TimeTally - Timesheet Management AppTimeTally
Professional Services

Timesheet Software for Professional Services UK

Professional services firms bill by the hour, and recording those hours accurately is harder than it should be. TimeTally is time recording software for solicitors, accountants, architects and surveyors. Fee earners log time against a client and matter from any phone or desktop. Partners get a clear record of who worked on what, and approved timesheets export straight to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV. From £3 per employee per month.

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Timesheet showing hours, breaks and the client matter each entry was booked to
Time being recorded on a phone during a client meeting

“The app is simple to use, reliable, and makes managing staff records straightforward. The system has saved us a significant amount of administration time.”

CLI ManchesterJordan Ingoe, CLI Manchester

Simple Timesheets That Take Seconds, Not Minutes

A timesheet entry takes under 60 seconds. Pick the client or matter, enter start and end times, add a note about the work done. It runs in any phone or desktop browser, so a fee earner can record the day from wherever they finished it.

TimeTally timesheet entry screen showing hours logged against a project

  • Book the hour to the matter

    Every line carries the project it belongs to. A morning on one client and an afternoon on another is two lines, not one estimate written up at month end.

  • Record what the time was for

    A free-text note sits on each day and on the period as a whole. A partner reads that note when a client queries a line six weeks later.

  • Record it where the work happens

    Any phone browser, tablet or laptop, plus native iPhone and Android apps. A fee earner can log the day between a client meeting and the train home.

What it does for a practice

Approve a Fee Earner's Week Before It Reaches Payroll

A partner or practice manager opens one week and finds it already totalled. Regular hours, overtime, TOIL and the week's total sit across the top, then one row per day with the times worked and the pay for that day. Approve the week or send it back. Approved and exported are tracked as separate states, so a week signed off on Friday is not paid twice when the practice runs payroll.

  • Everything totalled before you open it

    Regular hours, overtime and TOIL are worked out against that person's own thresholds. Total pay for the week sits under the day rows.

  • Open a day to see the detail behind it

    Each day is one row. Open it for the start and end times, the unpaid break, the matters the day was split across, and the note the fee earner wrote.

  • Send a week back with a written reason

    A rejection can carry a reason, and the reason is stored on the timesheet. The fee earner sees which line to correct instead of asking.

  • Approve from a phone, a tablet or a desktop

    The approval screen is the same on every device. A partner can clear the queue between client meetings.
Approved and exported are separatePay figures can be hidden per admin
Timesheet approvals Get Started
Approved weekly timesheet for a fee earner showing regular hours, overtime, TOIL and pay for each day

Every Fee Earner's Submitted Hours in One List

The timesheet screen lists everyone for the current period: name, department, whether the week is in, and total hours. A practice manager sees who still owes a timesheet without emailing round the floor. That list is where you spot and chase late timesheets, from a desk or from a phone.

  • One row per person, with their department

    Each row shows the department the person sits in — audit, tax, conveyancing, planning — and their total hours for the period.

  • A tick marks whoever has submitted

    An outstanding timesheet is visible at a glance. Step back and forward one period at a time to check an earlier week.

  • Approve the whole list or one person

    Approve All clears every outstanding timesheet on screen. Or open one person and approve or reject their days one at a time.

  • Nudge a late timesheet by hand

    Send a reminder to one person in a single tap. It arrives as a notification in their app. Nothing goes out on a schedule; you choose who gets it.
Phone, tablet or desktopExport the period from the same screen
Practice manager view on a phone listing each employee's department, submitted status and total hours for the week

Watch a Submitted Week Get Approved

A short loop of the admin dashboard. The month grid at the top shows who worked which days. Underneath it, the Timesheet Requests panel holds each submitted week with its hours and dates, and one is approved with a single tap. The Time-off Requests panel sits beside it.

