With Gusto Project Tracking, admins with payroll permissions can create and manage projects to see how much your workforce costs. That includes primary admins, full-access admins, and limited-access admins with payroll permissions. There is no separate project tracking permission.
Project Tracking’s core features — creating projects, clients, and tasks, and entering hours manually — are available on all Gusto plans. Add Time & Attendance so your team can track their own hours on projects and tasks. You can upgrade at any time.
After you run payroll, the project dashboard shows total project costs, including wages, benefits, and taxes.
Tracking hours by project lets you understand employee costs and efficiency. Here's how project tracking works in Gusto:
Create a project in Gusto when you have new clients or work.
Your team tracks hours by project and task, and can add notes. When Time & Attendance is set up for a worker, they track their own hours. If it is not set up, you enter their hours for them. Hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors can all add notes about their work.
If employees also track payroll time, they pick the project when clocking in and out.
See project data in real time. Filter total hours by employee, project, task, or date range.
Benefits of project tracking:
Track hours and notes in one place.
Break down costs by project, task, employee, or client.
See project costs that include wages, benefits, taxes, and workers’ comp.
Use tracked hours to invoice your clients accurately.
Included features:
Unlimited projects and tasks
Support for hourly employees, salaried employees, and contractors
Clients you can assign to projects
Optional budgets and hour estimates per project, so you can compare estimated and actual cost
Billable and non-billable hour tracking
A project dashboard with real-time hours and costs
Bulk actions to mark projects active or inactive, or to delete them
Not included:
Manager approvals
Location tracking
Overhead or material cost tracking
You can create projects for new clients or jobs and assign employees and contractors to them. Once projects are set up, your team tracks hours directly in Gusto, and you’ll review and approve before running payroll.
To create a project:
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Select + New Project.
Name the project.
Choose a client.
Add a budget estimate, estimated hours, or both (optional), so you can compare estimated and actual cost later.
Add a job site address (optional).
Add tasks (optional).
Choose the employees and contractors who can track time to the project.
Click Create Project.
Name
Client
Tasks
Budget estimate and estimated hours
Job site address
Team members assigned (add or remove)
Status (active or inactive)
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Next to the project, click the Actions menu (three dots).
Select Edit project.
Make changes, then click Update project.
If you remove a team member who has logged hours, those hours stay in your reports. That person just does not appear in the project's active member list going forward.
To stop tracking time to a project but keep its historical data, close it out instead of deleting it. Closing out a project sets it to inactive. Workers can no longer track time to it, and its reporting history stays intact.
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Click the project you want to close out.
In the upper-right corner, click Manage.
Select Inactive.
Deleting a project releases its hours and removes it from reporting. There is no option to archive a project, so close out the project instead if you want to keep its history.
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Next to the project, click the Actions menu (three dots).
Select Delete project.
Click Delete.
You can also select more than one project at a time to mark them active or inactive, or to delete them.
Tasks break a project into the work being done. You can manage tasks inside a single project, or manage them across all of your projects at once.
Add a task: Edit the project, type the task name, and select Create task, then click Update project.
Edit a task name: Create a new task with the correct name, then delete the old one.
Remove a task from the project: Edit the project, click the x next to the task, then click Update project. The task stays available to any other project that uses it.
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
In the upper-right corner, click More and select Tasks.
What to know about managing tasks globally:
A change you make to a task here applies to every project that uses it.
Set whether a task is billable or non-billable on the task itself.
Select more than one task at a time to mark them inactive or delete them. Mark a task inactive when you want to keep its historical data across projects.
Deleting a task here removes it from every project. Removing a task from a single project leaves the task available everywhere else.
Important: Deleting tasks removes their reporting history. You cannot delete a task that already has hours logged against it in a project. Reassign or remove those hours first.
When workers clock in and out of a project, they see a No task option for hours logged without a specific task. No task appears only when the project has other tasks. If a project has no tasks at all, workers do not see a task selector. You cannot rename, deactivate, or remove No task.
Create clients and assign them to projects to see costs broken down by client. Every project needs a client.
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
In the upper-right corner, click More and select Clients.
Add a client: Select Add client, name the client, then click Save.
Rename a client: Click the Actions menu (three dots) next to the client, select Edit, update the name, then click Save.
Mark a client inactive: Click the Actions menu (three dots) next to the client, then select Mark inactive.
Delete a client: Click the Actions menu (three dots) next to the client, then select Delete. Deleting a client removes it from every project, so mark the client inactive instead if you want to keep its history.
To change the client on a project, make that change inside the project itself.
What to know:
Client names must be unique within your company.
Marking a client inactive removes it from the client list when you create or edit a project. Any project already associated with that client keeps the association.
Select more than one client at a time to mark them inactive or delete them.
A change you make to a client here applies to every project that uses it.
