Overview
Time tracking is infrastructure for payroll accuracy, project profitability, resource planning, and compliance with working time obligations. When it works well it is largely invisible — employees register their time, the data flows to where it needs to go, and the downstream processes that depend on it run correctly. When it does not work well, the consequences show up everywhere: payroll errors because hours were not submitted correctly, project cost overruns that were not visible until the project was over, invoicing disputes because the billable hours record does not match client expectations, and compliance exposure because working time records do not meet the legal requirements that apply.
Generic time tracking tools serve the average use case. They handle the straightforward scenarios — employees logging hours against projects, managers approving timesheets, basic reporting. What they do not handle is the specific: the organisation that pays different rates for different shift types, the project structure that requires hours to be allocated across multiple dimensions simultaneously, the approval workflow that routes to a project manager rather than a line manager, the integration with the specific payroll system and project accounting system the organisation uses, or the industry-specific compliance requirements that govern how working time must be recorded and reported.
We build custom time tracking software for organisations that need time registration built around how they actually work — not configured around the limitations of a generic tool. From straightforward employee time registration integrated with AFAS and payroll, to complex project time allocation systems for professional services firms, to shift and schedule management for organisations with variable working patterns — we build the system that fits the requirement rather than asking the organisation to fit the system.
What Custom Time Tracking Covers
Employee time registration. The core of any time tracking system is the interface through which employees record their time. Custom time registration interfaces are designed around the specific recording model the organisation uses — daily time entry, weekly timesheet submission, real-time clock-in and clock-out, or project-based hour logging. The interface reflects the data that employees are required to capture — standard hours, overtime, project allocation, activity type, notes — without requiring them to navigate a generic system that captures data their organisation does not use.
Mobile-accessible time registration for employees who work away from a desk — on site, in the field, between client locations — allows time to be recorded from the device they carry rather than requiring retroactive entry at a fixed workstation. Offline capability for environments where connectivity is intermittent ensures that time records are not lost when the network is unavailable.
Project and cost centre allocation. For organisations that need to know not just how many hours were worked but where those hours were spent — across projects, clients, cost centres, activities, or any other dimension the organisation tracks — time allocation captures this context at the point of registration. The allocation structure is configured to match the organisation's project and cost hierarchy, not a generic category system that requires hours to be mapped to a structure that does not match how the work is organised.
Multi-dimension allocation for complex professional services environments — where a single hour might need to be allocated to a client, a project phase, an activity type, and a cost centre simultaneously — is handled through the registration interface rather than requiring employees to enter the same hour multiple times in different systems.
Shift and schedule management. For organisations with shift-based working patterns — retail, healthcare, logistics, hospitality — time tracking is inseparable from schedule management. Custom shift management tools define the schedule, assign employees to shifts, track actual attendance against the schedule, and produce the worked hours record that payroll requires — with handling for the specific shift types, differential rates, and overtime rules that the organisation's employment contracts define.
Schedule publication to employees — through the time tracking interface, through the employee portal, or through mobile notification — gives employees visibility into their upcoming schedule without requiring a separate scheduling system. Schedule change management handles the operational reality that schedules change — shift swaps, cover requests, last-minute changes — with the approval workflow and notification that schedule changes require.
Overtime and working time compliance. Dutch working time law (Arbeidstijdenwet) specifies maximum working hours, minimum rest periods, and the record-keeping requirements that employers must meet. Custom time tracking software built for Dutch employers enforces working time rules at the registration level — alerting when a registered schedule or actual hours would breach the applicable limits, and producing the working time records that compliance requires in the format that inspection would require.
CAO-specific working time provisions — maximum shift lengths, minimum rest between shifts, weekly working time limits, night shift restrictions — are configured into the time tracking rules rather than requiring manual monitoring of compliance against separately maintained schedules.
Approval workflows. Time registrations that need approval before they are finalised — timesheets submitted by employees and reviewed by line managers or project managers, overtime that requires pre-authorisation, hours above a defined threshold that require review — are managed through configurable approval workflows. The approval workflow routes to the appropriate approver based on the type of registration, the employee's team structure, and the project or cost centre the hours are allocated to.
Approval delegation — automatic reassignment when the primary approver is unavailable — prevents timesheets from stacking up waiting for an approver on annual leave. Bulk approval for managers with large teams who need to approve many timesheets efficiently without reviewing each one individually.
Time and absence integration. Time registration and absence management are two sides of the same record — the hours an employee worked and the hours they did not work together make up their total working time. Integration between time tracking and absence management ensures that approved leave and recorded sick leave are reflected in the time record without requiring double entry, and that the total hours in the time system reconcile correctly with the payroll expectation.
Reporting and analytics. Time data that is only accessible through individual timesheet records cannot drive the operational decisions that time tracking is supposed to inform. Reporting on worked hours — by employee, by team, by project, by cost centre, by period — surfaces the utilisation, capacity, and cost information that operational management depends on.
