Anyone working in a team that manages client projects will recognise the situation: hours are tracked, but not consistently categorised as billable or non-billable. Timesheets are submitted, but not systematically reviewed. Budgets are planned, but only reconciled with reality at the end of the project.
Asana’s native time tracking solves part of this challenge. Hours are logged, aggregated and made visible in dashboards. For internal reporting, that is often enough. But for agencies that bill clients for time, manage budgets and need to approve timesheets, it falls short. That is exactly where the Timesheets & Budgets Add-on comes in.
What the Add-on offers
The Add-on is not a standalone time tracking solution, but a direct extension of Asana. It builds on the time data that already exists in the normal flow of project work, and adds three capabilities that are missing from the standard solution: the distinction between billable and non-billable hours, a structured approval process for timesheets, and real-time budget tracking. For teams managing billable work, this closes the gap between internal task management and professional project controlling.
Billable status for time entries
In the standard solution, everything ends up in the same pot: client projects, internal meetings, team events. Billable and non-billable are not categories that Asana recognises out of the box. The result: every invoice is preceded by a round of manual clean-up in Excel.
With Asana Timesheets & Budgets, every time entry is categorised at the point of logging, not after the fact and not in a separate tool. Timesheets can be filtered by billing status, and the data can be exported directly into accounting systems. The hours on an invoice are no longer a reconstruction – they are documented from the start.
Structured timesheet approval
Most teams will recognise this scenario: invoices need to go out, and someone has forgotten to log their hours. Someone else has booked their time to the wrong project. What follows is a round of chasing via Teams, Slack or email.
The Add-on replaces this process with a structured workflow. Team members submit weekly timesheets, which managers and project leads review and approve. The status is visible to everyone: Draft, Submitted, Approved, Rejected. No parallel tracking, no guesswork, no chasing.
For teams billing multiple clients each month, this is not a convenience feature. It is the prerequisite for invoices going out accurately and on time.
Real-time budget tracking
Most tools show you the past. You find out a project has gone over budget when it is too late to do anything about it.
With the Timesheets & Budgets Add-on, hourly rates can be set per team member, differentiated by role or experience level. As soon as someone logs time, Asana calculates the costs incurred and compares them against the planned budget. The result is a live dashboard showing budget consumed and budget remaining.
If a project has used up the majority of its budget halfway through, you see that in time – not in the final invoice. You can open a conversation with the client, reallocate resources or adjust the plan while there is still something to decide. For sensitive financial data, the budget view can be restricted to project admins and managers.
Who it’s worth it for
The Add-on is licensed per user and available from the Starter plan. You only purchase licences for the users who actually need these features.
Teams running internal projects without client billing will get a long way with Asana’s native time tracking. For teams that regularly manage billable work or need to control project budgets, the Add-on closes a gap that would otherwise show up as manual rework, delayed invoices and undetected budget overruns.
Conclusion
The Timesheets & Budgets Add-on turns the time data that already exists in Asana into a genuine management tool: clear separation between billable and non-billable hours, a transparent approval process, and budget visibility that does not wait until the end of the project to emerge.
