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Agencies and Technical Studios — Every Untracked Hour Is Lost Margin ​

Your agency has 15 people across 8 projects. Designers and developers log their hours at the end of the week — or at the end of the month — reconstructing from memory. The result: 15–20% of actual hours are never recorded. For a team of 15 at €50/hour, that is €6,000–8,000 per month in invisible revenue.

The problem is not the team's laziness. It is that logging hours has always felt like a chore, because the tools used so far made it one. With RevasOS, time tracking becomes a sub-one-minute action — from the app, at end of day — and the data feeds directly into reports by project, by person, and by period.

This guide is for the owner or administrator of an agency, technical studio, or "time factory" (10–50 people) who wants to make team hours visible, allocate expenses to engagements, and produce reliable reports for invoicing and management control.

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Agency setup

Team roster, project structure, and expense categories: what to configure before launch.

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⏱️

The daily flow

How the team logs hours by project in under a minute, every day.

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🧾

Engagement expenses

Travel, licenses, materials: how to log costs and allocate them to the right engagement.

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Management reports

Hours by project, hours by person, vampire projects: the data you need to decide.

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Agency setup — What to configure ​

Before asking the team to log hours, you need to prepare the structure: collaborators with the right roles, projects/engagements in the system, and expense categories. For an agency of 15 people, the setup takes a couple of hours.

Team roster with roles ​

Every team member needs to be in the RevasOS organization with their basic information and assigned role. The role is not just a label — it is used to filter reports and understand how the team distributes time.

  1. Open the Contacts app in RevasOS.
  2. Verify that every collaborator is present and has the correct role (designer, developer, PM, account, copywriter…).
  3. If the hourly cost is relevant for reports, configure it in the Humans app at the collaborator level.

Project and engagement structure ​

In an agency, every client engagement becomes a project in RevasOS. Under each project you can create tasks for the work phases (concept, design, development, revisions, delivery).

The most practical naming convention:

TypeExample name
Fixed-scope project"Rebranding — ClientName"
Monthly retainer"Social Retainer — ClientName — 2026"
Internal project"Internal Website — Q1 Update"

For each project, create the key tasks and assign them to resources. This lets the team log hours against a specific task — not just a generic project.

  1. Open the Timesheets app.
  2. In the Quick task time entry section you will see the tasks assigned to each collaborator.
  3. To create new tasks, use the Tasks app → New task, linking it to the project.

Expense categories for agencies ​

Agency expenses fall into recurring categories. Defining them upfront speeds up entry by the team:

  • Client travel — transport, tolls, parking
  • Meals — lunch and dinner while traveling
  • Software licenses — design tools, hosting, development tools
  • Materials — prints, samples, prototypes
  • Outsourcing — freelancers, photographers, translators

Categories are configured in the Reimbursements app under the organization settings.

The daily flow — How the team logs hours ​

The rule is simple: log today, not Friday. Hours reconstructed from memory at the end of the week are inaccurate by definition — on average, 15–20% of actual hours are lost. Logging at end of day takes under a minute and produces reliable data.

The designer working on 3 projects in a day ​

A typical designer jumps between multiple engagements in the same day. The flow:

  1. Opens the Timesheets app at the end of the day (mobile or desktop).
  2. In the Quick task time entry view, sees assigned tasks organized by day.
  3. Enters hours next to each task: 3 hours on "Visual identity — ClientA", 2 hours on "Social kit — ClientB", 2 hours on "Website mockup — ClientC".
  4. Taps Save.

Total time: under a minute. The hours are immediately visible in the project reports.

The developer focused on one project ​

Someone working all day on a single project has an even simpler flow:

  1. Opens Timesheets → New time entry.
  2. Enters start time, end time, and links the task.
  3. Saves.

If clock-in is enabled, the time entry is created automatically from the timestamp — just link the task.

The PM splitting time between coordination and production ​

The PM rarely works on a single project. The most practical approach is the quick task time entry: all assigned tasks appear in a weekly grid, and the PM enters hours with minimal interaction.

