How Outsourcing Companies Can Manage Multiple Client Projects in Jira Using TimePlanner

[Asia Pham]

Hello Community,

I’m Asia from DevSamurai, and I’m excited to introduce our latest article: "How Outsourcing Companies Can Manage Multiple Client Projects in Jira Using TimePlanner."

Let’s dive in and explore how TimePlanner can help streamline client project management in Jira! 😊

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Introduction

For outsourcing companies, Jira is the backbone of software delivery. It helps teams manage tasks, sprints, and QA cycles efficiently.

However, when your team works across multiple clients, each with different billing models, contract terms, and reporting needs, Jira alone cannot provide the full picture. Many outsourcing teams end up juggling spreadsheets, manual reports, and disconnected tools—wasting time and risking billing errors.

TimePlanner, an Atlassian Marketplace app, solves this problem by turning Jira into a complete time management and billing solution tailored for outsourcing companies.

Let’s see how it works.

The Challenge for Outsourcing Teams

Managing client projects in an outsourcing environment involves more than tracking tasks and deadlines. Each client may have its own pricing, reporting, and budget expectations, which adds complexity to daily operations.

Common Challenges:

• Lack of a consolidated client view: Teams need a single, unified summary of all work done for a client, even when that client has several Jira projects. Without this, it’s difficult to see total hours or costs across projects.
• Manual conversion of time into cost: Time logged by team members must be converted into billable amounts based on client-specific rates. Doing this manually makes invoicing slow and error-prone.
• No clear budget monitoring: Project managers need to define and track financial or hour-based budgets for each client or project. Without automated monitoring, it’s easy to overspend or exceed contract limits.
• Difficulty separating billable and internal work: Teams need to distinguish between billable client work and internal activities such as meetings, admin work, or training. Jira doesn’t provide built-in ways to do this.

Why Jira Alone Can’t Meet Outsourcing Needs

Outsourcing companies often manage multiple clients and projects with different workflows and billing structures. While Jira is excellent for managing project execution, it lacks tools for client-level management and financial tracking.

• No client-level data: Jira organizes work by project, not by client. If a client has multiple projects, Jira cannot show a combined summary of hours or costs.
• No link between time and cost: Jira worklogs record only how long a task took (for example, “5 hours”). It cannot apply billing rates or calculate cost automatically.
• No budget tracking: Jira tracks remaining effort but not financial or contractual budgets.
• No billable or non-billable categorization: All time entries are treated equally. Reporting only on billable hours requires manual filtering or third-party tools.

How TimePlanner Helps Outsourcing Teams

What Is the Client’s Feature in TimePlanner

In TimePlanner, the Clients feature lets you manage all work, time, and cost information related to a client across multiple Jira projects in one place.

A Client Profile acts as a container that groups projects, time, costs, and reports for a single customer.

With it, you can:

• Create client profiles with contact and business details.
• Link multiple Jira projects to a single client.
• Assign permissions to allow specific users to manage client data.
• Associate tasks, time logs, and costs with specific clients.
• Generate client-level reports showing total time, cost, and budget usage.

This means outsourcing teams can instantly answer questions such as:

• How much total time have we spent for this client across all projects?
• Which tasks or roles are consuming the most budget?
• Are we within the client’s contracted budget or nearing an overrun?
• What should be included in the next invoice?

Step-by-Step: Managing Clients in TimePlanner

1. Create and Manage Client Profiles

With TimePlanner, you can create Client Profiles to group multiple Jira projects under a single client. This allows you to track all hours, costs, and progress related to that client, even if the work spans several projects.

How to do it:

1. Go to TimePlanner > Navigate to Clients from the sidebar
2. Click Create Client.
3. Enter the client’s name, contact information, and address.
4. Link one or more Jira projects that belong to this client.

Once created, all time, cost, and project data for the linked projects will appear together under that client’s profile.

2. Control Access with Client Permissions

Use Client Permissions to manage which team members can access and modify client information in TimePlanner. Only authorized users can view the Clients tab, link work to clients, or edit client details.

