Time Tracking Overview

Time tracking is a method for reporting the time people in the organization spend working on projects and on other activities. It is a subset of a broader method – actuals tracking – which includes financial cost and benefit tracking as well as resource time tracking.

In ResourceFirst, there are three ways resource time on projects can be captured:

Labor Actuals Tracking – An authorized user (normally a person’s resource manager) enters actual time delivered against previously defined project assignments on a labor assignments page.

ResourceFirst Time Tracking – Each resource enters actual time spent on project and non-project activities on a weekly basis. Optionally, resource and/or project managers approve submitted timesheets.

External System Time Tracking – Resource time is reported in an external (to ResourceFirst) system and imported to the ResourceFirst database by an interface.

NOTE: Some organizations may have critical, non-fungible, non-human resources, e.g. labs, critical test equipment, trucks, etc. It could be useful to register such objects as resources with their capacity and cost in ResourceFirst.

Who can track time?

The requirements in order for a person to track time in ResourceFirst are:

The person must be registered as a user.
The person must be registered as a resource on the Resource Data page.
The user’s login name must be included in the Resource Key field of the associated resource (on the Resource Data page).

A time tracking user does not need any access rights in order to submit timesheets.

Color-coded Timesheet States

Color codes are used to indicate timesheet state on all three time tracking pages (Track, Manage, Compliance) and in the time tracking widget available in a dashboard on the user’s home page.

Gray – Not Created: User has not created (opened) a timesheet for the week period.
Orange – Open: User has created a timesheet for the week, but not yet submitted it.
Blue – Submitted: User has submitted a timesheet for the week.
Green – Approved: Manager/approver has approved the timesheet.
Red – Rejected: Manager/approver has rejected the timesheet.
Dark Green – Adjusted: User has modified values in a previously approved timesheet but not yet submitted it.

For further details and How To guides, see the following articles:

Time Tracking Basics – for users tracking time in ResourceFirst.
Manage Time Tracking – for managers to review and approve/reject submitted timesheets.
Timesheet Compliance Page – for review of time tracking performance by resource OBS node and by individual resource.
Administering Time Tracking – for system administrators.