How Deltek Costpoint Time and Expense Works
The process generally begins when employees record time against the appropriate project, task, activity, or charge code and enter reimbursable business expenses with the required supporting information. Managers or designated approvers then review submissions before the information moves into downstream accounting workflows.
For project-based organizations, the relationship between time entries and project structures is especially important. Labor hours can contribute to direct project costs, while expense records can capture travel, materials, or other reimbursable spending. Consistent coding helps finance teams distinguish direct and indirect costs and maintain reliable project-level reporting.
- Time capture: Employees record hours against authorized projects, tasks, and charge codes.
- Expense capture: Employees submit eligible business expenses with relevant dates, amounts, categories, and documentation.
- Review and approval: Supervisors and finance teams validate entries against organizational policies and project requirements.
- Accounting integration: Approved information supports project costing, billing, payroll, and financial reporting processes.
Core Components and Financial Data
Time and expense management depends on consistent master data. Project structures, employee records, labor categories, charge codes, expense categories, approval rules, and accounting mappings determine how transactions are classified and ultimately reported.
For contractors, time records can also support contract compliance and indirect-cost analysis. Finance teams can use labor information to understand how resources are being consumed across projects, while expense information provides additional visibility into the cost of performing contractual work.
When connected through integrations with other financial or operational systems, approved information can move between applications with synchronized data. This can help organizations maintain consistent records across project accounting, financial reporting, and related business processes.
Expense Documentation and Audit Visibility
Strong expense management requires more than recording an amount. Employees may need to provide receipts, business purposes, dates, project references, and other information required by company policy or contract terms. Real Time Expense Documentation helps explain how supporting evidence can be captured and maintained as part of an expense workflow.
Real Time Expense Capture focuses on recording expense information close to when the transaction occurs. Timely capture can reduce gaps between the business activity and its accounting record, giving finance teams more current visibility into employee spending and project costs.
For audit and control purposes, Real Time Expense Audit Trail provides a useful framework for understanding how expense records can retain evidence of submissions, reviews, approvals, and subsequent activity. A clear audit trail helps finance teams trace transactions from their source through the accounting process.
Use Cases for Project-Based Finance Teams
Deltek Costpoint Time and Expense can support several recurring finance activities. Government contractors can use time records to monitor labor charged to contracts, while project accounting teams can analyze costs by project, task, employee, or other dimensions. Finance leaders can also use timely expense information when reviewing project performance and forecasting spending.
Procurement-related spending can be evaluated alongside employee expenses, particularly when teams coordinate procurement activities with project budgets and accounting structures. Similarly, organizations can connect expense and purchasing information with Budget Control practices to monitor budget usage and identify transactions that require review.
Vendor-related processes may also benefit from timely financial information. Notifications For Vendor Management can help teams keep relevant stakeholders informed about operational events such as invoices, purchase orders, onboarding, and payments.
Connecting Time and Expense With Finance Automation
Time and expense data becomes more valuable when it feeds downstream finance processes without unnecessary re-entry. For example, accurate transaction information can support invoice workflows, including invoice processing activities such as extraction, validation, matching, coding, approval, and posting.
Customer receipts represent another connected finance workflow. While employee expense records concern outgoing spending, cash application focuses on matching customer payments and remittances, resolving unapplied cash, and posting receipts accurately. Linking these processes through an integrated finance environment gives accounting teams broader visibility across transaction cycles.
Expense and project data can also support period-end accounting. Organizations may use related information when preparing accruals, reconciling accounts, reviewing journal entries, and completing other close activities. Better-connected workflows can contribute to faster close by giving finance teams more timely and traceable information before reporting deadlines.
Best Practices for Managing Time and Expense
Organizations can improve the reliability of Costpoint time and expense data by establishing clear coding rules, approval responsibilities, documentation requirements, and review procedures. Employees should understand which project, task, charge code, and expense category to select for each transaction.
Finance teams should also periodically review exception patterns, rejected submissions, unusual spending, missing documentation, and delayed approvals. Maintaining clean master data and aligning approval workflows with organizational responsibilities helps ensure that transactions reach project accounting and financial reporting with the appropriate classifications.
When evaluating the broader ERP environment, organizations may also review deltek alongside other ERP approaches, particularly when considering ERP integration, migration, or ways to extend finance workflows around an existing system.
Summary
Deltek Costpoint Time and Expense provides a structured way to capture employee labor and business expenses and connect those transactions with project accounting and financial reporting. Its value depends on accurate coding, timely documentation, appropriate approvals, and reliable downstream processing. When these elements work together, finance and project teams gain better visibility into labor costs, reimbursable expenses, project performance, compliance requirements, and period-end reporting.