Time is remembered, not recorded
Timesheets get filled in on the last afternoon of the month from a calendar and a vague sense of the past four weeks. The numbers are defensible rather than accurate, and everybody involved knows it.
Use case · professional services
Hours recorded where the work happened
Enclessa runs client work as a channel per client, a board for what has to be done, and project time recorded against that work as it happens. Project time is kept separate from attendance, because eight hours at the desk and seven hours forty on projects is the normal case rather than an error, and time can be attached to the board item it was spent on. Timesheets are submitted, approved and then locked for the period, and the numbers come out as an export for invoicing.
Open betaThe platform is being built in the open, so parts of it are not there yet, behaviour changes between releases, and no availability figure is committed while it is in beta. What is still being built.
At a glance
- Structure
- A team for delivery, a channel per client, a board per stream
- Time
- Project time recorded separately from attendance
- Attachment
- Hours can point at the board item they were spent on
- Approval
- Submitted, approved, then locked for the period
- Out
- Asynchronous exports for invoicing and payroll
- Needs
- The Time and Boards modules — the Business plan
The situation
The organisation sells hours. Which hours, against which client, and on what, decides both the invoice and whether the engagement was worth taking. The conversation with the client, the work being done, and the record of the time spent on it are three things that have to agree at the end of the month, and usually do not.
What goes wrong when this is spread across four products
Attendance and project time are conflated
A system that assumes hours at work equal hours on projects forces people to either inflate the project total or explain a discrepancy that was never a problem in the first place.
The client conversation is in email
The approval that changed the scope is in somebody’s inbox. When the invoice is questioned, finding it takes longer than the work it authorised.
Approved numbers keep changing
A timesheet that can still be edited after it was approved is not an approval. Corrections that overwrite the original leave nothing to show what was signed off and what was altered afterwards.
How Enclessa handles it
Give each client a channel and each engagement a board
Put delivery in a team, give each client a channel in it, and use categories to keep the sidebar readable as the client list grows. A board belongs to the team and inherits its roles, so nobody administers a second permission model beside the first.
Keep the decisions in the channel with the work
Scope changes, approvals and questions live in the client’s channel. A board card links back to the channel and the message the work came out of, so the reason for a task is one click from the task, not in an archive.
Record project time as the work happens
Project time is recorded against the project and can be attached to the board item it was spent on, through a stable reference rather than a foreign key — so the hours survive a card being reorganised. Attendance is recorded separately, because the two questions are different questions.
Submit, approve and lock the period
A timesheet is submitted by the person, approved by their manager, and then the period is locked. A correction afterwards keeps the original rather than overwriting it, so what was approved stays visible next to what changed.
Export the numbers for invoicing
Reports and exports run asynchronously and produce the figures finance needs per project, per client and per person. The invoice is built from recorded hours rather than from a reconstruction of them.
Which plan this needs
Boards are on the Team plan and above; Time is on the Business plan. The messaging half — a team, a channel per client, and the conversation kept in one place — works on any plan, including Free up to ten people.
Compare the plansWhat this will not do
- There is no invoicing. Enclessa produces the hours and the exports; the invoice is raised somewhere else.
- There are no rate cards, margins, budgets or profitability reporting. Recorded time is not turned into money here.
- There is no client portal. Bringing a client into a channel means giving them an account with a guest role, and the external-guest invitation flow — a guest across several channels with restricted visibility — is not built yet.
- Time and People are modules, off until an operator switches them on, and they are not on the Free or Starter plans.
- There is no resource planning or forecasting: no capacity view, no utilisation targets and no staffing model.
Where the detail is
Questions
Client work with time against it: common questions
Can I track time against a client project in Enclessa?
Yes. Project time is recorded against the project and can be attached to the board item it was spent on, and it is kept separate from attendance so the two totals do not have to match.
Why does Enclessa separate attendance from project time?
Because they answer different questions and they rarely match. Eight hours at work and seven hours forty on projects is the normal case, and a system that treats the difference as an error makes people falsify one of the two numbers.
Can an approved timesheet be changed?
A period can be locked after approval, and a correction keeps the original rather than overwriting it. What was approved stays visible alongside what was altered afterwards.
Does Enclessa raise invoices?
No. It records the hours and exports them for invoicing and payroll. There is no invoicing, no rate card and no profitability reporting.
Can I give a client access to their channel?
Only by giving them an account with a guest role on that channel, which limits them to reading, posting, reacting and taking part in calls. A full external-guest experience — an invitation flow with restricted visibility across several channels — is not built yet.
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