How do you show a client a development vendor's hours and money so that they can verify them?

For a client to verify anything, every hour has to be tied to a task and know who logged it and at what rate, and the client has to see what was done to their data. A timesheet, a time tracker export and a PDF report each cover part of that. In SLAtech Vantage an hour is logged against a task, and the rate is locked at the moment of entry.

What makes an hours report checkable

A single line of "40 hours of development" cannot be checked: there is nothing to point at. A checkable report answers four questions:

1. which task each hour was logged against;
2. who logged it, and from which organization;
3. at what rate, and what happens when the rate changes;
4. what else touched the data: who changed an estimate, a status or a cap, and when.

The usual options

• A timesheet. Flexible, but every line was typed by hand, and the link to a task depends on whoever typed it.
• A time tracker export. Accurate about time, but it usually knows nothing about money or the client's own ticket number.
• Worklogs in the task tracker with guest access. The hour sits on the task, but the money stays outside the system.
• An invoice with a summary line. Convenient for payment, with nothing in it to check.

An hour tied to a task, and a rate that does not move backwards

In SLAtech Vantage hours are logged against a task, and every entry stores the rate it was logged at. The rate is taken from the logging organization's participation in the project, so each contractor can have a different rate on the same project. Changing a rate tomorrow does not rewrite work already done.

Every line of hours knows who logged it and from which organization. Hours arriving from Jira, Toggl Track, Clockify, Harvest and similar tools are stored with their identifier from the source, so loading again does not double them. An hour forgotten from a previous month is logged in the current month with a mark saying which month it belongs to.

Money and hours are two separate rights

The right to see amounts and rates is separate from the right to see reports, and it is granted to each person by name. The client sees money because they pay, and the owner of the contractor's organization always does. A contractor's employee sees money only if the owner opened it to them, and the default is "no".

The contractor also has an internal split of the hours: of the hours billed, how many its own team did and how many went to subcontractors. Margin is calculated from it, so only the business owner sees it. The split never enters any client view, export or search, and the client sees exactly the same billed hours.

A journal of what the contractor touched

The access journal records what was created, changed, deleted and exported from the client's data, over which kind of data, and how many objects. Status, priority, due date and hours estimate are written with the old and the new value. Views and background jobs are not recorded.

Whoever has no right to see money will not see amounts in the journal either: the row and the event stay, and the values come off the whole row. The client sees their journal in the portal, and the default retention is seven years.

What it does not do

• SLAtech Vantage does not judge whether an hour was justified. It shows what it was logged for, and the decision stays with people;
• hours kept in Tempo are not pulled from Jira;
• a monthly cap on a task highlights and warns, but does not block time entry;
• it is not an accounting system. Creating invoice documents in iCount is built and switched on per agreement, and no other accounting system is supported.

Frequently asked questions