What's the Difference Tracking Time Against Work Areas vs. Cost Codes?

When adding a Job in LMN Time, you will see two options to Track Time against either Work areas/Services or by Cost Code*.

Cost Codes are generally simpler, but we recommend Work Areas/Services.  Work Areas/Services can be as simple (or as detailed) as you like, and they give you far more flexibility.  Plus, every Work Area/Service can be assigned a cost code, so they still get tracked accurately in accounting.

NOTE: Once you have selected a job to be tracked against Cost Codes or by Work Areas/Services you CANNOT change it once there are time-sheets associated to the job. 

When adding a new Job manually, you will see that here:

When importing an Estimate, you will see that here:

Tracking by Work Area

Allows the user to customize the Task Names within that Job. Each Task is then linked to a Cost Code for Job Costing purposes. See below for an illustration:

NOTE: if this is an Estimate being imported into LMN Time, your Work Areas/Services are then converted into a Task

Tracking by Cost Code

Does not allow the user to customize the Task Names as the Tasks are now being labelled by their Cost Code by default. See below for an illustration:

NOTE: if this is an Estimate being imported into LMN Time, all of your estimated hours will be lumped into one sum based on the Cost Code