Time tracking for agencies: hours, projects and billable value
An agency sells time, so time tracking decides whether a project made money. The trouble is that people forget timers, fill timesheets from memory on Friday and log work to the wrong client. Tickin starts from the clock your team already uses: people clock in from Slack or the web, pick what they are working on, and log time to client projects and tasks. On the Scale plan, approved time turns into a Cost & billable report per project. It does not create invoices.
Hours from the clock, not from memory
People clock in and out with /tickin start and /tickin end in Slack, from the browser, or from the optional desktop app (Microsoft Teams on the Scale plan). Hours, breaks and overtime are recorded as they happen, so the day's total is never reconstructed at the end of the week. That is the base every project figure is built on, on every plan.
Time against client projects and tasks
On the Scale plan, work is organised into projects and tasks on a board. People log time on a task, or pick what they are Working on when they clock in, and leads see time by project, task and person. The project task list exports as CSV.
Approved before it is billed
Logged time is approved before it counts: by an admin, with a team-lead stage first where your workspace uses team leads. Wrong-project entries and duplicates get caught before a client ever sees a number.
Cost and billable value per project
Billing is off until an admin turns it on. Then each project can be marked billable with one hourly bill rate, each person gets an hourly cost rate, and the Cost & billable report shows approved hours, cost, billable value and the difference for each project, with a line per person. Money figures are visible to system admins only, and cost rates are never used for payroll.
What Tickin does not do for agencies
There is one bill rate per project, not per person or per task. There is no invoicing, and the Cost & billable report is on screen rather than exported. If you need invoices from tracked time, pair Tickin with your invoicing tool, or choose a tool such as Harvest that invoices from timesheets.
Frequently asked questions
- Which plan do agencies need?
- Projects, task time and the Cost & billable report are on the Scale plan ($6 per employee a month). Clocking in from Slack, attendance, leave and the live dashboard work on every plan, including Free for up to 10 employees.
- Can Tickin invoice clients?
- No. Tickin tracks approved hours, cost and billable value per project, but it does not create invoices. Use your invoicing tool alongside it.
- Does Tickin take screenshots of my team?
- Not by default. Screenshots and app tracking exist only through the optional Desktop App add-on, and stay off until an admin turns monitoring on. Project time tracking does not need them.
- Can we set different rates per person?
- Cost rates are per person, with the date each one starts. Bill rates are one per project; there is no per-person or per-task bill rate.