Automatic time capture: what is counted
What Achekam's automatic time capture records for a firm's staff, what it never records, and how captured time is confirmed, approved and billed.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Friday afternoon, and a senior is rebuilding the week's timesheet from memory, calendar entries and sent e-mails. Some of Tuesday went to a client whose file was open but who is nowhere in the calendar. The call to a SARS branch, or to KRA, or to the NRS, on behalf of another client is forgotten altogether. Unbilled time is not only lost revenue; it also makes every engagement look cheaper than it was, which distorts next year's fee.
Automatic time capture promises to fix that, and it raises an immediate and reasonable worry among staff: what exactly is being recorded about me? This article answers both sides: what Achekam counts, what it never counts, and how captured time becomes billable only after people have looked at it.
What is counted
Achekam records a person's working time automatically while they work on a client, an engagement or a work item. To tell whether someone is working, it uses only counts of key presses, clicks and scrolling.
It never records the keys typed. It does not know what a person wrote in an e-mail, a working paper or a note. It knows that there was activity, and which client, engagement or work item it was on.
Capture is on by default. A firm can switch it off under Settings, Time & presence.
| Recorded | Never recorded |
|---|---|
| That the person was active on a client, engagement or work item | The keys typed |
| Counts of key presses, clicks and scrolling | The content of what was written |
Captured time is a suggestion until confirmed
By default, captured time reaches the timesheet only when the person confirms it. Until then it is a record of activity, not a time entry.
This is the right design for professional staff. Captured time is often close to what happened, but not always: a file left open over lunch, a call taken on the same client while the screen was idle, two clients' papers open side by side. The person who did the work corrects and confirms it, and remains responsible for their timesheet.
Encourage staff to confirm daily rather than weekly. Corrections are easy while the day is still fresh, and the Friday reconstruction disappears.
Approval before time is billable
Staff submit weekly timesheets, and a manager, partner or administrator approves them or returns them. By default, time becomes billable only after someone other than the person who recorded it approves it.
That separation matters. Captured, confirmed time is still the recorder's own account of their week. A reviewer who knows the engagements can spot a junior who has booked far more time to a client than the work called for, and ask why before the client sees it on an invoice. The detail of timesheet approval is covered in timesheet approval before billing.
Once approved, time flows into the WIP Register, where a partner, manager or administrator can write unbilled time up, down or off with a reason and bill it into a client invoice, so the same hours cannot be billed twice. Write-downs above the firm's threshold, 10% by default, and every write-off wait for approval by another partner. See WIP write-downs for how that works in practice.
What the activity is not used for
The question staff usually ask is whether keyboard and mouse activity is used to judge them. It is not used for utilisation.
Time Reports offers ten reports for a chosen period, such as staff time, engagement time and utilisation, exportable as CSV, XLSX or PDF. Utilisation is never based on keyboard or mouse activity. It comes from time, not from counts of clicks.
The Team Activity page shows each person's recorded and captured time against their working hours, and the work due on them next. It states these as facts about the work, not as a judgement of the person. Leaders can ask for an AI reading of the page, but that reading may only rank and explain the report's own facts; findings about a person's character or effort are dropped. More on that page is in the team activity report.
Better time records, better budgets
The benefit is not only on the invoice. Staff can compare each engagement's planned hours with the hours logged, and see a people-by-weeks capacity plan in which a week with no capacity recorded shows as "not set" rather than as free time. Both views are only as good as the time behind them. When short calls and small tasks reach the timesheet, the comparison of planned and logged hours finally shows where an engagement really overran, and next year's budget can be set on that evidence.
Introducing it to your team
How a firm introduces time capture decides whether staff see it as help or surveillance. A few practical steps:
- Tell staff in writing what is counted and what is not, using the table above.
- Explain that captured time is theirs to correct and confirm before it reaches a timesheet.
- Confirm that utilisation and performance discussions are based on time and work, not on activity counts.
- Decide whether capture stays on for the firm, and who may change that setting.
- Review the first month's captured time with a few volunteers before relying on it firm-wide.
Firms may also have obligations to employees about information collected at work under their country's data protection and labour law. In South Africa, for example, the Protection of Personal Information Act sets the conditions for lawfully processing personal information. Take your own advice on what notice is appropriate; the plain description in step one is a good basis for it.
A first step for the firm
Ask a few managers to confirm their captured time daily for a few weeks and compare it with what they would have reconstructed on a Friday. The difference, usually in short calls and small tasks that never reach a timesheet, is the case for keeping capture on, made in your own firm's terms.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
