Hour types

Consult tracks the following hour types:

Name	Acronym	Description
Originally planned hours	OP	The hours captured at the start of the project.
Planned hours	P	The planned hours as adjusted during the project (i.e. subsequent to project kick-off).
Actual hours	A	The hours logged by the employees on their timesheets, what they actually worked.
Billed hours	n/a	The hours that are invoiced to the client.

The hours above can be explained by way of an example:

Engineer John Doe was assigned as a resource on project X, a three week project. At the start of the project, it was estimated he would work 10 hours each week.

The first week he worked 10 hours, which he also entered into his timesheet, meaning that his actual hours aligned with his original planned hours. However, the following week he knew he was going to be on leave for half of the week, so he adjusted his planned hours to be 5 for week two and 15 for week 3 to ensure he still worked the full 20 hours for those two weeks. At the end of week two, John logged 7 hours (actual) as he managed to get two hours in more than the adjusted plan. This meant that at the end of week three, he logged only 13 hours as he knew had 2 less to make up for. In total, John therefore worked thirty hours on the project (actual hours), even though it didn't always align with the original plan or adjusted plan hours.

During the invoice phase for those three weeks, the project director reviewed the hours worked by John and decided to bill for a few less hours than logged as John was still brand new to the team and wasn't able to contribute at full capacity. The project director therefore decided to adjust the billed hours to 6 hours for each week, billing 18 hours in total in stead of the 30 hours worked.