For a team of 5 to 200 people, five things decide whether timesheet software survives the first month: weekly entry fast enough that people actually do it, a real approval step before hours reach payroll or an invoice, hours broken down by project with billable separated from non-billable, exports your payroll and finance teams can open, and per-person pricing you can forecast as you grow. Long feature lists decide nothing.
- Fast weekly entry — a couple of minutes, or adoption dies.
- An approval step between logged hours and payroll.
- Hours per project, billable split from non-billable.
- Clean exports, because finance works in spreadsheets.
- Predictable per-seat cost.
Most small teams start with a shared spreadsheet. It works until the week someone forgets to fill it in, a manager edits a cell after payroll has run, and nobody can say who changed what. This page covers what to look for in timesheet software, and how Aarveta handles each part.
What a small business actually needs
Ignore long feature lists. For a team of 5 to 200 people, five things decide whether a timesheet system survives the first month:
- Fast weekly entry. If logging a week takes more than a couple of minutes, people stop doing it.
- A real approval step. Someone must review hours before they reach payroll or an invoice.
- Project and task breakdown. Total hours are useless; you need hours per project, and billable separated from non-billable.
- Reports you can export. Payroll and finance work in spreadsheets, so the data has to come out cleanly.
- Predictable cost. Per-person pricing you can forecast as the team grows.
How Aarveta covers each one
Weekly entry with clear statuses
Staff log hours a week at a time. Every entry moves through states everyone can see: Draft while it is being filled in, Submitted when it goes for review, then Approved or Rejected. Approved weeks are locked so they cannot be edited quietly afterwards.
Approvals that match your reporting lines
Each employee is mapped to the person who approves their time, so requests land with the right manager instead of one overloaded admin. There are three roles: Admin, Approver and Staff. If an approved week turns out to be wrong, an admin can reopen that week, the correction is made, and it goes through approval again. See the full approval workflow guide.
Projects, job types and allocated hours
Hours are logged against a project and a job type, and each job type is marked billable or non-billable. You can also allocate a number of hours per employee per job type, so planned effort and actual effort sit side by side instead of being compared from memory at the end of the month.
Reports and exports
Aarveta includes 13 built-in reports, including weekly summary, daily summary, project utilisation, billable vs non-billable, overtime summary, pending approvals, rejected entries, payroll-ready hours and yearly work. Each one exports to CSV or Excel, so payroll and finance keep working the way they already do.
Separation and audit trail
Every company's data is isolated from every other company on the platform, and sensitive administrative actions are written to an audit log with who did it and why.
What it costs
Start with a free trial — no card required. After that, pricing is per seat in INR, and you choose monthly, quarterly or annual billing. A seat is an active employee, so the cost tracks the size of your team rather than a fixed tier you may not fill. See current pricing.
Tip before you buy anything: run one real week through a trial with two or three people. A tool that survives one honest week of your own data tells you far more than any feature comparison.
Getting started in an afternoon
- Create your workspace. Sign up, set your company details and add your first users.
- Add projects and job types. Mark which job types are billable.
- Map approvers. Point each employee at the manager who reviews their hours.
- Run one week. Have the team log a real week, then approve it.
- Export a report. Pull the payroll-ready or weekly summary report and check it against what you expected.
Frequently asked questions
How much does timesheet software cost for a small business?
Aarveta starts with a free trial and then charges per seat in INR, billed monthly, quarterly or annually. A seat is an active employee, so the cost grows with your team rather than jumping between fixed tiers.
Do we need to install anything?
No. Aarveta runs in a web browser, so staff log hours and approvers review them without installing software.
Can different managers approve different people?
Yes. Each employee is mapped to their own approver, so submissions go to the manager who actually oversees that person's work.
Can we separate billable and non-billable hours?
Yes. Each job type is marked billable or non-billable, and reports split the two automatically, including a dedicated billable vs non-billable report.
Can we get the data out for payroll?
Yes. All 13 reports, including payroll-ready hours and monthly approved hours, export to CSV or Excel.