Business tool builder

A timesheet tracker your team fills in weekly
and a reviewer approves on Monday.

Describe your clients, projects and billing rules, and the agent builds a web app where people log hours daily, a reviewer approves each week and billable totals come out per client.

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Starter prompt

Build a timesheet tracker web app for a 20-person consultancy. Store clients, projects with an hour budget and a billing type of hourly, fixed fee or internal, and the tasks under each project. Everyone signs in and fills a week grid: hours per day against a task, a short note and a billable flag. On Friday they submit the week, and their reviewer approves it or sends it back with a comment; approved weeks lock. Show weeks over 40 hours, hours burned against each project budget and a billable summary by client for any date range.

Build it in Netiva Paste the prompt into a new workspace and adjust it to your business.
Overview

Who this timesheet tracker is for

The last week of the month is when most firms find out what they actually sold. Two people never submitted, someone logged 46 hours with no project on half of them, and an account lead is rebuilding a client’s billable total from calendar invites. A timesheet tracker built with Netiva gives each person a single week grid, sends the finished week to a reviewer and totals approved hours by client, project and rate — so the numbers behind next month’s invoices are settled before anyone opens the accounting software.

Key features

What your timesheet tracker can do

  • The week grid people fill in

    Each person signs in to their own week: a row per project and task, a column for each day and totals that add up as they type. Entries carry a note and a billable flag.

    • Rows for the projects each person is assigned to
    • Daily and weekly totals as the numbers go in
    • Last week’s rows copied forward to start the new one
    • Opens in a phone browser for hours logged on site

  • Submit, approve or send back

    A submitted week lands with one reviewer, who approves it or returns it with a comment. Approved weeks lock, so a late correction leaves a record instead of quietly changing last month’s numbers.

    • Statuses from open to submitted, approved or returned
    • The reason for a return kept on the week itself
    • A reviewer queue of the weeks waiting on you
    • A reopened week stamped with the date and the reason it came back

  • Billable hours by client

    Approved entries roll up by client, project and person for any date range, grouped by billing type and valued at the rate that applies, so hourly work totals what you invoice and fixed-fee work shows the hours behind the fee.

    • Billable and non-billable hours side by side
    • Saved views per account lead, client or month
    • Hours already invoiced kept out of the next total
    • Entry notes carried through as invoice line detail

  • Reminders and budget warnings

    Scheduled emails nudge whoever hasn’t submitted, tell each reviewer what is waiting and warn a project manager when a fixed-fee project passes the share of its hour budget you choose.

    • Monday reminder to anyone with an open week
    • Reviewer digest listing the weeks left to approve
    • Budget alert when a project crosses your threshold
    • Month-end note once every week is approved
Data model

The collections behind it

Netiva keeps your records in built-in collections. Here’s a starting structure — the agent adapts it to your prompt, and you can change it any time.

Team members

Everyone who logs hours, with their default rate and the person who approves their week.

  • Name (required) Text
  • Work email (required) Used to sign in and to send the Monday reminder Text
  • Job title Analyst, designer, developer, partner… Text
  • Default bill rate Hourly rate used when a project doesn’t set its own Number
  • Target billable hours Per month; the utilization view compares actual hours with it Number
  • Assigned projects The projects that appear as rows in this person’s week Relation to Projects
  • Reviewer Approves this person’s week; leave blank for partners Relation to Team members
  • Status (required) Active or left Text

Projects

The work hours are booked against, one per client engagement, with its budget and billing type.

  • Name (required) Text
  • Client (required) Client or account the project is billed to Text
  • Task list The tasks people can book to on this project, one per line Paragraph
  • Billing type (required) Hourly, fixed fee or internal Text
  • Hour budget Hours sold; blank for open-ended retainers Number
  • Bill rate Overrides a person’s default rate on this project Number
  • Project manager Relation to Team members
  • Status (required) Planned, active, on hold or closed Text

Time entries

One line per person, day and task — the record everything else is added up from.