All Departments
Jun 2026
M
T
W
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F
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S
M
T
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F
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M
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F
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AR1

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

JK2

James Kelly

Front of house

PS3

Priya Shah

Kitchen

MP4

Maya Patel

Front of house

TW5

Tom Wilson

Bar

Timesheet Requests

3
AR

Amelia Roberts

37h 30m · Week of Jun 15

JK

James Kelly

38h 30m · Week of Jun 8

Time-off Requests

2
PS

Priya Shah

3d · Annual Leave

MP

Maya Patel

2d · Sick Leave

AR

Amelia Roberts

Monday 15 June · 09:00

AR

0h 00m

09:00 – 17:00

Break
End Done

Timesheet submitted

Week of Jun 15

AR

Amelia Roberts

Kitchen

Week of Jun 15, 2026

Mon15
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Tue16
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Wed17
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Thu18
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Fri19
09:00–17:00·30m

7h 30m

Submit Timesheet Submitted

Payroll Export

Week of Jun 15, 2026 · 5 employees

Employee
Reg. pay
Overtime
Total
AR

Amelia Roberts

37.5h

£281.25

—

£281.25

JK

James Kelly

40h

£300.00

£22.50

2h

£322.50

PS

Priya Shah

32h

£240.00

—

£240.00

MP

Maya Patel

38h

£285.00

—

£285.00

TW

Tom Wilson

40h

£300.00

£45.00

4h

£345.00

Total · 5 employees

£1,406.25

£67.50

£1,473.75

Confirm Export Exported!

Used Across UK Professional Services

TimeTally works for any professional services firm that records staff hours against a client or a matter. Chargeable and non-chargeable time are recorded the same way, as hours against a project, so a practice can see where the week actually went.

Legal

Law Firms

Solicitors, barristers' chambers, conveyancers, and legal practices of all sizes

  • Create a project per client, then nest each matter underneath it. Projects run three levels deep.
  • Every line takes a free-text note, so a fee earner records what the time was for.
  • Every approval and rejection is timestamped. A rejection can carry a written reason.
Accountancy

Accountancy Practices

Chartered accountants, bookkeepers, tax advisors, and audit firms

  • Time recording for accountants across audit, tax, payroll and advisory engagements.
  • Export hours and labour cost by engagement, not only by person.
  • Set the timesheet period to one, two or four weeks to match busy season.
Design & engineering

Architects & Engineers

Architectural studios, structural engineers, planning consultancies

  • Create a project per job and nest the work stages underneath it.
  • Turn on activities to break a week down by task as well as by job.
  • Breaks are recorded separately and deducted from the day's total.
Advisory

Consultancies

Management consultants, IT consultancies, HR advisors. See our consulting page

  • The same project and approval model, set out for consultancies on their own page.
  • Rates are set per person, so an analyst and a partner are costed differently.
  • One price for every feature, at four people or forty.
Get Started

Time Recording That Stands Up to a Fee Note Query

Four settings an admin controls: what each hour is booked to, how long the timesheet period runs, who can see pay, and how staff are grouped. Every one of them applies to the whole practice.

Book every hour to a client matter.

Create a project for each client, then nest the individual matters, engagements or work stages underneath it. Projects run three levels deep, so a client sits above its files rather than beside them.

A day can be split across as many projects as it actually took. Two hours on a completion, three on an audit file and one on internal training is three lines, each with its own note. The day still totals six hours.

Activities are a second dimension on each line, and they are off until an admin turns them on. Switch them on when a practice wants the week broken down by task as well as by matter. The activity then follows the hours into every export.

TimeTally does not raise the fee note. There is no invoicing, no expenses, no WIP ledger and no chargeable versus non-chargeable flag. What comes out is hours and labour cost per project.

Run timesheets weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly.

Set the timesheet period to one, two or four weeks, then set the date the first period starts. Every period after that follows the same cycle.

Match the period to the run it feeds. A practice that pays monthly does not want fee earners stapling four weekly sheets together at the end of the month, and a four-weekly period arrives at the partner already totalled.

