Klokka extension
Hours agreed, hours recorded. The same number.
You agree forty hours on a project with a consultant. With this extension that number lives in Klokka: the collaborator records only on projects where they have an active allowance, sees how much is left, and when the hours run out the timer no longer starts — if the company has chosen so.
A collaborator is not an employee with fewer privileges
The “Contributor” user type is external to the company: it records its own hours on the projects it has an allowance for, and manages nothing — no people, no catalogue, no one else’s absences. Whoever holds the “Manage the staff hours allowances” privilege creates the allowance per person and per project, or per sub-project: allocated hours, validity, alert thresholds, and a rate of their own, used instead of the project’s to calculate the expected cost on the project. Internal team activities stay hidden: the collaborator sees only those marked “Visible to collaborators”. The check is on the server, not on the page: an hour on a project without an active allowance is rejected, wherever the timer is started from.
How it works
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New allowance
Collaborator, project and optional sub-project, allocated hours, start and end dates, alert thresholds — 80% and 95% by default.
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The collaborator records
In “My projects” they see hours used, hours left and the end date. At each threshold they get a notification in Klokka; when the allowance is used up, administrators get it too.
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Plan around unavailability
In “My absences” the collaborator flags days or time slots when they are unavailable: no approval, it is not a leave request. The “Capacity planner” shows them week by week to whoever plans, and the unavailable hours also count in “Team workload” and in Projekta’s assignment suggestions.
The allowance agreed with a consultant is a contract figure. Klokka enforces it while the work is done, not when the invoice arrives.
What you can do
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The timer stops when the allowance runs out
“Block timer when hours are exhausted” is on by default: at 100% the timer no longer starts on that project. Turned off, the collaborator keeps recording beyond it.
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Alerts before it is too late
At the chosen thresholds it alerts the collaborator; a week before the end date it alerts them and the administrators. Each alert goes out only once.
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Expected cost on the project
On the project page the “Collaborators” section shows hours, percentage, rate and expected cost, allocated hours times rate.
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An allowance has a status
Active, Paused, Depleted, Closed. Adding hours to a depleted allowance makes it active again, and alerts start over from the next threshold.
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Only the activities they need
Each activity has a “Visible to collaborators” switch, off by default: internal activities do not appear in external users’ menus.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if the extension is turned off?
The allowance pages and the capacity planner disappear, and the privileges tied to the extension no longer appear among those of the user types.
Does deleting an allowance erase the recorded hours?
No: the hours stay. The collaborator cannot record new ones on that project, though, until another allowance is assigned.
Does unavailability need approval?
No. They are a declaration, not a leave request: they tell planners when the collaborator is not around.
Do collaborators take up employee seats?
No: “Contributor” is an external user type and counts among the plan’s external users, not among staff.
The other Klokka features
Try Klokka in your company
Request a demo: we’ll show you how Klokka simplifies time tracking and hour accounting.
Alex