---
title: "Track project costs and approve engineering timesheets — Clock Clerk"
description: "How an engineering firm approves its engineers' timesheets month by month in Clock Clerk and sees what each project cost at each person's cost rate, beside what it is worth at the rate card. Limitations and plans included."
url: "https://clockclerk.com/solutions/engineering-firms"
---

For engineering firms

# Track project costs and approve engineering timesheets

An engineering firm needs two numbers from the same hours: what a project cost at each engineer's salary or day rate, and what it is worth to the client. Clock Clerk has the hours approved by the right lead, then reports them on either basis.

[Start free trial](https://app.clockclerk.com/signup) Which plan includes it

Thirty days of the Team plan, no card.

The problem

## Hours are approved in one place and costed in another

Engineers file timesheets so that projects can be costed and clients billed, but the costing usually happens elsewhere: hours are exported to a spreadsheet, multiplied by a cost rate somebody keeps privately, and compared with the fee. By then the month is over and an overrun is history.

Approval is its own problem. A discipline lead should sign off the hours on their projects and no others, a week that crosses a month end belongs to two accounting periods, and an engineer on leave should not be chased for a sheet.

How Clock Clerk handles it

## Approved by the lead, costed by finance

### Each lead approves the projects they were granted.

A manager sees the clients and projects they were granted and nobody else's hours. They approve a filing per person per month, or send it back with the reason written on the sheet, and approved hours are locked.

- **A week cut at the month end** is two filings, each approved and locked on its own.
- **A backlog** counts what is pending and who is missing over the last eight weeks, leaving out people who had not started or had left.
- **Nobody approves their own week**, except an administrator, who has nobody above them.

Every plan, Free included

### What a project cost, at each person's cost rate.

Finance keeps a dated cost rate for each person, hourly, monthly or annual. Any report can then be shown at cost or at the rate card, grouped by client, project, task, person or activity, with internal work included.

- **A salary becomes an hourly cost** from the hours that person actually recorded that month.
- **Uncosted people are named**, never counted as free.
- **Cost is for finance.** Managers see the same reports at the rate card, without anybody's pay.

Team and Enterprise

Limitations

## What it does not do

Clock Clerk costs the hours that were approved. It is not project-accounting software, and these are the gaps worth knowing.

- #### No project budgets or margin report

  A task can carry an estimate in hours, but there is no project budget in money, no earned-value view and no report that subtracts cost from revenue for you. Both figures are there; the margin is a comparison you make.
- #### No fee-against-burn for fixed fees

  A fixed-fee project's hours are valued and costed like any other, but nothing compares them with the fee as the work goes on.
- #### No resource scheduling

  There is no capacity plan, Gantt chart or allocation of people to future weeks; Clock Clerk records the hours that were worked.
- #### No time-off tracking

  A holiday schedule lowers people's targets on public holidays, but there is no leave request, balance or accrual.
- #### One currency

  Cost rates, billing rates and reports are in US dollars.

Plans

## Which plan includes it

Approvals, the backlog and reports at the rate card are on every plan. Cost rates, cost-basis reports and export to QuickBooks are Team; export to any other ERP is Enterprise.

| What is included | Free | Starter | Team | Enterprise |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Price | $0 | $3 per filer / month | $6 per filer / month | Talk to us |
| Approvals per filing, with send-back reasons | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Holiday schedule & paid holidays | Not included | Included | Included | Included |
| Cost cards and cost-basis reports | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Friday, month-end and backlog reminders | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Contractors: monthly protocols, countersigning and payment | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Export hours and cost to QuickBooks Online and Desktop | Not included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Export hours and cost to SAP, Oracle, NetSuite and every other ERP | Not included | Not included | Not included | Included |

Reviewers, administrators and finance readers are free on every plan; Starter and Team charge only for the people who log hours that month. [Compare plans in full](https://clockclerk.com/pricing.md)

Questions

## Asked while evaluating

**Can a manager see everyone?**

Only the clients and projects they were granted. A grant is not a seat on a team either: a manager books nothing until a project is ticked for them like anybody else.

**Can we send approved hours and their cost to our ERP?**

On Team, to QuickBooks Online, or to QuickBooks Desktop by an import file Finance downloads; on Enterprise, to SAP S/4HANA, Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, NetSuite, Dynamics 365, Sage Intacct, Acumatica or Workday. Approved days go out as time entries with their cost, and a change after export goes as a correction, except that a QuickBooks Desktop time entry is corrected there by hand.

**What happens at a month end mid-week?**

The week is cut where the month is. Each part has its own status and its own submit, and locking follows the days, so the new month stays typable while the old one is being approved.

## Know what each project cost the month it happened

Thirty days of the Team plan, no credit card required. When the trial ends, your data stays and stays readable. Start with your work email and set a password from the link we send you.

[Start free trial](https://app.clockclerk.com/signup) [See the whole product](https://clockclerk.com/index.md)

Evaluating something else?

[Timesheet approvals](https://clockclerk.com/features/timesheet-approvals.md) [Contractor management](https://clockclerk.com/features/contractor-management.md) [Consulting firms](https://clockclerk.com/solutions/consulting-firms.md) [Project time tracking](https://clockclerk.com/features/project-time-tracking.md)