A longer period does not change how time is recorded day to day. Staff still enter each day as they go; only the sheet they submit gets longer.

Hide pay figures from an admin who approves hours.

Pay visibility is set per admin. Switch it off for someone and rates, pay totals and the pay screen disappear for them. They approve hours and see none of the money.

Use it where a practice manager or a supervising partner signs off a team whose salaries are not their business. Approval works in exactly the same way with the figures off.

Be clear about what this is not. TimeTally has two roles, admin and employee, and there is no per-department or per-office access level. An admin without pay visibility still sees the whole practice's hours; they just cannot see what anybody is paid.

Group staff by department and export one team at a time.

Each person carries a department — audit, tax, conveyancing, planning, whatever the practice uses. It appears beside their name on the timesheet list.

Filter the export by department instead of ticking names one by one, and include the department as a column in the file. A practice manager can pull one team's hours for the period on its own.

Reporting breaks the period's hours down by department as well, so you can see how the practice's time divided before anyone opens a spreadsheet.

Payroll Export

Take Approved Hours Through to Pay

The pay screen lists each person's period, the hours behind it, and what they are owed, with regular and overtime kept apart. Rows sit under Due until they are paid, and the date each one was exported is recorded against it. Send the period to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV.

TimeTally pay screen listing each employee's period, hours, regular pay, overtime and total

  • Hours and cost per project

    Reports break the period down by project as well as by person, so a practice can see how many hours a client matter took and what those hours cost.

  • Pay worked out from approved hours

    Each person's own hourly rate and overtime rate are applied to the hours a partner approved. Nothing is recalculated by hand at month end.

  • Choose what the export carries

    Filter by date range, by person or by department, and pick the columns: department, job title, payroll reference, hourly rate and overtime rate.

What TimeTally Does for Professional Services Teams

TimeTally is a straightforward timesheet tool. Here is what it does, and what a professional services practice gets out of it.

  • Client, Matter and Engagement Tracking

    Create a project for each client, matter or engagement. Staff assign their hours to a project as they submit their timesheet. Reports show total hours and labour cost per project. That is the data a fee note is built from — TimeTally does not raise the fee note itself.

  • Individual Hourly Rates

    Set a separate hourly rate for each person: partner, senior associate, junior, support. Pay is calculated from those rates when a timesheet is approved. Overtime rates and thresholds are set per employee as well.

  • Timesheet Approval Workflow

    Partners and practice managers review and approve timesheets before they reach payroll. Reject anything that needs correcting. Every approval and rejection is timestamped, which gives you an audit trail for internal governance and for client queries.

  • Payroll Export

    Export approved timesheets to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV. The file carries employee names, standard hours, overtime hours, pay amounts and break deductions. Nothing is re-keyed into your payroll system.

  • Notes on Entries

    Staff add a note to each timesheet entry describing the work done. The note stays on the record. When a client asks what a block of hours went on, the explanation is already written.

  • Mobile Access — No App Required

    TimeTally runs in any mobile browser, so there is nothing to install. Staff record time between meetings, at court, or on a client site. Native iPhone and Android apps are available for anyone who prefers them.

Why it matters

Why Professional Services Firms Need Accurate Timesheets

For firms that bill by the hour, time records are the foundation of revenue. But even salaried professionals need proper timesheets for payroll, compliance, and client accountability.

When professionals record their hours inconsistently or retrospectively at the end of the week, detail gets lost. A solicitor forgets to log a 20-minute phone call with a client. An architect underestimates time spent on revisions. An accountant does not record the hour they spent researching a tax query. None of these are deliberate, but they add up. If your firm bills hourly, unrecorded time is unrecoverable revenue. Time recording has to be a daily habit rather than a monthly administrative task.

Beyond billing, UK employers have legal obligations around working time records. The Working Time Regulations 1998 limit average weekly working hours to 48 (calculated over a 17-week reference period) and require employers to keep records demonstrating compliance. This applies to salaried professionals just as much as hourly workers. HMRC also requires employers to keep records of hours worked for at least two years for payroll purposes.

