Time and Expenses
The TIME area in Factor is where employees log their hours to projects, track paid time off, enter expenses, and submit timesheets for approval. It connects directly to project budgets — so managers can track how much budget has been consumed — and to billing, so invoices can be prepared from logged time and expenses.
Key Features
Timer — Start a running timer, then convert captured time into a time entry by specifying the project, phase, actual hours, description, and optionally a task.
Enter Time — The primary timesheet interface where employees log hours to projects, budget phases, and optionally tasks. You can look up projects and phases or see scheduled work from the Resource Scheduler. This is also where you enter PTO.
Time Periods and Submission — Firms can create time periods that employees submit time for. Submitted time can then be approved by authorized users. This is an optional feature.
Approve Time — Review and approve submitted time entries. Only visible to users with the appropriate permissions.
PTO Requests — View and act on paid time off requests from other users. Only visible to users with the appropriate permissions.
Expense Entry — Log expenses to projects. If an expense budget exists for that type and is linked to a phase, you can specify which phase it applies to.
Review Time — View time entries from other people with filtering by date range, project, person, or time type. Users with appropriate permissions can also add time entries for other employees from this page.
How Time Entry Is Organized
The Enter Time page has several tabs:
Enter Time — A weekly grid for entering hours by day across projects, phases, and tasks
My Expenses — Where you log your own reimbursable expenses (see Entering Employee Expenses)
My Schedule — Shows projects you are scheduled to and any associated tasks you are assigned to
My Tasks — Shows all tasks you are assigned to, filtered by date
Review and Submit — Review your own time entries for date ranges or submit for pre-determined time periods
Timesheet Submission Workflow
When time periods and submission are enabled, timesheets move through the following statuses:
Not Submitted — Default state; fully editable by the user
Submitted — Sent for review; appears in the manager's approval queue
Approved — Time entries are locked and ready for invoicing
Rejected — Returned for corrections; the user can edit and resubmit
Status Indicators on the Time Entry Grid
As you enter time, Factor provides several indicators to help you stay on track:
Daily totals — The header shows total hours for each day and overall
PTO balances — For PTO types, you can see your allowance, hours logged, hours requested in the future, and remaining balance
Utilization tracking — An optional dial showing your billable hours against your target (e.g., 30 billable hours out of a 40-hour week). This is configurable by your firm.
Scheduled hours — If you've been scheduled to projects via the Resource Scheduler, you'll see how many hours you have remaining for each project. Projects you're scheduled to are automatically preloaded on your timesheet.
Phase budget progress — As you log time, you'll see the percentage of the phase budget consumed
How Time Entry Connects to Other Areas
PROJECTS — Time entries are logged against project phases and affect budget tracking
BILLING — Hourly time entries can be selected for inclusion on invoices
SCHEDULE — Scheduled hours preload on the timesheet and show progress indicators
REPORTS — Time data feeds dashboards and printable reports for analysis