In Productive, understanding the distinction between Billable and Recognized time is essential for accurate budget management and invoicing.

To get the full picture, it's also important to understand how time is categorized in Productive. These categories include:

Worked time refers to the actual hours team members track against services while working on tasks or projects. These entries represent the total time spent, regardless of whether the time is billable to a client or used for internal purposes.

📌 Example: If an employee works 8 hours on a task and logs them to a budgeted service, all 8 hours count as worked time.

Billable time is the portion of worked time that can be invoiced to the client. This applies to both Time and Materials and Fixed billing type services.

Not all worked hours are billable. You can choose to bill only a portion of the time logged.

📌 Example: If 8 hours are worked on a task, but only 3 hours are set to be invoiced,

Recognized time is the portion of billable time that is or will be charged to the client. It reflects the limits defined in the budget or agreement.

📌 Example: A Fixed billing service has a budgeted Quantity of 10 hours. If 12 hours are logged as billable:

Important for reporting:
Looking at a Financial Items data source report, you will still see 12 hours as billable, but only 10 hours will be recognized and eligible for invoicing.

Scheduled time comes from resource planning. These are planned or forecasted hours set for future work and may not reflect actual time worked or billed.

📌 Example: If a report shows "4 hours in May" or "14 hours in June" for a service without any logged time, this is scheduled time — planned via the Resource Planner, not actual work done.

Recognized scheduled time is the portion of scheduled hours that is expected to be recognized (i.e. billable within budget constraints).

📌 Example: A Fixed service is capped at 10 hours. If 12 hours are scheduled for a team member:

Each type of time serves a different reporting purpose. Recognizing how they interact helps you manage client expectations, budgets, and reports more accurately.

Client time in reports shows the total time logged for a specific client. Each time entry has a worked and a billable component. These don’t need to match.

📌 Example: If someone works for 4 hours but only 2 hours are billable:

Does client time include internal or deal time?

If your 'Average rate by client (recognized)' report shows fewer billable hours than worked hours, it’s because billable time only includes what's invoiced, while worked time includes everything logged.

If you see entries for scheduled hours with no logged time (e.g., 4 hours in May), those are forecasted efforts from the Resource Planner—not actual work done.