Odoo HRMS (Part 3): Timesheets – Tracking Time, Approvals & Billing Customers

Time is the inventory of every service team. Whether you run installation crews, after-sales technicians, consultants or an in-house projects team, untracked hours mean unbilled revenue and projects you can't price properly. Odoo Timesheets links every hour to an employee, a project and — when billable — a customer invoice.

In the final Part 3 of our Odoo HRMS series, we configure Odoo Timesheets: settings and reminders, employee costs, projects, timesheet entry, approvals, invoicing and profitability.

Step 1: Configure Timesheets settings

Go to Timesheets › Configuration › Settings:

• Time Encoding – log in hours or days.
• Reminders – automatic emails to employees who haven't logged their time, and to managers who have timesheets waiting for validation.
• Minimum duration and rounding – e.g. minimum 15 minutes, rounded up to the next 15, so timer entries are clean and billable.

Timesheets › Configuration › Settings – encoding, reminders and rounding

Step 2: Set the hourly cost on each employee

Open each employee and, on the Settings (HR Settings) tab, enter the Hourly Cost — salary plus overheads per hour. Odoo multiplies logged hours by this cost to calculate the real cost of each project, which is what makes profitability reports meaningful.

Step 3: Create projects and tasks

In the Project app, create a project for each engagement or internal activity and make sure Timesheets is enabled on it. Break work into tasks with assignees and allocated hours. For internal time (training, meetings, admin), Odoo provides an Internal project so all hours are captured, not only billable ones.

Step 4: Log time — the way your team prefers

• Grid view – Timesheets › My Timesheets shows a weekly grid; type hours against each project and task.
• Timer – start a timer on a task and stop it when done; Odoo applies your rounding rules.
• From the task – log time directly in the Timesheets tab of a task.
• Mobile app – technicians log hours on site, even offline.

The weekly grid: hours per project and task, with billable work linked to sales orders

Step 5: Validate timesheets

Managers review submitted time in Timesheets › To Validate, filter by week or team, correct entries if needed and click Validate. Validated timesheets are locked for employees, giving you a reliable basis for invoicing and payroll.

Step 6: Bill customers from timesheets

To invoice time automatically, create a service product (e.g. Installation Labour – per hour) and set:

• Invoicing Policy: Based on Timesheets (or Based on Milestones / Prepaid / Fixed Price for other contract types).
• Create on Order: Project & Task or Task in an existing project.

When you confirm a sales order containing this product, Odoo creates the project or task automatically. Every hour logged against it updates the delivered quantity on the sales order, and you invoice only validated hours — no copying from spreadsheets.

From sales order to invoice: how timesheets drive billing

Step 7: Measure profitability

Open any project and check its Profitability panel in the project dashboard: revenue invoiced and to invoice, timesheet costs, other costs (purchases, expenses) and margin. Timesheets › Reporting shows billable versus non-billable time per employee and project, helping you spot under-utilised resources or under-priced contracts.

Up next: our Finance & Accounting series – starting with setting up Odoo Accounting from scratch.