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Time tracking & profitability
Ventura time tracking is designed to be fast enough for daily use and useful enough to matter. Everyone logs time against the right client engagement; Ventura turns that habit into recovery, retainer burn, labour capacity, service-line efficiency, billing readiness, and pricing intelligence.
If you are a team member, your job is simple: log your time every day. If you are a partner or finance user, the setup below turns those hours into firm insight.
The 60-second version
- Open Time.
- Confirm this week's engagement rows are listed (use Copy last week if not).
- Type today's hours into the grid.
- Use the timer only if it helps.
- Check your daily total.
- Submit the week when you are done.
Most people can update a day in under a minute and clean up a full week in under ten minutes.
For everyone: logging your time
Open the Time tab in the top nav. There are two ways to log.
- Rows are your client / engagement work.
- Columns are the days of the week (today highlighted).
- Type hours directly into a cell; it saves on its own.
- Copy last week brings familiar rows forward.
- Totals split into Client / billable and Internal.
The weekly grid
Rows are client engagements; columns are days of the week. Click a cell, type the hours, then tab or click away — Ventura saves automatically. You can type time in whatever format feels natural: 2.5, 6:30, 6h30, or 15m. To remove time, clear the cell. Daily, row, and weekly totals update as you go, split into client/billable and internal.
Use Copy last week to bring forward the engagements you worked on last week, and + Add a client / engagement row only when something is missing. Only active or paused engagements appear in the picker.
Fast entry shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Tab | Move across the row |
| Shift + Tab | Move back |
| Enter | Move down the column |
| Shift + Enter | Move up |
| Clear the cell | Remove that day's time |
Most people update the grid once at the end of the day. You do not need to run a timer all day unless that works better for you.
The timer
Use the timer when you want to track work as it happens. Pick an engagement, click Start, and Ventura begins counting. When you click Stop, the elapsed time lands in today's cell for that engagement. The timer survives a page refresh, so you can leave it running.
If you leave a timer running by mistake, stop it and edit the grid cell before submitting your week. Timer entries are not magic — they are just time entries you can correct.
What should I log where?
| Work type | Where to log it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Client delivery work | The relevant client engagement | Normal client work |
| Client meeting | The relevant client engagement | Add a short note if useful |
| Client admin / follow-up | The relevant client engagement | Still client time |
| Early scoping, no engagement yet | BD Discovery | Don't invent a fake job |
| Proposal work | Pursuit engagement or BD Discovery | Depends on firm convention |
| Internal admin | Internal Admin | Excluded from recovery |
| Internal team meeting | Internal Meetings | Excluded from recovery |
| Training | Internal Training | Useful for utilization context |
| Leadership / management | Team Leadership | Internal, non-billable |
| OOO / vacation | OOO internal engagement, if tracked | Depends on firm policy |
Billable vs internal time
You do not choose billable or non-billable on every entry — Ventura uses the engagement setup. Time on a normal client engagement counts toward that client's hours and recovery. Time on an internal engagement (Admin, Internal Meetings, OOO, BD Discovery, Team Leadership) is logged as internal time and excluded from recovery and margin. The important thing is to choose the right engagement.
Archived engagements and BD Discovery
Archived engagements. If an engagement is archived but already has time this week, the row stays on the grid with an archivedbadge and you can still fix existing cells — but you can't add newtime to it, and Ventura blocks that with a clear message. Archived engagements don't appear in the add-row picker or copy-forward.
BD Discovery. When you work on a prospect, scoping call, or proposal before a real engagement exists, log it to BD Discoveryrather than inventing a fake job. It's internal and non-billable; if the work later becomes a real engagement, a partner can reassign it.
For partners: one-time setup
Partners configure the financial logic behind time tracking. Team members don't manage these settings.
1. Rate card (Settings → Rate card). Enter billable and cost rates for each tier — Partner, Manager, Senior, Staff. Billable rates drive the value of logged time; cost rates drive margin.
2. Team rate tiers(Settings → Team). Assign each person to a rate tier. Every entry snapshots that tier's rate based on the day the work happened — so if someone is promoted mid-month, earlier entries keep the old rate and later entries use the new one.