How splitting across tasks works ​

If you logged an 8-hour block but worked on 3 different tasks:

  1. Open the entry to split.
  2. Choose Split.
  3. Search for the tasks and distribute the hours.
  4. Verify that the total matches the entry duration.
  5. Save.

Engagement expenses — Travel and direct costs ​

In an agency, expenses are not marginal: client visits, working lunches, software licenses, freelancer outsourcing. The key is linking each expense to the right engagement, so project reports include direct costs — not just hours.

How the collaborator logs an expense ​

The sales rep returning from a client visit, the PM paying for a client lunch, the developer renewing a license:

  1. Opens the Reimbursements app on their phone.
  2. In the My expenses section, taps + → Expenses.
  3. Fills in: amount, date, category (travel, meals, license…), description (e.g. "Lunch with ClientX — Milan").
  4. In the Budget line field, selects the engagement to allocate the expense to.
  5. Taps Save.

Average time: approximately 30 seconds. Entry is manual — automatic receipt scanning is not available.

The expense report and approval ​

At the end of the period (week or month), the collaborator groups expenses into an expense report and submits it for approval:

  1. In the Reimbursements app, tap New expense report.
  2. Select the expenses to include.
  3. Submit the expense report.

As admin or manager, you receive the report in the All expense reports section:

  1. Open the report.
  2. Review the list (amounts, categories, dates, linked engagements).
  3. Click Approve or Reject if there are errors.

After approval, RevasOS automatically generates an invoice and authorizes the reimbursement.

Management reports — Where the hours go ​

After a few weeks of tracking, the data starts to produce a clear picture of the agency. The reports answer the fundamental questions: how much time does each engagement absorb? How does the team distribute its time? Which projects are consuming more than expected?

Hours by project ​

The project report shows how much time each engagement absorbed over a period. It lets you compare actual hours with estimated hours (if you entered estimates in the tasks) and spot engagements that are running over.

  1. Open the Timesheets app.
  2. Go to Report → View the monthly report.
  3. Filter by project to see the aggregated data for a single engagement.

Hours by person ​

The report by person shows how each collaborator distributes time across engagements. It is useful for understanding whether the senior designer is spending 40% of their time on administrative work, or whether a developer is overloaded across too many engagements in parallel.

  1. In the same Report section, filter by contact.
  2. Compare hours by project for that person.

Identifying "vampire" projects ​

A vampire project is an engagement that systematically absorbs more hours than budgeted — often without anyone noticing. The project hours report makes them visible:

  • Compare actual hours with the engagement's hour budget.
  • If the ratio exceeds 120%, the project warrants investigation: was the brief undersized? Is the client requesting too many revisions? Does the team lack the right skills for this type of work?

Export for client invoicing ​

If billing is by the hour (time & materials), you can export the data directly from Timesheets:

  1. Go to My time entries → More → Export time entries.
  2. Filter by project and date range.
  3. Choose the format: CSV, Excel, or JSON.
  4. Confirm. The file is sent via email.

The export includes for each entry: collaborator, date, duration, task, project, description. Attach it to the invoice or use it to generate the detailed hours breakdown for the client.

The next step — From time tracking to margin control ​

You now know how many hours the team spends on each engagement. You know where direct costs go. You have an export for client invoicing.

The next question comes naturally: are you making money or losing money on that engagement?

Answering it requires one more step: linking the tracked hours to a project budget with hourly costs, external costs, and revenue by milestone. That is exactly what the Suite Professional does — and the good news is that there is nothing to migrate.

What Suite Professional adds ​

FeatureWhat it solves
Project budget with real costsYou know what each engagement costs in real time, not after the fact
Live Financial ReportRemaining margin updates every time the team logs hours
Project-linked invoicingIssue invoices from payment milestones, with the data already in place
Team workloadSee the real load per person and per week, not just past hours

How to activate it ​

The same platform, the same data, the same collaborators. When you activate Suite Professional, the hours your team has already tracked are automatically associated with project budgets. No migration, no reset.

To explore the full project workflow for an agency on the Suite:

Weekly checklist for the admin ​

After launch, a weekly routine of a few minutes keeps the system reliable:

Quick reference ​

Key concepts ​

Roles and permissions ​