Most organisations know how many hours were worked. Few know what those hours were spent on. UnikPeople‘s time allocation to projects module solves exactly that — with approval workflows, billability control, and direct integration into the employee self-service portal.
1. The problem nobody quantifies — but everyone feels
In an organisation with 200 employees, each person works across 3 to 5 projects simultaneously on average. At month’s end, the finance department knows the total payroll cost. But it doesn’t know how much of that cost was allocated to Project A versus Project B. It doesn’t know how many hours were billable to the client. And it doesn’t know whether the project manager actually approved the declared work, or whether the numbers were simply entered without validation.
This information gap has direct consequences:
- Undervalued projects: actual personnel costs are underestimated because there’s no per-project tracking
- Unbilled hours: in service organisations, billable client hours go unrecorded because the process is manual and time-consuming
- Imprecise cost centres: analytical accounting relies on estimates rather than actual data declared by employees
- No approval layer: without an approval workflow, any declared allocation is taken at face value — creating risk of manipulation or error
According to the Project Management Institute (PMI, 2025), organisations that don’t track time by project face average budget overruns of 28% on personnel costs, and 43% of project managers cite lack of labour cost visibility as the primary obstacle to project profitability.
2. What time allocation to projects means in UnikPeople
UnikPeople ESS’s time allocation to projects module allows each employee to distribute their daily working hours across projects or cost centres directly in the self-service portal, with an integrated approval workflow.
There are two allocation modes, which can coexist within the same organisation:
Allocation to Projects
The employee records how much time they spent on each project, and can flag hours as billable to the client. The system displays:
- Hours already submitted on previous days
- Draft hours (not yet submitted)
- The default value configured for that employee or project
- A duration selector with 15-minute increments
- The target project (with a configurable default project per profile)
Once submitted, allocations remain in Pending status until approved by the line manager. This workflow ensures no hour is counted as a real project cost without validation.
Allocation to Cost Centres
Follows the same logic, but the analysis dimension is the cost centre rather than the project. Useful for organisations managing analytical accounting by department, business unit, or functional area, independent of formal projects.
Each allocation can be flagged as billable (client-invoiceable hours), automatically feeding billing and profitability reporting processes.
3. The workflow in detail: from employee to approval
The time allocation to projects process is simple for the employee, yet robust on the back end:
Step 1 — Day distribution
The employee accesses the working day in the portal and sees the distribution bar: already-submitted hours, draft hours, and hours yet to allocate (default). The visual sum makes it easy to see how much remains to distribute.
Step 2 — New allocation
They select the project (or cost centre), set the duration in 15-minute increments, and toggle the Billable flag on or off. The default project or cost centre loads automatically, reducing friction in the daily process.
Step 3 — Submission
The employee submits one or multiple allocations in a single action. The system creates the records in Pending status.
Step 4 — Approval
The line manager receives a notification and can approve, reject, or return for revision. Only after approval do the hours transition to Approved status and feed into cost and billing reports.
4. Integration with actual working hours
The time allocation to projects module is connected to UnikPeople’s attendance tracking. For a given day — say Monday 27 April — the system automatically shows “9 real hours”: the hours actually worked as recorded by the time clock. This integration prevents an employee from allocating more hours than they actually worked, ensuring data integrity.
The distribution bar reflects in real time:
- Submitted: hours already validated in previous allocations for the same day
- Draft: allocations created but not yet submitted
- Default: remaining hours to allocate, based on total real hours
5. Real-world use cases
Technology consultancy — client billing
A firm with 80 consultants serves 15 clients simultaneously. Before time allocation to projects, client invoicing was calculated based on project managers’ estimates. With UnikPeople, each consultant allocates hours daily by project with the billable flag, and the billing report is generated automatically — no more month-end reconciliation meetings.
Public administration — budget programme cost control
A public entity with 350 employees distributes its personnel budget across 12 budget programmes. Allocation to cost centres allows each worker to declare which programme they spent their time on, feeding budget execution reports without parallel manual processes.
Shared services — interdepartmental cost reallocation
An organisation with shared HR, IT, and finance services needs to reallocate personnel costs to beneficiary departments. Cost centre allocation automatically generates the input data for interdepartmental chargebacks.
6. The impact on management data
Organisations implementing structured time allocation to projects systems report, on average:
- Project cost accuracy: +34% improvement
- Billable hours captured: +22% improvement
- Monthly cost reconciliation time: -65% reduction
- Project manager satisfaction with HR data: +41% improvement
(Source: Aberdeen Group, Time and Attendance Management Study, 2025)
From a financial perspective, a services organisation with 100 employees and an average rate of €75/hour that captures just one additional billable hour per employee per week generates €390,000 in additional annual revenue — value that was previously left uninvoiced due to lack of tracking.
7. Configuration and control for HR departments
On the administrative side, the module offers:
- Default projects and cost centres per employee: each employee has a default project and cost centre, reducing daily allocation effort
- Configurable billable flag: can be preset per project, with employee override capability
- Hierarchical approval workflow: fully configurable, with automatic escalation for non-response
- Allocation reports: by employee, by project, by period, distinguishing billable from non-billable hours
- Payroll and ERP integration: approved time allocation to projects data automatically feeds cost analysis systems
8. Availability
The time allocation to projects feature is available in UnikPeople ESS Portal for all clients on Standard and higher plans. It operates in cloud (Microsoft Azure) and on-premise, with full support for Portuguese and European labour regulations.
Project, cost centre, and approval workflow configuration is handled directly by the system administrator — no development or technical intervention required.
About Uniksystem
Uniksystem is a Portuguese company specialising in low-code BPM platforms and AI-powered automation. With over 15 years of activity, it serves organisations including Edenred, Equifax, Eurobic, ANEPC, and IHG, managing over 6,000 employees on the UnikPeople platform and processing €7 million in monthly payroll. More at www.uniksystem.com.
Contact:
info@uniksystem.com | www.uniksystem.com/self-service-portal/
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