3. Labour targets (Settings → Firm settings). Set the target effective rate, breakeven rate, and utilization target. These drive the signals in Labour analysis.
4. Retainer engagements. On a client engagement, set the kind to Retainerand add a monthly hours allotment. Ventura then shows retainer burn — this month's hours against the allotment.
How the numbers work
Ventura turns logged hours into firm insight by combining time entries, rate tiers, engagement setup, billing data, and labour targets.
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Time value | Hours × the person's billable rate |
| Time cost | Hours × the person's cost rate |
| Margin | Time value minus time cost |
| Effective rate | Revenue or fee divided by hours used |
| Recovery | Effective rate vs target or breakeven |
| Retainer burn | This month's hours vs the monthly allotment |
| WIP | Billable time not yet invoiced |
| Realization | Standard value vs what was actually billed |
Reading the insights
Per engagement (Clients tab). Open any engagement — the snapshot shows logged hours and, for partners/finance, time value / cost / margin, plus retainer burn for retainers. A Time on this engagementpanel lists who's on the file (hours total / this month / billable per person) and recent entries. Internal engagements show "excluded from recovery" instead of dollars.
Firm tab. Time analytics rolls up the last 90 days — hours, billable %, an internal-time-leakage signal, and firm value/cost/margin. The service-line library shows the average hours / fee / effective rate / margin per service line from real logged jobs.
Labour analysis (Time → Labour analysis, partner/senior-manager only) is a live monthly view: KPIs, projection to month-end, auto signals, utilization by person, client profitability, hours by service line, a per-person breakdown, and CSV export.
Billing, WIP, realization, and Xero
The Firm cockpit turns logged time into billing. It's partner/finance-only.
- Unbilled time (WIP). Billable hours not yet invoiced, by engagement, valued at each entry's rate — what you could bill right now.
- Billing packet. Click an engagement to review its unbilled entries, set a period label and invoice amount, then Mark invoiced so they drop out of WIP and aren't billed twice.
- Realization. Each packet shows standard value vs the amount actually billed, with a realization % and an overall rollup.
- Push to Xero. Create a draft invoice in Xero from a packet; the invoice number and status then show on the packet. Needs Xero connected and a default account code in Settings.
Pricing a pursuit
From a pursuit, choose Price this → (or open the pricing tool). Add a role row per tier, enter expected hours, and Ventura returns fee / cost / margin / blended rate from the rate card. An optional proposed-fee field shows realization and margin at that price, and you can save the fee back to the pursuit. Cross-reference the service-line library to sanity-check the hours.
Who can see what?
Ventura separates time capture from financial visibility.
| Role | Log time | See hours | See dollar economics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partner | Yes | Firm-wide | Yes |
| Senior manager | Yes | Firm / team hours & utilization | No (default) |
| Manager / Lead | Yes | Assigned engagements & team hours | No (default) |
| Staff | Yes | Own / assigned time | No |
| Finance / billing admin | Optional | Billing & time across firm | Yes |
| Contractor | Yes | Own / assigned time | No |
| System admin | No (default) | No operational data | No |
Most users only need to log accurate hours. Economics are partner/finance-only and enforced at the database, not just hidden in the UI.
Common mistakes
I logged time to the wrong engagement. Clear the wrong cell, then add the hours to the correct engagement row.
I forgot to stop the timer. Stop it and edit today's grid cell before submitting your week.
I can't find the engagement. Only active or paused engagements appear in the picker — ask a manager or partner to create or reopen it.
I worked on a prospect before there was an engagement. Use BD Discovery; a partner can reassign it later if it becomes a real engagement.
I see no dollar figures. Dollar economics are partner/finance-only. Most users only see hours.
Internal time is on the wrong client. Move the hours to the correct internal engagement so client recovery stays clean.
The short version
- Everyone: log time daily (type 6:30, Enter down the column, Copy last week), then Submit when the week's done.
- Partners, once: rate card → tiers → labour targets (and retainers for agency clients).
- Insights: per-engagement margin and who's-on-the-file, firm analytics, the Labour analysis tab, pricing grounded in real actuals.
- Billing: Firm → Unbilled time → billing packet → realization → push a draft to Xero.