Managing Charge Codes

The charge code tree, showing a contract expanded to its CLINs — Settings → Charge Codes. Codes nest under their contract; Direct, Indirect, and Leave are grouped separately.

Charge codes are what employees pick from when filling out a timesheet. Every hour in Clockwise is attributed to one. Manage them from Settings → Charge Codes.

Creating a Code

Click New Charge Code and fill in:

Code and Description — visible to employees in the picker.

Type — direct (billable to an account), indirect (overhead, G&A, B&P), leave, or holiday. Drives reporting and labor distribution.

Account (optional) — link the code to an Account so hours roll into that account's invoices and rate calculations. See Accounts.

Parent — nest codes (e.g., Project → Task) for cleaner reporting and a shorter picker.

Global vs. Assigned

If a code is marked Global, every employee can charge to it without an explicit assignment — useful for company-wide things like Holiday or Overhead. Otherwise, assign it to specific users from Settings → Users → (user) → Charge Codes, or in bulk via the Bulk assign import tool on the Charge Codes page.

Cost Allowability (FAR 31.201-6)

Every charge code has an Allowable Cost toggle, on by default. Turn it off for costs the government won't reimburse — entertainment, lobbying, and the rest of FAR 31.205.

Allowability is a separate axis from type, not a fourth type. An unallowable cost can be direct or indirect (unallowable direct travel is routine), so the two questions are asked independently: *type* says how the cost is classified, *allowability* says whether it can be recovered at all.

Marking a code unallowable does two things. It stops the cost being billed: an unallowable code can't be linked to a labor category, which is what makes a code reachable from a CLIN, so it can never land on an invoice. Clockwise refuses that combination in both directions — you can't mark an LCAT-linked code unallowable, and you can't attach a labor category to an unallowable one.

And in Labor Distribution its hours are split into a separate *(Unallowable)* row, so you can keep them out of the indirect pools that feed your overhead and G&A rates when preparing an incurred cost submission.

How it flows through a hierarchy

Allowability only ever travels down, and only as a restriction:

A parent can be allowable with unallowable children. This is the normal structure — "Overhead" holding "Overhead — Entertainment".

A parent cannot be unallowable with allowable children. A cost sitting inside an excluded pool can't itself be claimable.

So the two directions behave differently:

Marking a code unallowable cascades automatically to every code beneath it. It has to — otherwise you'd land in the forbidden state.

Marking a code allowable does not cascade. It only lifts the restriction, leaving children *free* to be allowable without deciding that they are. Clockwise prompts you afterwards, offering to mark them allowable too — say no if they're genuinely unallowable in their own right.

A consequence worth knowing: you can't fix a subtree from the bottom up. Trying to mark a child allowable while its parent is still unallowable is refused, with a message naming the parent. Start at the highest unallowable code and work down.

To change several at once, select them on the Charge Codes page and use Allowability…. The CSV import and export both carry an allowable column (true/false, defaulting to true), though a row under an unallowable parent is forced unallowable on import regardless.

Bulk Operations

Two helpers live on the Charge Codes page:

Bulk Remap — Move every entry against a deprecated code over to a replacement code in one shot. Source-deleted codes are kept for audit but no longer assignable.

Bulk Assign Import — Upload a CSV of (user, charge-code) pairs to wire up assignments en masse. Useful when standing up a new contract.

Charge Codes vs. Accounts

Charge codes are the leaf-level "what did I work on" picker. Accounts sit a layer above and add contract structure (POP, CLIN, LCAT, T&M vs. FFP, rate cards, invoicing). On Pro and Enterprise plans you'll usually create Accounts first and link charge codes to them. See Accounts.