Everything between the hour worked and the invoice sent
The Ledger covers the whole chain — recording, approving, budgeting, reporting and billing — so no part of it lives in a spreadsheet somebody keeps on their desktop.
Six modules, one record
Each of these would be a product on its own. Together they mean a number never has to be re-entered.
Time recording
A weekly grid built for people who resent timesheets. Pre-filled rows, keyboard entry, and a running total that tells them when they are done.
Projects and budgets
Structure work the way you sell it — phases, work packages, tasks — and hold a fee against any level of that structure.
Approvals
A single review queue per manager, bulk actions, queries with comments, and period locking once time has been billed.
Reporting
Utilisation, recoverability, WIP and margin, sliced by person, grade, team, client or project, over any date range.
Billing
Draft invoices from approved time at the correct rate, with narrative pulled from the entries themselves.
People and grades
Grades, cost rates and charge-out rates with full effective-dated history, so last year’s work stays priced as it was sold.
The fastest weekly timesheet your team has used
The grid opens on the current week with every project the person is assigned to already listed. They fill in hours, add a note where it matters, and submit. That is the whole interaction.
- Duplicate last week, then adjust
- Half-hour or decimal entry, per organisation preference
- Notes captured per entry and carried through to billing
- Submitted weeks lock automatically once approved
12 – 16 May
35.0 / 37.5 h| Project | M | T | W | T | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverside masterplan | 4 | 3.5 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Halton retrofit survey | 2 | 3 | 3.5 | 2 | 2 |
| Northgate quarter | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Internal · training | – | – | – | – | – |
Answers your partners can act on the same day
Reporting is not a monthly export. Every approved hour updates utilisation, work in progress and margin immediately, and every figure drills back to the entries behind it.
- Utilisation by person, grade, team or office
- Recoverability against the fee that was actually proposed
- Work in progress ageing, so nothing quietly goes stale
- Scheduled exports to CSV or your finance system
Utilisation by grade
Rolling 12 weeks · target 72%
- Partner41%
- Associate68%
- Senior83%
- Engineer79%
- Graduate88%
Firm-wide: 78.4% · 6.2 pts above last quarter
Rates that hold their history
Change a grade rate in April and last February’s work keeps the rate it was billed at. Every rate is effective-dated, per grade, per project and per client — which is what makes retrospective reporting trustworthy.
- Standard grade rates
- Per-project overrides
- Client-specific agreements
- Full change history
From approved time to draft invoice
Select a period and a client, and The Ledger assembles the bill: hours at the right rate, expenses where they apply, narrative drawn from the entries, and a write-off column for whatever the partner decides not to charge.
- Write-ons and write-offs recorded against the project
- Fixed-fee, time-and-materials and capped arrangements
- Export to your accounting package
The parts nobody demos, and everybody needs
Security, access control and the plumbing that lets The Ledger fit the way your firm already works.
Isolated by organisation
Every record is scoped to your organisation and enforced at the API layer, not just hidden in the interface.
SSO and roles
Sign in with Google or Microsoft, and give people exactly the permissions their role needs — nothing more.
Currencies and timezones
Set the currency, country and working week per organisation, so weeks close when your office says they do.
Your working calendar
Public holidays, part-time patterns and leave feed capacity, so utilisation is measured against real availability.
A GraphQL API
Everything the interface can do is available to your own tools, with the same access rules applied.
Exports that fit
CSV, scheduled reports and webhook events, so the finance team keeps working the way it already does.
See it against your own projects
Set up your organisation, add a live job, and record a week. It takes about twenty minutes to know whether this fits.