, and can find that alert on their home screen.
- Reminders can be sent from your own domain, through Brevo for example, which keeps deliverability under your control.
The reasoning is pragmatic: over a billing month, a reminder landing on the 28th beats entry being barred on the 2nd. The timing and recipients of reminders are part of your configuration.
Traceable data, and therefore defensible data
Every time entry carries its author, its date and its approval. That is not an audit detail: it is what lets you answer a client who disputes an invoice, tracing the billed line back to the entry that produced it. It is also what makes the data usable everywhere else without reprocessing.
Once entered, time follows your approval chain, at one or several levels. That chain, and what approved time then feeds, are the subject of our article on consumed effort in AlibeeZ.
What it changes
Fast entry has no value in itself. It matters because in AlibeeZ, entry, absences and invoicing talk to each other continuously: an entry made on Monday is billable on Tuesday.
- Timesheets handed in on time: the completion rate is what unblocks invoicing, margin and the capacity plan.
- A cycle without re-keying: approved time feeds the invoice and the capacity plan directly, nobody retypes a spreadsheet from one team to another.
- Better-fed payroll: variable elements derived from timesheets (on-call, overtime, assignment bonuses) can flow to your payroll tool, such as ADP or Silae.
- Managers who chase less, because the tool chases for them.
For the role of the timesheet in an organisation’s profitability, read our article on the activity report. If your teams live in Jira, see how to connect Jira to AlibeeZ. And for the next link in the chain, from approved time to invoice, read our article on fast billing.
Frequently asked questions
Can granularity differ between activities?
Yes. The entry unit is set per activity: day, half-day, quarter-day, hour, or a work unit when what matters is the volume delivered. Entry stays light on time-and-materials work and gets fine-grained where technical traceability demands it.
What happens if someone has not filed their timesheet at month end?
They are reminded automatically, and their manager can see they have not filed yet. There is no period close that would freeze entry: the timesheet can always be completed, and the invoice can go out as soon as it is approved.
Our developers already log time in Jira: do they have to enter it again in AlibeeZ?
No. Time logged on Jira issues feeds the AlibeeZ timesheet, attached to the right project and activity. The employee checks their timesheet instead of rebuilding it.
Can we see who changed an entry?
Yes. Every entry carries its author, its date and its approval. If a client disputes it or an audit asks, the trail is complete, from entry to invoice.