The Sub-Project Time Booking feature enables resources allocated at the parent project level to log time directly to any sub-projects within that structure. This reduces the need for repeated resource allocations across projects and sub-projects, providing project managers with greater control over resource planning, minimising administrative workload, and ensuring that teams can focus on execution rather than manual resource assignments.

This feature is particularly valuable in Agile environments, where organisations often structure projects around a product (parent project) with workstreams or value streams (sub-projects) representing distinct iterations or flows of work aligned to business objectives. With this new feature, overall resource commitment is managed at the product (parent project) level, while teams can book time at the workstream or value stream level, ensuring accurate tracking of actuals without the administrative overhead of repeated allocations.

Enabling Sub-Project Time Booking

To activate Sub-Project Time Booking, a project administrator must configure the parent project settings.

Steps to enable:

1. Navigate to the Project Settings page of the parent project.

2. Locate the option ‘Allow Time Booking to Child Projects’ in the Financial section.

3. Enable this option to allow time booking across its sub-projects.

4. Save changes to apply the setting.

This configuration ensures that resources allocated at the parent project level can record time against sub-projects without requiring separate allocations. 

Please note that project administrators can also use the Project Details bulk edit functionality to update this setting for multiple projects simultaneously.

Managing Resource Allocations

With Sub-Project Time Booking enabled, resource allocation and team membership management follow these principles:

Allocate resources at the parent project level 

• Resources only need to be assigned at the parent project level, rather than each individual sub-project. 
• This centralised allocation provides a single source of truth, ensuring project managers have full visibility of resource commitments. 
• With allocations consolidated in one place, it becomes easier to track resource utilisation, plan future allocations, and avoid overbooking. 
• This approach reduces administrative effort, allowing teams to focus on execution rather than managing multiple allocations.

Add resources as team members to sub projects

• While resources are allocated at the parent project level, not all team members will be involved in every sub-project. 
• To ensure resources can only book time to the sub-projects they actively work on, they must be added as team members to those specific sub-projects. 
• This step ensures accurate tracking of actuals and prevents incorrect time bookings while maintaining flexibility for project managers to control access.

Submitting a timesheet

Once Sub-Project Time Booking is enabled, resources can easily log their time within their timesheets: 

• Sub-projects linked to a parent project will automatically appear in the resource’s timesheet. 
• Resources can choose between logging time at the parent project or selecting a specific sub-project. 
• Resources must select the project they worked on, choose the specific task performed, and enter the hours worked.
• If a resource worked on multiple tasks within a project, they can create additional timesheet entries to accurately reflect the time spent across different activities.