PR agencies get the most value from time tracking when every entry is tied to a client and a defined piece of work, marked as billable or internal, and reviewed against the relevant retainer or project budget while delivery is still in progress. That makes time records useful for billing, staffing, utilization analysis, and timely scope conversations—not just timesheets at month-end.
What PR agencies should track
Use a small, consistent set of fields that reflects how the agency sells and manages work. Each entry should identify:
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- Client: the organization receiving or benefiting from the work.
- Retainer, campaign, or project: the budget or workstream against which effort should be reviewed.
- Task: a useful category such as media outreach, strategy, reporting, or account administration. Choose categories your team can apply consistently.
- Billable status: whether the time is chargeable to the client under the agency’s agreement. Keep internal work distinct.
- Duration and brief context: enough information for an account lead or finance reviewer to understand the work, without turning an entry into a diary.
Agency-focused vendor guidance also points to client, project, and billing codes as useful ways to structure entries. ClickTime’s PR agency page describes coding by client, campaign, and billing code. The exact code list should follow your agency’s contracts and reporting needs, not a software vendor’s default taxonomy.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesHow to build a time-entry process that people can follow
1. Define the codes before choosing a tool
Decide how retainers, campaigns, projects, tasks, and billable status will be represented. Keep the taxonomy narrow enough that account teams can choose the right code quickly. If two categories routinely mean the same thing in practice, simplify them; if a category cannot support a billing, budget, or management decision, reconsider whether it needs to be a required field.
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2. Record time frequently
Entries made close to when work occurs are less likely to require reconstruction from memory. Choose a cadence—such as daily entry or a regular weekly timesheet—that fits the team’s workflow, then set clear submission deadlines. Use reminders and an approval step if late or incomplete records delay invoice preparation. ClickTime’s Allison Worldwide case study describes late timesheets as a constraint on accurate monthly invoicing.
3. Review work against budgets during delivery
Compare recorded hours or costs with the relevant retainer or project budget while work is underway. A variance is a prompt to investigate, not automatically proof that someone made a mistake. The account lead can assess whether the work is taking longer than expected, whether priorities changed, whether staffing should shift, or whether the client needs a scope conversation. Reviewing only after a period closes makes it harder to change course in time.
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4. Keep client work and internal work separate
Classify non-chargeable activities consistently, including internal meetings, training, business development, and administration where those categories fit your agency. This separation helps explain how staff capacity is being used. Do not treat a high share of chargeable time as a complete measure of performance: workload, role, delivery quality, scope, and the agency’s definition of available capacity all affect interpretation.
5. Connect approved records to billing and reporting
Where the existing finance workflow supports it, connect approved time to invoicing and management reports. Confirm which fields transfer, how corrections are handled, and which steps still require manual reconciliation. A connection is only useful if the data remains understandable and reviewable by the people responsible for accounts and finance.
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How to use time data without mistaking utilization for the goal
Utilization usually expresses a portion of available working capacity spent on billable work, but agencies must define both parts consistently. Decide which roles are included, what counts as available capacity, and how leave or non-working time is treated. Without a stable denominator, comparisons between teams or periods can mislead.
Use utilization alongside other signals: retainer effort versus plan, workload and capacity by role, internal time patterns, and the margin or delivery economics available to your business. If a team’s utilization shifts, investigate the cause before changing targets or incentives. Raw utilization alone cannot distinguish efficient delivery from overservicing, unrealistic budgets, or excessive workload.
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Teamwork.com’s State of Agency Operations Benchmarking Report 2023 surveyed 512 agency leaders across multiple agency types, including PR agencies, and organizations from fewer than 10 to more than 3,000 employees. It reports a margin of error of ±4.9 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. In that 2023 survey, 33% of agencies struggled to hit billable utilization benchmarks above 50%, 38% overserviced clients, and 52% of leaders said employees submitted time-tracking data on time 90–100% of the time. These are historical, cross-agency survey findings, not PR-only results or recommended targets. Read the report methodology and findings.
What features should PR agencies look for in time-tracking software?
Choose around the workflow you need to improve rather than the length of a feature list. Time capture, budget oversight, approvals, utilization, resource planning, expense handling, reporting, and invoicing are distinct capabilities. Ask vendors to show how each would work with your actual codes and review steps.