For professional services organisations, utilisation reporting — billable hours as a percentage of available hours, by consultant and by team — is the primary operational metric that time tracking produces. Realised margin by project — hours worked at cost rate versus revenue — is the financial performance metric that project profitability depends on.
For project-based organisations, budget versus actual hours by project phase provides the project management visibility that identifies over-runs before they become unmanageable.
For organisations with compliance obligations, working time records by employee provide the evidence that working time law compliance requires.
Integration With Payroll and Project Systems
The value of time tracking data depends on it reaching the systems that need it — payroll for hours-based pay calculations, project accounting for cost and revenue allocation, finance for cost centre reporting.
AFAS. Approved hours from the time tracking system delivered to AFAS in the format AFAS requires for its payroll processing — hours by employee, by pay type (regular, overtime, shift differential), by period. For organisations using AFAS for project administration, project hours delivered to AFAS for project cost tracking. The integration runs on the payroll cutoff schedule — hours approved up to the cutoff are submitted, hours submitted after cutoff are held for the next period.
Exact Online. Project hours at cost rate delivered to Exact Online for project cost accounting — the actual labour cost by project that Exact Online needs for project profitability reporting. Cost centre hours allocation for internal cost centre reporting. Invoice basis for billable projects — the hours record that drives the invoice calculation.
Payroll processors. For organisations using payroll processors outside AFAS, hours data in the specific format each processor requires — flat file, API submission, or the proprietary format of the processor's integration interface — delivered at the cutoff timing the processor requires.
Project management tools. For organisations using external project management tools — Jira, Asana, or others — time entries linked to the project tasks they relate to, with the project management tool as the source of the task structure and the time tracking system as the source of the time records.
Industry-Specific Time Tracking
Professional services. Law firms, consultancies, accountancies, and other professional services organisations need time tracking that captures billable hours accurately, allocates time to client matters, supports the rate card calculation that produces the invoice, and produces the utilisation reporting that professional services management depends on. Custom time tracking for professional services handles the rate card complexity — multiple rate tiers by seniority, client-specific rates, capped fee arrangements — that generic tools approximate rather than implement correctly.
Construction and project-based trades. Time recording against specific jobs, sub-jobs, and cost codes — with the site-based mobile registration that construction environments require and the integration with job costing systems that construction project management depends on.
Healthcare and care services. Shift-based time recording with the specific compliance requirements of healthcare working time — maximum shift lengths, minimum rest periods, bank holiday working, on-call time — integrated with the rota management that healthcare staffing requires.
Manufacturing. Production time recording against work orders, machine time allocation, labour efficiency reporting, and the integration with ERP systems that manufacturing time tracking feeds.
Agency and flexible staffing. Timesheet submission and approval for variable-hours workers, integration with staffing agency billing, and the audit trail that agency worker time recording requires for compliance with the Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten (WTTA).
Technologies Used
- React / Next.js — time registration interface, timesheet views, manager approval dashboard, reporting
- TypeScript — type-safe frontend and API code throughout
- Rust / Axum — high-performance time calculation engine, payroll data processing, compliance rule evaluation
- C# / ASP.NET Core — AFAS and Exact Online integration, complex payroll logic, Dutch working time law calculations
- SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL) — time records, approval history, project allocation, audit trail
- Redis — real-time approval status, notification queuing, processing coordination
- AFAS REST API — payroll and project hour submission
- Exact Online API — project cost and cost centre hour allocation
- REST / Webhooks — integration with project management tools and external payroll processors
- SMTP / SMS / push notifications — timesheet submission reminders, approval notifications, schedule alerts
- Mobile-responsive design / PWA — mobile time registration for field and site-based employees
Building From Scratch vs Configuring a Generic Tool
The case for custom time tracking software over a configured generic tool follows the same logic as any custom versus off-the-shelf decision — it depends on how far the organisation's requirements deviate from what the generic tool supports.
Generic time tracking tools handle the common case well. If the organisation's time tracking requirements are straightforward — standard hours, simple project allocation, line manager approval, a payroll system that the generic tool already integrates with — a configured generic tool is the right choice.
Custom time tracking becomes the right investment when the requirements diverge in ways that generic tools cannot accommodate: CAO-specific working time rules that a generic tool cannot model, a project structure and allocation model that the generic tool's category system cannot represent, a payroll and project accounting integration that the generic tool does not support natively, or industry-specific compliance requirements that the generic tool does not address.
The cost of custom is the build cost. The cost of generic is the configuration overhead, the workarounds, the manual processes that fill the gaps, and the compromises in data quality that result from forcing the organisation's requirements into a tool that was not designed for them. For many organisations, the custom cost is lower than the accumulated generic cost when both are measured honestly.
Time Tracking That Works for Your Organisation
Time is the resource that every organisation manages and that most organisations track imprecisely. Custom time tracking software built for the specific workflows, compliance requirements, and integration needs of the organisation produces accurate time records, reduces the administrative overhead of time management, and gives management the operational visibility that generic tools approximate.