Project Management for Time Tracking

In short: a Sandtime.io project is a bucket for time with rules attached. It carries a billable default, a member list that decides who can log time to it and who sees whose hours, and each member's revenue rate. Administrators create as many projects as the work needs, and Sandtime.io is free for unlimited users. It tracks time against projects; it does not plan them.

Setting up a project, step by step

1. Open Settings, go to Projects, and click Create new project. Only an Administrator sees the button. A new Untitled project opens, and its creator becomes its first Project Administrator.
2. Fill in the Name, and optionally a Picture and Notes. A stable name such as "Acme - Website redesign" still reads well in a report two years later.
3. Leave Billable on for client work, or switch it off for internal time such as admin, sales, or breaks. Every project starts out billable, and each entry keeps its own Billable switch for the exceptions.
4. In the Members section, pick people in Assign new members and click Assign members. Only members can log time to the project.
5. Open a member to set their Role within the project and, under Revenue, their hourly rate with Add rate.

Who sees and changes what

Project membership does more than fill a drop-down. It decides visibility.

• An Administrator sees every project, every member, and every entry, and is the only role that can create, archive, or delete a project.
• A Project Administrator is assigned per project. They can edit its name, picture, notes, and billable setting, see the time reported to it, and see the cost and revenue rates of its members. When they add people or change a role, the change goes to an Administrator as a request.
• A User sees only the projects they belong to, and sees a teammate's hours only on the projects they share. A User with no projects yet gets a Request project assignment button.

Nobody but the person who recorded an entry, or an Administrator, can edit it. Being a Project Administrator does not extend to a colleague's time. The roles and permissions page has the full breakdown.

A worked example: a five-person studio

A studio has an owner (the Administrator), a project manager, and three designers. The owner creates three projects: "Acme - Website redesign" and "Nordlicht - Brand refresh", both billable, and "Internal - Admin" with Billable switched off. Designers A and B join Acme, designer C joins Nordlicht, the project manager joins both client projects as their Project Administrator, and everyone joins Internal.

In one week, each of the four logs 36 hours:

• Acme: 30 hours from A, 28 from B, and 12 from the project manager, 70 in total.
• Nordlicht: 32 hours from C and 10 from the project manager, 42 in total.
• Internal: 6, 8, 4, and 14 hours, 32 in total.

With Reported time and Billable time as metrics, a report grouped by Project shows 144 hours, 112 of them billable: a 77.8% billable ratio. Designer C sees A's internal hours, because they share Internal, but not A's Acme hours. When Acme wraps up, the owner archives the project: the entries stay in the record, drop out of reports unless Show archived is on, and cannot be edited until the project is restored.

What it deliberately does not do

Sandtime.io keeps projects to what time tracking needs, so some project tools are out of scope:

• No tasks, subtasks, Gantt charts, or kanban boards. The activity name carries the detail.
• No budgets or estimates. The free project budget and billable hours template covers that in a spreadsheet, fed by a report export.
• No separate client records. Put the client in the project name.
• No invoicing. Reports export to Excel and CSV for your invoicing tool.

Deleting a project is permanent and removes every entry reported to it along with its revenue rates, so archive instead whenever the record may matter later.

How it connects to the rest of Sandtime.io

Projects become rows on the weekly timesheet, a Group by option in reports, and the place where rates in several currencies are set. Project visibility explains the sharing rules in more detail, and the project setup guide walks through the screens. Coming from an agency suite with budgets and resource planning? See how Sandtime.io compares with Productive, or read about methods of recording time in projects.