• App Admin: Full access to all TimePlanner features, including managing clients and billing.
• Client Admin: Can manage client profiles, link projects, and schedule work for clients.
• Client Viewer: Can view client schedules and client profiles.
• Billing/Cost Admins: Can plan costs and manage cost settings.
• Billing/Cost Viewers: Can view cost schedules and cost reports.

This ensures that only trusted internal team members can manage client information, protecting data accuracy and preventing unauthorized edits.

3. Link Tasks and Schedules to Clients

When scheduling or planning tasks in TimePlanner, you can associate each task with a specific client and control whether it’s billable or not.

This helps outsourcing teams link all logged hours, costs, and reports directly to the right client profile — ensuring billing accuracy and complete visibility of client-related work.

How to do it:

1. Go to TimePlanner > Navigate to Schedules from the sidebar.
2. Click Create Plan in the toolbar to open the Planning Dialog
3. Fill in the required fields such as task name, assignee, start and end dates, and workload.
4. In the Client field, select the appropriate client from the dropdown list.

Linking work to clients makes it easy to report total time, costs, and progress for each customer, even when the work spans multiple Jira projects.

4. Set Billing Rates

TimePlanner lets you define how much each hour of work costs by setting up billing rates. Once configured, these rates can be applied directly when scheduling tasks, ensuring every billable hour is calculated correctly for client reporting and invoicing.

How to do it:

Navigate to Settings from the left sidebar > Choose Rate and Cost to get started. There are 05 main settings you can configure:

• Rate Unit: Defines the standard cost of one hour of work.
• Resource Rate: Applies a specific rate to an individual user (e.g., John = $100/hour).
• Resource Group Rate: Applies a shared rate to a group or team (e.g., Developers = $80/hour).
• Project Rate: Applies a fixed or hourly rate to a single project (e.g., Website Redesign = 70 EUR/hour).
• Project Group Rate: Applies the same rate across multiple related projects, usually under one client (e.g., all BrightTech projects = $85/hour).

Once saved, these rates automatically appear as options when planning or marking tasks as billable.

5. Mark Work as Billable or Non-Billable

TimePlanner allows you to categorize work as billable (client-chargeable) or non-billable (internal activities). This distinction ensures accurate cost tracking and reporting, especially when your team performs both client and internal work within the same Jira projects.

How it works:

• Billable tasks use the billing rates you defined earlier in the Billing Rate settings.
• Non-billable tasks record time but are excluded from cost and invoice calculations.

6. Approve and Review Team Timesheets

Before generating reports or invoices, project managers can review and approve logged hours to ensure accuracy. This step confirms that all billable time is correct and complete.

How to do it:

1. Go to TimePlanner > Navigate to Approval from the sidebar.
2. Choose Timesheet Request under Approval. 
3. Review each team member’s logged hours.
4. Approve or reject entries that need adjustment.

7. Generate Client Cost Reports

After setting up billing rates, marking billable work, and approving timesheets, the final step is to generate Client Cost Reports.

These reports consolidate all the data you’ve managed in earlier steps, including logged time, billing rates, and client associations, to give a clear financial summary for each client.

TimePlanner automatically calculates total hours, costs, and billable amounts based on the data your team has logged in Jira. This helps project managers and finance teams review performance, monitor budgets, and prepare accurate invoices for clients.

How to do it:

1. Go to TimePlanner → Cost → Clients tab.
2. Select the Client and the desired Date Range.
3. Review the key details, such as:
   • Total hours logged
   • Billable vs. non-billable time
   • Budget usage and remaining balance
   • Total cost per role or project
4. Export the report as a CSV file for invoicing or financial review.

Conclusion

Managing multiple client projects in Jira can be challenging for outsourcing companies, especially when it comes to tracking time, costs, and budgets across different clients. TimePlanner simplifies this process by bringing structured client management, time tracking, and billing directly into Jira. With it, outsourcing teams can manage multiple clients with clarity and confidence, ensuring every hour worked and every cost incurred is transparent, organized, and profitable.

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Give TeamBoard TimePlanner a try and see how it can simplify managing multiple client projects in Jira!