Effort reporting

Effort reporting is Flowstate's replacement for a timesheet. It records what each person worked on, as a share of each day on each project. Finance relies on it for Capitalisation, R&D tax claims and the Spend timeline.

Nobody starts from a blank page. Each week works like this:

1. Flowstate drafts the week from ticket activity in your project tool, and from GitHub if it's connected.
2. The team lead fixes what's wrong and checks that each person's days add up.
3. The team lead submits the week. If your organisation has approval stages, approvers, often in finance, then sign it off.

Effort is always a share of a day, never hours. How the draft is made is in How your team's effort is estimated.

Who does what each week

Who	What they do	Read
Team lead	Checks the team's week, fixes what's wrong, clears Unattributed work and submits.	Review and submit your team's week
Approver	Approves the week, sends it back, or makes a small fix and approves.	Approve or send back a week
Engineering or delivery lead	Links projects, matches people and follows up teams that haven't submitted.	Fix unattributed effort, Track submissions across teams
Finance lead	Uses submitted effort in Capitalisation and R&D claims, and agrees the settings that change it.	Effort reporting settings

The tabs

Go to Delivery → Effort reporting. It opens on My teams.

Tab	Use it to
My teams	Review and submit the weeks for teams you manage. If you don't manage a team, pick one to look at.
All teams	Open any team's week in your organisation.
Contractors	See and correct contractor effort by contractor company, and export it. You only see this tab with access to contractor effort.
Review	See every team's weeks at a glance, coloured by status, and open any of them.

Before your teams start

1. Ask your Flowstate contact to switch on effort reporting. Until then, the section shows a holding screen.
2. Connect your project tool: link projects, match people and choose which statuses mean "in progress".
3. Give every team a manager with a Flowstate account. See People and teams.
4. Choose how often teams submit, which also turns on reminders, and who approves. See Effort reporting settings and Set up approval stages.
5. Optionally, connect GitHub to sharpen the draft.

The full set-up checklist is in Set up Report effort.

If something's not right

I can't submit my team's week. Only the team's manager, or an approver in its review workflow, can submit. Ask your Flowstate admin.

I can't see the Contractors tab. You need access to contractor effort. Ask your Flowstate admin.

Nobody is being reminded to submit. Review Cadence is Off, which is where it starts. An admin can change it in Effort reporting settings.