  • Team member (required) Relation to Team members
  • Project (required) Relation to Projects
  • Task (required) Picked from the project’s task list: design, build, QA, travel… Text
  • Worked on (required) The day worked; the week it belongs to follows from this date Date
  • Hours (required) Decimal hours, so 90 minutes is 1.5 Number
  • Billable (required) Yes or no; starts from the project’s billing type Text
  • Note What was done; can carry through to the invoice Paragraph
  • Invoiced on Set when the hours go on an invoice; blank hours feed the next billable summary Date

Weeks

One person’s week: its status, who reviewed it and when it was locked.

  • Team member (required) Relation to Team members
  • Week starting (required) Monday, or whichever day your workweek starts Date
  • Status (required) Open, submitted, approved or returned Text
  • Submitted at Date & time
  • Reviewed by Relation to Team members
  • Reviewed at Date & time
  • Reviewer comment Why a week was sent back, or why an approved week was reopened Paragraph
  • Reopened at Set when a reviewer takes the lock off an approved week for a correction Date & time

Required field. Types are Netiva collection field types.

Screens

Pages and screens to start with

A typical first version. Ask the agent for more, or annotate the preview to change any of them.

  • My week

    The signed-in person’s week: a row per project and task, a column for each day, a running total and a submit button that closes the week.

    Signed-in users

  • Approvals

    Weeks waiting on the signed-in reviewer, with every entry listed, an approve button and a box for the comment that goes back with a return.

    Your team

  • Project hours

    Hours on one project by person, task and week, measured against its hour budget, with the entries that haven’t been invoiced yet.

    Your team

  • Billable summary

    Approved hours by client and project for a date range, split billable and internal and valued at the rate, ready for whoever raises the invoice.

    Your team

  • Missing weeks

    Who still has an open or returned week, how far back it goes and which reviewer it is waiting on, so the Monday reminder goes to the right people.

    Your team

  • Utilization

    Billable hours against each person’s monthly target, month by month, with internal and non-billable time shown next to it.

    Your team
How it works

From prompt to a live timesheet tracker

  1. Describe how you bill

    Tell Netiva who your clients are, whether a project is hourly, fixed fee or internal, and who approves whose week. The agent drafts collections for team members, projects, time entries and weeks.

  2. Load the active projects

    Enter current projects, task lists, hour budgets and rates in the collection grid, or have the collection assistant draft the rows and tidy up client names, then set each person’s reviewer.

  3. Fill in a real week

    Try the grid in the live preview the way a consultant would: submit a week, approve it, return one. Annotate whatever slows entry down and the agent reworks it.

  4. Publish before Monday

    Publish it in one click, invite the team to sign in and turn on the submission reminders. Later edits are checkpointed, so a change mid-month can be rolled back without losing the hours already logged.

Why Netiva

Netiva vs a traditional build

Building a timesheet tracker with Netiva compared with a traditional build
Criterion With Netiva Traditional build
Collecting the week Everyone fills their own week in the app and submits it; the reviewer sees it the same minute A spreadsheet per person, emailed on Friday and re-keyed by whoever chases the stragglers
Working out what to bill Approved hours grouped by client and project for any date range, with invoiced time left out Hours copied into the invoice from tabs that stopped agreeing with each other weeks ago
Getting started Describe what you need in chat and watch it take shape in a live preview Hire developers, or stitch together templates, plugins and a hosting plan
Content and data Built-in collections with nine field types, bound straight to your pages Set up and connect a separate database or CMS
Making changes Ask the agent; every change is checkpointed and reversible File a ticket, wait for a sprint, redeploy
Hosting and domain Global hosting and automatic SSL; connect a custom domain from the Starter plan Buy hosting, then install and renew SSL certificates yourself
Code ownership Clean production code you own and can export Locked into a template, plugin or agency setup
Examples

Ways teams use it

  • A 20-person digital agency

    Designers and developers split each week across six retainers. At month end the account lead opens the billable summary and sees which retainer has already used the hours it was sold, before the invoice goes out.

