Time tracking that fits Financial Services
Hours captured as work happens, mapped to the client mandates, reporting cycles and reviews you already plan around.
Manual timesheets are reconstructions, and reconstructions lose money. Worktivity records hours automatically in the background, lets analysts, advisers and compliance officers correct them, and turns the result into timesheets, invoices and payouts data without a second round of data entry.
14-day free trial · No credit card required
Why financial services firms need time tracking
Time is the unit financial services firms sell, plan and pay against, yet in most organisations it is entered from memory on a Friday afternoon. The gap between what happened and what was recorded is where margin quietly disappears.
Regulatory overhead has grown faster than any other cost line in financial services, and almost nobody measures it directly. Suitability documentation, know-your-customer refreshes, reporting and internal review consume large amounts of qualified time that no client is billed for.
Cost to serve a client mandate is one of the least reliable numbers in financial services. Advisory time is remembered, and the suitability documentation, know-your-customer refreshes and periodic reviews that surround it are treated as unavoidable background cost spread evenly across the book.
Worktivity's time tracking for financial services firms puts a number on it. Hours split across client-facing work, compliance and administration, attributed to mandates and clients, so the regulatory cost of serving each segment becomes visible and manageable.
Tracking hours against mandates and reporting cycles shows how unevenly that burden actually falls. The typical pattern is that a minority of clients consume a large majority of the compliance effort, which is decisive information for minimum account sizes, service tiering and the business case for automating a specific review process.
Worktivity closes that gap by capturing hours as they are worked, attaching them to the right project or client, and leaving a clear trail from raw activity to approved timesheet. What you bill and what you paid for finally describe the same day.
How tracked time reaches the invoice
Four steps, none of which involve a blank timesheet grid.
Hours captured, not remembered
The agent records working time in the background and separates idle stretches, so a timesheet starts from evidence instead of an empty form.
Everything mapped to work
Time attaches to the projects, clients and tasks that mirror your client mandates, reporting cycles and reviews, which makes reporting a filter rather than a rebuild.
Approvals without chasing
Employees review and adjust, managers approve in bulk, and locked periods stop retroactive edits from reopening a closed month.
Billing and payouts in one pass
Approved hours flow into invoices and payouts exports with the breakdown clients ask for already attached.
Time tracking capabilities for Financial Services
Seven capabilities, two of them specific to how financial services firms work.
Compliance effort measurement
Track hours consumed by know-your-customer work, suitability documentation, regulatory reporting and internal review as a distinct category, separate from advisory and client-facing time.
Client and mandate profitability
Attribute effort to individual clients and mandates so servicing cost can be compared against fee income, segment by segment.
Automatic background tracking
Start once and the desktop agent handles the rest across Windows, macOS and Linux. analysts, advisers and compliance officers do not stop work in order to record work, which is the only way tracking survives a busy month.
Project, client and task mapping
Structure time the way you already structure delivery, so hours roll up to the client mandates, reporting cycles and reviews your reporting is built on without manual re-tagging.
Timesheets and approvals
Generated timesheets arrive pre-filled. Employees correct, managers approve, and every change is logged with who altered what and when.
Idle, break and offline handling
Idle thresholds, break rules and manual entry for offline work keep the recorded day honest, including the hours that happen away from a keyboard.
Billable rates and invoicing
Set rates by person, role or project, mark hours billable or internal, and export invoice-ready breakdowns into your accounting stack.
What accurate hours are worth to financial services firms
The return shows up in six places.
Recovered billable time
Teams that move from memory-based entry to captured time routinely find hours that were previously written off, simply because nobody recorded them.
Estimates that improve
Every completed piece of work becomes historical data, so the next quote rests on what the work actually cost rather than on optimism.
Faster billing cycles
Closing a period stops being a week of chasing and becomes a review of data that is already sitting there.
Fewer client disputes
Itemised, timestamped breakdowns answer “what did we pay for” before the question turns into a credit note.
Cleaner payouts
Approved hours, overtime and leave arrive in a single export, which removes the spreadsheet stage entirely.
Audit-ready records
A complete trail from captured activity to approved timesheet stands up to internal review and external audit alike.
Where financial services firms rely on tracked time
Five places financial services firms put this to work in the first quarter.
Segmenting the client book by true cost
Small mandates often consume nearly as much compliance effort as large ones. Hours per client against revenue makes that structural problem explicit.
Quantifying regulatory change
When a new requirement lands, measured before-and-after effort turns “this is consuming the team” into a figure the board can act on.
Evidencing supervision and controls
A documented record of review and supervision time supports the control narrative internal audit and regulators expect to see.
Fixed-price work that must not overrun
Watch consumed hours against the budget on every engagement and intervene while there is still room to act.
Distributed and shift-based teams
Track across time zones, devices and locations under one set of rules, then reconcile the lot in a single view.
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions financial services firms ask most often about time tracking.
Can we measure how much regulatory work each client mandate actually costs?
Yes, by tracking suitability, review and know-your-customer work against the mandate rather than to a general compliance bucket. Two or three reporting cycles are usually enough to show the distribution, and firms are consistently surprised by how concentrated the burden is in a small part of the book.
How does this fit our data protection obligations?
Worktivity records application-level metadata rather than document or message contents, screenshots are optional and configurable per team, and data can be retained on a defined schedule. Firms handling client data typically run capture with screenshots disabled. Your own impact assessment and retention policy still govern the deployment.
Can records be produced for a regulatory review?
Yes. Timesheets carry a complete approval and edit history, periods can be locked after approval, and exports can be produced per user, per client or per date range.
Does time tracking require manual timers?
No. Tracking runs automatically once the agent is installed. Manual entry exists only for work that happens away from the computer: meetings, site visits, travel and calls.
Can employees correct their own hours?
Yes, and they should. Employees review and adjust their day before submitting it, managers approve, and every edit is recorded. That combination is what makes the data trustworthy rather than merely automatic.
Does it work offline?
Yes. The agent buffers activity locally and syncs when the connection returns, so travel, site work and outages do not leave gaps in the record.
Can we export to our accounting or payouts system?
Approved timesheets export as CSV or XLSX, and the API lets you push hours into your existing finance stack on a schedule.
Other Worktivity solutions for Financial Services
The same platform, pointed at a different question.
Employee Monitoring for Financial Services
Comprehensive employee monitoring solutions for tracking productivity, activity levels, and team performance.
Learn moreProductivity Calculation for Financial Services
Advanced productivity calculation and analytics tools for measuring team efficiency and performance metrics.
Learn more
How time tracking works in other sectors
The mechanics are shared; the reporting, policy and vocabulary are not. Compare with a neighbouring industry.
Media & Publishing
Media companies, publishers, and content creators needing time tracking for editorial work, content production, and remote team management.
Learn moreIT Services & MSPs
IT service providers and managed service providers requiring time tracking for client support, project billing, and technician productivity.
Learn moreHR & Recruitment Agencies
HR consultancies and recruitment agencies needing time tracking for candidate sourcing, client work, and team productivity optimization.
Learn moreLogistics & Transportation
Logistics companies and transportation firms requiring time tracking for office staff, dispatch operations, and administrative productivity.
Learn moreSoftware Houses
Software development companies and tech firms that need to track developer productivity, manage project timelines, and optimize team performance.
Learn moreArchitecture Firms
Architecture and design firms requiring time tracking for billable hours, project management, and client reporting.
Learn more
Ready to see where your hours actually go?
Set Worktivity up for your team this afternoon. The configuration that financial services firms need is already mapped out. Fourteen days free, no card, and the data is yours either way.
14-day free trial · No credit card required