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| Decision area | What to verify |
|---|---|
| Entry and compliance | Timer and manual-entry options, timesheet cadence, reminders, approval flow, and visibility into missing or late entries. |
| Agency coding | Whether records can be linked to the client, retainer or campaign, task, billing code, and billable status your team uses. |
| Retainer and project oversight | How actual hours or costs compare with a fixed-fee or time budget, and whether account leads can see a variance early enough to act. |
| Management reporting | Whether reporting can separate chargeable and internal time and show utilization, workload, capacity, or margin at useful levels of detail. |
| Downstream workflow | How approvals, invoices, expenses, accounting or finance connections, and project-management integrations fit your current process. Verify current integrations with the vendor. |
| Adoption and complexity | Whether the entry process is straightforward for staff and whether the system reduces or adds reconciliation work for account and finance teams. |
A standalone tracker may be simpler to introduce; an integrated agency system may reduce handoffs but requires a close fit with current processes. Synergist positions its product around connecting timesheets with agency jobs, budgets, utilization, and invoicing. That is vendor positioning, not an independent comparison. See Synergist’s timesheet feature information.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Software examples to investigate
The following products illustrate different approaches, not rankings or hands-on recommendations. Feature descriptions below reflect vendor material and can change; confirm plan limits, current availability, integrations, and workflow fit directly with each provider.
| Product | Vendor-described emphasis | Useful evaluation question |
|---|---|---|
| ClickTime | PR agency time tracking, client/campaign/billing-code entry, budget tracking, utilization, and resource planning. | Can your account and finance teams use its coding and approval process to identify missing time before monthly invoicing? |
| Clockify | Timers and manual entry, project budgets, rates and costs, resource planning, invoicing, expenses, time off, utilization, and reporting. | Which of these functions are available in the plan you are considering, and how do its budget reports map to your retainers? |
| Toggl Track | Time tracking for billable and internal work; its Sweat+Co customer story discusses remote visibility and retainer profitability. | Can staff record client and internal conversations in a way that produces reports your account leads will actually use? |
| Synergist | Agency timesheets connected to job budgets, utilization, and invoicing; its vendor material names PR agency AMBITIOUS as a customer. | Does an agency-wide system fit your processes better than a standalone tracker, and what setup or reconciliation would it require? |
| Harvest | A vendor page aimed at PR agencies for time and budget tracking. | Ask the vendor to demonstrate the specific approvals, reporting, and finance handoffs your process needs. |
| Wrike | A project-management product with time-tracking functionality; its Tipton Communications customer story emphasizes project administration. | Would time tracking inside a project-management workflow reduce handoffs, or would your finance process still need separate reconciliation? |
Relevant vendor pages include ClickTime, Clockify, Toggl Track’s Sweat+Co story, Synergist, Harvest, and Wrike’s Tipton Communications story.
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What vendor case studies can—and cannot—tell you
Customer stories can suggest questions to ask during a demonstration, but their results are customer-specific and vendor-published. They do not establish what another agency should expect.
Quick Recap
- ClickTime reports that Allison Worldwide saved 20 administrative hours each month, reduced late timesheet submissions by 30%, and hired twice as many new billable employees. Those figures are ClickTime’s account of one customer’s experience, not a general forecast. Allison Worldwide finance team member Susan Canales said the company had planned and run every billable hour through ClickTime since 2013 for a staff of more than 500. Read the case study.
- Toggl quotes Sweat+Co business consultant Dax Kimbrough as saying Toggl Track increased the company’s profitability by at least 20% after it used time data to identify overservicing, inefficiency, or slow work. This is a vendor-published statement from one customer, not an independently verified or typical outcome. Read the customer story.
- Wrike’s Tipton Communications story says the customer estimated it had been losing 5% to 10% of billable hours to project administration before adopting Wrike. That is Tipton’s estimate presented by the vendor, not an industry statistic. Read the customer story.
- Synergist quotes AMBITIOUS founder and director Lis Anderson describing time management as a way to understand whether the agency is overservicing or underservicing clients and why. It illustrates a potential use of time data, not proof of a result for other agencies. See the feature page.
Common process failures to prevent
- Codes are too broad: if an entry says only “client work,” it may not show which retainer or campaign used the effort.
- Entries are reconstructed at period-end: delayed recording can reduce detail and hold up approvals or invoicing.
- Budgets are reviewed only after delivery: the agency loses the chance to adjust staffing or discuss scope while work is active.
- Internal work is mixed with client-chargeable time: utilization and profitability reporting then depend on inconsistent classification.
- Utilization is treated as a standalone performance score: the metric cannot explain the cause of a change without workload, role, budget, and delivery context.
- Software is selected from a feature list alone: a nominal integration or report is not enough; confirm what data actually transfers and what remains manual.
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