  • A consultancy working on fixed fees

    Associates log hours against an engagement quoted as a single fee. The partners compare hours burned with the fee to see the effective hourly rate, then price the next proposal of that shape with real numbers.

  • An engineering firm with on-site work

    Engineers add hours from a phone browser between site visits, with travel recorded as its own non-billable task, so nobody is reconstructing a week from mileage and memory on Friday evening.

Good to know

Before you build

  • Payroll and invoicing stay put

    Netiva builds the tracker, not a payroll or invoicing system. It doesn’t calculate pay, overtime premiums or taxes, and it doesn’t send invoices. Approved hours leave as a download, or through your provider’s REST API if it has one.

  • Timesheets are employee records

    Hours, notes and approvals name individual people. Write notes about the work rather than the person, and set a retention period: the FLSA sets a floor of three years for payroll records and two for the time records behind them. Your state or country may ask for longer.

  • Working-time rules differ by country

    Hour rules depend on where people work. A 2019 Court of Justice ruling (C-55/18) requires EU member states to make employers measure daily working time, and each sets its own arrangements. The app records hours as you define them; it doesn’t check them against a rule set.

  • Time off lives somewhere else

    Vacation, sick days and public holidays aren’t tracked here. Keep balances in a separate leave tracker and log only worked hours, or ask the agent for a non-billable project so a day off still shows in the week total.

Compliance note

Timesheets are employee records: they name people, their hours and what they worked on. Collect only what you need to bill and pay. Everyone signs in to their own week, and a reviewer’s queue is a filter on the weeks naming them — the app you publish doesn’t hand out per-user roles, so keep anything a colleague shouldn’t read out of shared fields. Decide how long approved weeks are kept before you publish. Netiva builds the app; it doesn’t make your timekeeping compliant.

FAQ

Questions about building a timesheet tracker

How does a week get from open to approved?

Each person’s week starts open. They add entries day by day against a project and task, then submit on Friday, which sends the week to their reviewer. The reviewer sees the entries in one list and either approves the week, which locks it, or returns it with a comment saying what to change. Only approved weeks reach the billable summary.

Can consultants log hours from a phone on a client site?

Yes. What you publish is a web app, so it opens in the phone’s browser with nothing to install. A consultant signs in, picks one of the projects assigned to them, takes a task from that project’s list and adds hours between meetings. The same screens work on a laptop when they catch up on Friday, and each person sees only their own week.

Can the tracker flag hours over 40 in a week?

You can ask for it. Under the FLSA a workweek is a fixed, recurring period of 168 hours, and nonexempt employees earn at least time and a half beyond 40 hours in that week; hours can’t be averaged across two weeks. Ask the agent to total each person-week from your own workweek start day and flag the ones above 40. Pay is still calculated in payroll.

What happens when an approved week has to be corrected?

A reviewer reopens it. The week goes back to open, the reopen is stamped with its date and the reason goes in the reviewer comment, so the correction leaves a trail instead of quietly rewriting last month. The entries are fixed and submitted again. Hours already carrying an invoiced date stay out of the next billable summary, so a correction to them is billed as an adjustment rather than a change to a total the client has already paid.

Can approved hours reach our invoicing or payroll system?

Apps built with Netiva can call any REST API with the key stored securely, so if your invoicing or payroll provider publishes one, describe the connection and the agent wires it up — posting approved hours for a client as draft invoice lines each month, for example. Check the provider’s API documentation first. Without an API, a download of the approved month covers it.

Does every consultant need their own Netiva account?

No. The people filling in a week sign in to the app you publish, as its users, and each one sees their own timesheet. Netiva plans cover the workspace where the app is built, and teammates you invite there can work on it with you in real time. If you want the tracker on your own domain, custom domains are available from the Starter plan.

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Drafted with AI assistance from Netiva’s product pages and reviewed by the Netiva team. Example data models, screens and prompts are illustrative starting points, not customer projects.

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