After data is tracked on your PC and turned into time entries, you can allocate it to a project, matter or a client. This steps can be manual or automated.

Manual Time Allocation

Time entries are selected individually or in bulk and allocated to a project/client from the Time Summary page or Timeline. This can be done by the user or a team admin.This is the most basic method of time allocation, this is the oldest one too.

The pros are:

Accurate allocation: This way you keep control on allocations done either by the team members that need to be corrected, or by rules (see below) that incorrectly allocated the time entries

The cons are:

Manual intervention: Performing this operation on one day's work is fine, doing it for the whole month, let along for an entire team becomes very tedious and time-consuming

Automated Time Allocation

Rules

If you're familiar with MS Outlook or Gmail then you've probably heard of rules or triggers before: In a nutshell they tell Outlook or Gmail to classify/tag or allocate emails to a specific folder when a keyword or list of keywords appear in the subject line or the sender's email address and/or recipient. Chrometa Rules follow the same logic: You basically tell Chrometa to look for a keyword, or combination of keywords, in a document's name, a document's folder name, an email's subject line, an email's sender address or a website URL, and if that keyword or keywords are present, to allocate the time to a specific client or project.

The pros are:

Automation: Time entries are automatically put under the project and client, you just need to review the time before creating your invoice or exporting the timesheet to your favorite practice management system. This saves time and brain space.

The cons are:

Conflicting keywords: Two clients or matters can have similar keywords resulting in a conflict and allocation to the wrong client/matter

Risks of errors: If data is incorrectly allocated, although you can find which rule was applied, sorting through the keywords and fixing the misallocation can become - again - very tedious.

Keywords

When creating a client, project or matter, you can directly assign a list of keywords. This will create a corresponding rule

The pros are:

Ease of use: Keywords can be created when creating the client, project or matter. Keywords can also be created on the fly when manually allocating a time entry: You basically tell Chrometa to perform the same action in the future when similar keywords are present

Automation

The cons are:

Conflicting keywords: Two clients or matters can have similar keywords resulting in a conflict and allocation to the wrong client/matter

AI-assisted Time Allocation

Automated Rules

Building on the last method - keywords, Chrometa can automatically create the keywords associated with a client, matter or project from the meta data: Client's name, contact info...

The pros are:

Ease of use: Almost all clients are created with basic contact info and meta data, this automates the rules creation.

The cons are:

Not following a convention for creating clients will not create relevant keywords.

AI-assisted Time Allocation

Each time you manually allocate a time entry, Chrometa's engine learns from the action and comes up with a set of rules to perform the same action for similar time entries.

The pros are:

100% automation: This is the holy grail of time allocation, there is no need for a manual intervention

The cons are:

Lack of enough data: Unless you have months' worth of data, this is an inaccurate method