Manage Project Time, Expenses, Budgets, and Profitability

Optional Project economics connect actual time and allocated expenses to budgets, billing and contribution metrics. They preserve the original time, expense, Invoice and Payment records.

Plan availability

Owners make these capabilities available and choose defaults in Projects → Time & Financial Controls, Rate Cards, and Planning & Capacity. The Project keeps its own saved configuration.

Permission required

Time viewing, recording and management; timesheet approval; rate cards; costs; expenses; budgets; profitability; and billing approved work are separate permissions. Cost rates and contribution data stay hidden without cost or profitability access.

Configure the Project economics

Depending on the engagement, enable:

• time tracking, timer and/or manual entry;
• timesheet approval before time becomes billable;
• fixed-fee, time-and-materials, mixed or non-billable model;
• billable time and/or expenses;
• labour cost, budgets and alerts;
• profitability reporting.

Profitability needs a valid cost source. Billable time needs time tracking. Budget alerts need a budget. Yepsta enforces these dependencies.

Record and approve time

Staff use Projects → My Work → My Timesheet or an eligible task. Start, pause, resume and stop the timer, or add a manual entry if allowed. Every entry belongs to a Project and can be linked to a task; mark it billable only when Project policy permits.

Approve a Project timesheet

1. The staff member reviews the week and submits the timesheet.
2. A submitted timesheet is locked while it awaits review.
3. An approver opens Team Timesheets, checks entries and either approves or rejects with feedback.
4. Rejected work returns for correction; approved entries become eligible for reporting and, where configured, billing.

Yepsta can ask for confirmation on unusually long entries. A running timer is actual activity, not automatically approved or invoiced time.

Allocate expenses

Link an existing eligible Expense or posted Purchase to the Project. Allocation does not duplicate the accounting record or change its tax treatment. If client recharge is enabled, add the supported client charge information; the source expense remains authoritative.

Create and control a budget

Prepare a Draft budget, review categories and amounts, then approve the baseline. The approved baseline is preserved. Later changes create reasoned revisions and retain history instead of overwriting the original approval. Thresholds can raise attention as actual cost or effort approaches or exceeds the budget.

Bill approved work

Use Financials → Unbilled Work to select eligible approved time or billable expenses and prepare a draft Invoice. Review items and GST in the Invoice workflow. Selected source entries are protected against double billing.

Read profitability correctly

Project profitability can show net revenue, direct labour cost, allocated expense cost and contribution margin. If a required cost rate or source is missing, Yepsta marks costing incomplete and withholds a false margin.

Warning

Contribution margin is an operational Project measure, not statutory company profit. It may exclude overheads, tax, financing and other business costs. Mixed currencies are kept separate rather than converted through an invented exchange rate.

Important information

Rate cards and Project cost overrides affect calculation from their valid effective context. They do not rewrite accepted client prices or historic approved records.

Tip

Use Project Performance to compare plan, actuals, budget, unbilled work and contribution. Investigate “Incomplete costing” before using margin in a business decision.

Related guides

• Manage billing, Invoices and Payments
• Plan resources and capacity
• Use Project reports and performance
• Manage Expenses

Last reviewed: 1 September 2026