For firms dealing with client queries about invoices, detailed time records are essential. When a client asks why a matter cost £3,000, you need to show exactly how those hours were spent. Project-based time tracking gives you the raw data to answer those questions, even if you are using a separate invoicing system to produce the actual bill.

TimeTally is a timesheet tool, not a practice management system. It does not generate invoices, track project budgets, or produce client-facing reports. But project-based time tracking gives you the raw data you need for accurate billing, and the payroll export eliminates manual data entry.

UK Compliance
UK Compliance

How TimeTally Helps with UK Compliance

TimeTally is a timesheet tool, not a compliance system — but accurate timesheet records are the foundation of meeting your regulatory obligations. Here is how the data TimeTally captures supports your compliance requirements.

Working Time Regulations

The Working Time Regulations 1998 apply to salaried professionals just as much as hourly workers. Employers must keep records demonstrating compliance with the 48-hour weekly average. TimeTally records all hours worked, giving you exportable data if HMRC or the HSE request records.

HMRC Record-Keeping

HMRC requires employers to keep records of hours worked for at least two years. TimeTally stores all timesheet data digitally with timestamps and approval records — a complete audit trail that you can export whenever needed. This is relevant during corporation tax enquiries where HMRC may request detailed time records.

Rest Break Records

Under UK law, workers on shifts over 6 hours are entitled to a 20-minute uninterrupted break. TimeTally tracks breaks separately using our break time compliance tools, so you have a record that breaks were taken. This matters even in professional services — long working days during busy periods still require proper rest breaks.

Holiday Entitlement

All UK workers get 5.6 weeks statutory holiday (28 days for full-time). TimeTally calculates entitlement automatically, including pro-rata for part-time staff and mid-year starters, and tracks remaining allowance in real time.

National Minimum Wage

Even salaried staff are protected by the National Minimum Wage. If unpaid overtime pushes a salaried employee's effective hourly rate below the legal minimum, the employer is liable. Accurate hours records help you identify this risk.

Client Billing Support

TimeTally does not generate invoices, but accurate project-based time records give you the raw data you need to produce detailed client bills. Each entry shows who worked on what, for how long, and includes any notes about the work done. Export this data and use it with your invoicing or practice management system.

Simple, Transparent Pricing

One price. Every feature. No surprises.

£3/employee/month

Billed monthly, incl. VAT. Cancel anytime.

Record hours by client, matter or engagement
Individual hourly rates per staff member, including overtime rates
Timesheet approval workflow with full audit trail
Weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly timesheet periods
Export to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV for payroll
Get Started
Book a Demo

In short

What is professional services timesheet software?

Professional services timesheet software records the hours each fee earner works on each client matter, so the time can be approved, costed and passed to payroll. TimeTally does this for UK law firms, accountancy practices, architects, surveyors and engineering practices from £3 per employee a month. Staff log start time, end time and breaks from any phone browser or from the iPhone and Android apps. A day can be split across several matters, and every line takes a note saying what the time was for. The period runs for one, two or four weeks, then goes to a partner to approve or send back with a written reason. Every state change is timestamped, and approved hours export to Xero, QuickBooks or CSV with a breakdown per project. TimeTally is not time recording and billing software. It does not raise the fee note, does not capture expenses, and has no chargeable versus non-chargeable flag. It is the hour record a bill is built from.

Price
£3 per employee a month
Recording
Any phone browser, iPhone or Android
Costs to
A project per client or matter
Exports to
Xero, QuickBooks, CSV
Not included
Invoicing, expenses, utilisation

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I track time by client and project?

Yes. TimeTally has project tracking where you can create a project for each client, matter, or engagement. Staff assign their hours to the relevant project when submitting their timesheet. You can see total hours and costs per project in reports.

Is TimeTally time recording software for accountants?

