For engineering and infrastructure consultancies in New Zealand
Log hours against projects and phases, approve and lock each week, and turn billable time into tax invoices with GST worked out for you. A record is never overwritten: a correction is a new entry, with a reason and a name, and the original stays.
It was built inside an engineering consultancy, for its own timesheets, approvals and invoices, and it is used for them every week. These are the six things that came from that.
Every correction supersedes the entry before it, carrying a reason and the name of whoever made it. No time entry is ever deleted. Approved weeks lock, and the database itself enforces it, so the application cannot switch it off.
How the record is keptNo screenshots, no location tracking, no idle detection and no productivity scores. People record the hours they worked, and ReliTime keeps that record straight.
Why it refuses toGST at 15% worked out for each client, zero-rated for an overseas one, both GST numbers on the face, a series per financial year from April, and credit and debit notes for every correction.
GST invoicing in detailJobs, phases and tasks budgeted in hours, and each job in money as well. Rates that change on a date without rewriting history, and work in progress that keeps time that was never chargeable apart from time that was written off.
Every featureAn hour with no rate is named, never billed at nothing. Rounding happens on the invoice, never to the hours on the record. A figure nobody set shows as missing rather than as a plausible zero.
What that looks likeA keyboard-first week, a draft that is only saved when you say so, undo rather than "are you sure?", and a phone view with buttons made for one hand.
The design decisionsA week is submitted, approved and locked. Reopening a locked week needs an authorisation countersigned by someone other than the person whose week it is, and it can be used once. Every step is in the audit log, with who did it and when.
Work in progress prices every hour at the rate in force on the day it was worked. It shows what is billable, what has already been billed, and what was never chargeable, with the reason for each.
Invoices are drawn from approved, locked time and titled as tax invoices, with your GST number and your client's and the GST worked out below. Each is issued under the next number in the series and corrected only by credit and debit notes.
A new New Zealand organisation starts with annual holidays of four weeks and sick leave of ten days, neither for casual staff, bereavement leave and unpaid leave. Each is a setting you can change. The leave year starts in April.
On a phone, the week shows one day at a time, with buttons large enough to use in one hand. Nothing is saved until Save is pressed, so a figure typed and corrected on the way never becomes two entries on the record.
Each step feeds the next, so the invoice is built from the same hours that were approved. You never retype them into something else.
Step 1 of 7 · Anjali, administrator
A client, a job with phases and tasks, a quote in hours, and the engineers assigned to it.
Step 2 of 7 · Sam, engineer
Hours typed into the week, saved when they are right, submitted when the week is done.
Step 3 of 7 · Charlotte, approver
The week is approved and locked, and from then on nothing in it can change.
Step 4 of 7 · Charlotte, approver
Every hour at the rate in force on the day, and what is still to bill.
Previous: Charlotte approves itNext: Anjali sees what is ready to bill
Step 5 of 7 · Anjali, administrator
Every client with approved, locked work waiting, and what the invoice would come to.
Previous: The hours are pricedNext: She raises a tax invoice
Step 6 of 7 · Anjali, administrator
GST at 15%, or zero-rated for an overseas client, numbered in the series, and emailed as a PDF.
Previous: Anjali sees what is ready to billNext: The payment comes in
Step 7 of 7 · Anjali, administrator
Recorded against the invoice, with the ledger showing what is still owed.
Check that a GST number is well formed before it goes on an invoice. Free, with no sign-up.
Open the IRD number checkerAdd GST to an amount or take it out, at 15% or any other rate.
Open the GST calculatorA weekly Excel timesheet by project and phase, with the totals worked out for you. Free to download, with no sign-up.
Get the templateThe application's servers and its database both run in Singapore.
Owners and administrators sign in with an authenticator app as well as a password.
Each organisation's data is separated where it is read, not by a filter somebody has to remember to add.
Time entries and approvals cannot be deleted, even by the application itself: the database refuses the request.
We set ReliTime up with a walkthrough rather than a sign-up form. We will take you through a working organisation, from a week of timesheets through approvals and work in progress to a tax invoice, answer your questions as we go, and set up yours.
Or write to hello@relitime.com.