Get a quick overview of project health without running a report. The dashboard sits at the top of the project details page and covers both active and inactive projects. It shows:
Total hours tracked
Total burdened cost, which includes wages, taxes, and benefits
Billable and non-billable hours
Projects that are over budget or at risk of going over budget
To view the dashboard:
In the left menu, click Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Find and click the project you want to view.
Hours appear as your team tracks them. Costs appear after you run payroll for that date range.
See a project's total cost and hours on its dashboard, then drill in to the cost for each worker. Costs come from processed payrolls and include wages, benefits, and taxes.
Select the project you want to review.
Change the date selector to the time range you want.
See the project's total cost and hours on the dashboard.
Scroll down to the Team tab to see the whole team's hours and costs broken down by worker.
On the Team tab, find the worker you want and open their row to see the breakdown of wages, benefits, and taxes.
Gusto divides the worker's total pay for the pay period by the greater of their payroll hours or their total tracked hours, then multiplies that rate by the hours tracked to the project.
Example, tracked hours under payroll hours: total pay is $2,500 and payroll hours are 40. The worker tracked 38 hours in total and 8 hours to Project A. Gusto divides $2,500 by 40 for a rate of $62.50, so Project A costs $500.
Example, tracked hours over payroll hours: same $2,500 and 40 payroll hours, but the worker tracked 45 hours in total and 8 hours to Project A. Gusto divides $2,500 by 45 for a rate of $55.56, so Project A costs $444.44.
Tracked hours can exceed payroll hours on purpose, so you can see the true labor hours on a project. Tracking more hours than payroll hours lowers the rate used for costing.
Contractors are costed differently. Gusto applies the contractor's job rate to their tracked hours. Flat-fee payments not tied to hours, like bonuses or reimbursements, are entered as expenses instead.
Note: Hours you enter in Project Tracking are used for project costing only. They never feed payroll and do not change what anyone is paid.
Only active projects appear in workforce costing reports.
To see how Gusto attributes payroll costs to a specific job or pay rate, go to Workforce costing calculation in the reports article.
If you have an accounting integration with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero, you can group your payroll information by project with your chart of accounts.
Mapping by projects (instead of job codes or departments) is good for businesses with multiple people in the same role and when some employees work hours in one role and other hours in another role.
Project mapping is not available for Aplos or Freshbooks.
If you use QuickBooks Classes, you can also map your projects to classes in step 9 below. The same expense account can be used for each team and have an assigned QuickBooks Class—this keeps the reports in QuickBooks much cleaner and easier to understand.
Make sure you've already:
Connected to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero from Gusto.
Mapped your chart of accounts.
Created project-specific accounts in your accounting software.
Set up time tracking by project for your team.
In your Gusto admin account, head to the App directory and choose your software (QuickBooks Online or Xero).
Go to the Settings tab.
Next to "Journal entry consolidation," click edit.
Select by project.
You can map your chart of accounts by just one category: projects, jobs, or departments.
Click Submit.
Go to the Mapping tab.
Scroll to the “Mappings by project” section. For each project you want to map, click Override.
If your company uses QuickBooks Classes, you’ll first have the option to choose a Class to map the project to.
When exported, the payroll entry will tie to your dimensional reporting needs in QuickBooks Online.
For each of the project's line items, choose the account you want it to correspond with.
Your progress is saved as you go. When you’re done mapping, click the x icon to return to the main Mappings page.
Repeat for each project you want to map.
If multiple projects share tracking categories, there will not be separate line items when synced to your accounting software. Instead, the project wages will be lumped together.
These transactions will be exported by project to your accounting software account. If any projects are left unmapped, they'll sync based on the original chart of accounts mappings.
Q: Can contractors track time to projects?
A: Yes. Contractors can clock in and out, or you can enter their hours manually, the same as employees. Contractor project costs are calculated differently: they use the contractor's job rate applied to their tracked hours. Flat-fee payments that are not tied to hours, like bonuses or reimbursements, are entered as expenses instead and are not part of this calculation.
Q: I have non-exempt employees who track time for payroll. How does this work for them?
A: Non-exempt employees still clock in and out as usual. Projects are tracked separately, under Time & Attendance > Project Tracking.
Q: Can I see real-time workforce costs for my projects?
A: The project dashboard shows hours as your team tracks them. Costs that include wages, benefits, and taxes appear after you run payroll for that date range.
Q: How does this work for employees who track time for payroll, projects, and tasks?
A: Employees who track time for payroll and projects can select which project and task they are working on when clocking in and out.
Q: How does this work for employees who only track time to projects?
A: Employees who track time for projects but not payroll can track project and task time on a separate weekly timesheet in the Time Tracking section of their account. If you add the employee to time tracking for payroll, the weekly timesheet is replaced by a project dropdown they use whenever they clock in and out. Project and task hours tracked on the old timesheet are still included in your project costs.