Wrike’s time tracking is used in very different ways across teams. Some integrate time data directly with billing software. Some export to spreadsheets. Some use time tracking purely for internal resource monitoring with no financial purpose at all. Others have not enabled it yet.
Some good practices on time tracking surface what works across a range of use cases.
The most common use case is internal tracking without billing integration.
The largest group uses Wrike’s time tracking for internal purposes only, to understand where time is going, monitor workload, and generate internal reports without connecting it to invoicing or financial systems.
Some teams use the timer every time they start a task. Those entries feed into billing and reporting, but the reporting itself is done by exporting to Excel and building reports there.
Teams that do not connect time tracking to any external system use it to track time on everything so they can build better estimates for future projects.
Teams that bill clients for time use different approaches to get time data from Wrike into their invoicing systems.
You can integrate Wrike time tracking with your ERP and billing software and automate invoicing from that data. Time entries go from Wrike directly into management, with a manual check by project managers before anything is invoiced.
For this type of advanced integration, which requires the Wrike API, analyse the process thoroughly before building, get developer support, and test with a small group first.
Some teams export monthly financial data using a self-written programme against the Wrike API, formatted as Excel files for the finance team. Check carefully whether Wrike supports every feature you need before committing to a custom integration.
Contractors and time logging
Contractors who need to track their time in Wrike need to be allocated a licence seat to log time. There is no way around this. You can handle this by creating a custom user type called Contractor that allows time logging, yet restricting access to more sensitive features.
You can try a different approach for contractors who track time in a separate system. Create a custom item type called Timelog or Timesheets and have contractors submit their timesheets via email or through independent time tracking software. An automation using Zapier can then track that and input it into Wrike. This is a more technical effort.