It is the time recording half. An accountancy practice creates a project per client and nests the audit, tax, payroll and advisory engagements underneath it, staff book their hours to the right one as they go, and the practice gets hours and labour cost per engagement out the other end. What TimeTally does not do is convert that into a fee note — there is no invoicing, no WIP ledger and no chargeable-versus-non-chargeable flag. Most firms run it alongside whatever raises the bill, and use the CSV, Xero or QuickBooks export for payroll.

Does TimeTally have a billable vs non-billable toggle?

Not as a built-in feature. TimeTally uses project-based tracking, so you could create separate projects for billable and non-billable work (e.g., 'Client A - Advisory' for billable and 'Internal - Admin' for non-billable). This gives you a breakdown by project, but there is no dedicated billable/non-billable flag on individual entries.

Can different staff have different hourly rates?

Yes. Each employee has their own hourly rate and overtime rate. Partners, senior associates, junior staff, and support staff can all have different rates. TimeTally calculates pay based on these individual rates when timesheets are submitted.

Can a partner approve hours without seeing what people are paid?

Yes. Pay visibility is set per admin. Switch it off for someone and rates, pay totals and the pay screen are hidden from them entirely, while approving hours works exactly as before. Note what this does not do: TimeTally has two roles, admin and employee, and there is no per-department or per-office access level. An admin with pay hidden still sees the whole practice's hours.

Does TimeTally generate client invoices?

No. TimeTally is a timesheet tool, not an invoicing system. It tracks hours by project and exports data to Xero, QuickBooks, or CSV. You can use the exported time data to produce invoices in your accounting or practice management software.

Can I use TimeTally for time recording and billing?

For time recording, yes. For billing, no — and it is worth saying plainly rather than leaving you to find out. TimeTally records hours against a client or matter, costs them at each person's own rate, and exports the result. It does not raise a fee note, does not hold a rate card per client, does not track WIP and does not capture expenses or disbursements. Firms searching for time recording and billing software generally need a second tool for the billing half; TimeTally is the hours record it reads from.

Can TimeTally track project budgets or profitability?

No. TimeTally tracks hours spent on each project and calculates costs based on individual hourly rates, but it does not have budget tracking or profitability analysis features. You would need to compare TimeTally's time data with your budget figures in a separate system.

How does the approval workflow work?

Staff submit their timesheets, and managers or partners receive a notification. They can review each entry, approve it, or reject it with a note. Approved timesheets can then be exported to payroll. The approval record creates an audit trail.

Can staff add notes about the work they did?

Yes. Each timesheet entry has a notes field where staff can describe the work done. This is useful for billing context — when you need to explain a block of hours to a client, the description is already recorded.

We have offices in Scotland and England — will everyone get the right bank holidays?

Yes. Bank holidays are set per person, not per firm, so each employee is assigned the nation they work in: England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Scotland gets 2 January and St Andrew's Day, does not get Easter Monday, and takes its summer bank holiday on the first Monday in August rather than the last. Ireland and nine other countries are available too, for a firm with one person outside the UK. You can have the days booked automatically at the start of the leave year or leave people to book the ones that apply to them.

Does TimeTally help with Working Time Regulations compliance?

TimeTally records all hours worked, including overtime. This gives you the data to monitor compliance with the 48-hour weekly average under the Working Time Regulations 1998. However, TimeTally does not actively monitor or alert for breaches — it provides accurate records, and compliance decisions remain with you.

What payroll systems does TimeTally export to?

TimeTally exports to Xero, QuickBooks, and CSV/Excel. The export includes employee names, standard hours, overtime hours, pay amounts, and break deductions. Most payroll and accounting systems can import CSV files if a direct integration is not available.

Can staff log time from their phone?

Yes. TimeTally works in any mobile browser — no app download needed. Staff can log time between meetings, at court, on a client site, or wherever they are working. There is also a native iOS app on the App Store for those who prefer it.

Still have a question? See all FAQs

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Complete guide to WTD compliance for UK employersRead guide

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