How do you handle time that's split between billable and non-billable work in the same task?

The cleanest approach is logging the two as separate entries against the same project — even if it's the same hour block conceptually, splitting billable from non-billable time at entry avoids ambiguity later, especially if a client ever questions an invoice.

What happens if a manager is unavailable to approve timesheets?

With automatic escalation, an unreviewed submission moves to the next approver in the chain after a set period, so it doesn't sit waiting for someone who's traveling or out on leave.

Do clients ever ask to see timesheet data directly?

It happens, particularly on larger retainer or time-and-materials contracts. Having an audit-ready export — approved hours, timestamps, project breakdowns — ready to share makes those conversations far less stressful than trying to reconstruct the record after the fact.

Is billable hours tracking only relevant for agencies?

No — any organization that bills clients by the hour, including consultancies, law firms, and professional services firms, deals with the same core problem. Agencies are just one of the clearest examples of where getting it wrong has an immediate, visible cost. Start free with OfficePortal →

Billable Hours Tracking Software & Timesheet Approvals

An agency's entire revenue model rests on something surprisingly fragile: an accurate record of who worked on what, for how long, and whether it's billable to a client. Get that record wrong — hours logged against the wrong project, non-billable admin time mixed into a client invoice, an approval that never actually happened — and it shows up directly on the bottom line, either as lost revenue or an uncomfortable conversation with a client about a disputed invoice.

This guide covers the two pieces that matter most for agencies and client-based teams specifically: separating Billable Hours Tracking Software from non-billable hours cleanly, and building an approval process that doesn't become a bottleneck.

Why billable hours tracking is harder than it sounds

In theory, billable hours tracking is simple: log time against a client project, mark it billable, invoice accordingly. In practice, a few things complicate that.

Not everything on a project is billable. Internal meetings, revisions beyond scope, and administrative time often get logged against the same project as the billable work, and if that distinction isn't made at the point of entry, someone has to sort it out later — usually right before an invoice goes out, under time pressure.

Retroactive sorting is unreliable. Ask someone three weeks later whether a Tuesday afternoon was billable or not, and you're relying on memory, not a record. The accuracy of billable/non-billable data depends almost entirely on whether the split happens when the hour is logged, not afterward.

Multiple projects blur together. Consultants and agency staff often split a day across several clients. Without task- and project-level logging, that time gets averaged or estimated rather than accurately attributed — which is exactly the kind of detail a client will ask about if an invoice looks off.

Why timesheet approval bottlenecks cost more than they seem to

Every agency has a version of this problem: a manager who's slow to approve timesheets, whether from being busy, traveling, or simply deprioritizing it against client-facing work. The cost isn't obvious day to day, but it compounds.

Invoicing gets delayed, because unapproved hours can't reliably be billed. Payroll processing gets rushed at the last minute because approvals came in late. And when someone eventually does review a backlog of timesheets, they're approving in bulk without much scrutiny — which defeats the point of having an approval step in the first place.

The fix isn't finding a more responsive manager. It's building a process that doesn't depend on any single person being available at the right moment — multi-level approval chains, and automatic escalation when a submission sits too long without action.

What to look for in a platform built for this

Billable/non-billable tagging at the point of entry, not as a separate cleanup step later.
Project- and task-level logging, so time split across multiple clients in a day is captured accurately.
Multi-level approval with automatic escalation, so an unresponsive approver doesn't stall invoicing or payroll.
An audit trail on every approval decision — useful both for internal accountability and for resolving a client dispute over billed hours.
Reports that separate billable and non-billable time by project, generated on demand rather than assembled manually before every invoice cycle.

Automated timesheets and approval terms worth knowing

A few related terms come up constantly in this space and are worth knowing before you evaluate platforms. Automated timesheets generally refers to systems where hours populate from a running timer or from task activity, rather than being typed in from memory at the end of the week — this matters directly for billable accuracy, since automated capture is far more reliable than end-of-week recall. Timesheet approval, as a feature category, ranges widely in sophistication — some platforms offer a single approve/reject button, while others support full multi-level chains with escalation, which is the version agencies actually need.

Project time tracking is the umbrella term for logging hours against specific projects or clients rather than just a daily total, and it's the foundation everything else in this guide depends on — without it, billable/non-billable separation and accurate client invoicing aren't really possible in the first place.

How OfficePortal handles this

OfficePortal's timesheet software separates billable and non-billable hours at the point of entry, logs time against specific tasks and project boards, and supports multi-level approval chains with automatic escalation when a submission goes unreviewed. Every approval decision is timestamped and logged, which gives finance teams audit-ready data without assembling it manually before every invoice cycle. It's free for up to 5 users, which makes it a reasonable way for a smaller agency to test whether this level of structure actually fixes the billing and approval friction they're dealing with.

Conclusion

Billable hours and approval delays rarely feel urgent enough to fix on their own — a slightly-off invoice here, a late approval there. But for an agency, that record is the entire revenue mechanism, and small inaccuracies compound into real disputes and real delays over a year.

The fix isn't more diligence from already-busy people. It's a system that captures the billable/non-billable split automatically and doesn't let approvals stall on one person's inbox.

Try OfficePortal's timesheet software free →