# Export timesheets

If your team tracks effort in any timesheet or time-tracking system like ClarityPPM, Oracle Time and Labor, Smartsheets, AdobeWorkfront, Deltek, or other system, you can easily export that time data to Neo.Tax to calculate your R&D allocations.

If your team tracks effort in any timesheet or time-tracking system like ClarityPPM, Oracle Time and Labor, Smartsheets, AdobeWorkfront, Deltek, or other system, you can easily export that time data to Neo.Tax to calculate your R&D allocations. 

Export your data to a spreadsheet (CSV or Excel), format it using the guidance below, and upload it to Neo.Tax.

We recommend exporting **all columns your system has for the tax year. That gives our system the most information to work with.**

### File Structure

Each row should represents **one person's effort on one project or non-project time) for a given date.** 

Put all rows in a single sheet with a header row.

For date, the system can handle days or weeks. But the file should use the same unit.

### Minimum Required Columns

| Column | What it is |
| --- | --- |
| **Project Name** | Name of the project or time category the effort went to.  |
| **Employee Name** | The person's name as it appears in your system. |
| **Employee ID** | Your organization's ID for that person (their payroll/HR ID). This is the main value we match on, so it should be the **same ID that appears in your payroll data** |
| **Date** | The date the effort applies to. |
| **Effort Amount** | How much effort the person logged, as a plain number (see Formatting rules below). |

#### Strongly Recommended: include every project column you have

These columns are **optional**, but we recommend including **all of them that your system has.** 

The more you include, the better and more accurate your R&D projects will be. 

| Column | What it is / why it helps |
| --- | --- |
| Project ID | Your system's short code or ID for the project. Especially helpful because it stays stable even if a project is later renamed. |
| Category | Any category label on the row. Helps us identify and correctly exclude non-R&D time. |
| Work /Activity Type | The type of work logged on the row. Another signal we use to qualify time. |
| Project Description | A description of the project. We use this to describe the generated R&D project. |

### Formatting rules

> **Warning:** **One unit per file — hours OR percentages, never both.** Every Effort Amount in the file must be in the same unit. Don't mix hours and percentages in one file; if some rows are hours and others are percentages, the numbers will be combined incorrectly. You'll tell us which unit the file uses when it's uploaded.

- **Effort Amount must be a plain number.** Just the number — e.g. `8.5` or `0.25`. No text and no units in the cell (not `8.5 hrs`, not `25%`).
- **Use a consistent date format** for Date across the whole file (e.g. `2025-03-14`).
- **Keep it to one sheet** of data with a single header row.
- **File type:** CSV or Excel (`.xlsx`).

### Sending your file to Neo.Tax

Upload in Data Sources > Timesheets, or share the file with your Neo.Tax contact

### FAQ

**Do I have to include the optional columns?**

No — only the four required columns must appear in every row. But include as many of the optional columns as you have, especially the project columns, for the best-quality results.

**My data has some rows in hours and some in percentages.**

Pick one unit and convert so the entire file is consistent. A single file can't mix hours and percentages.

**What is "Employee ID"?**

It's your organization's own ID for the person — typically their payroll or HR ID, the same ID found in your payroll data. It is not a Neo.Tax ID. We match on it, so accuracy here matters.

**Some rows aren't tied to a project.**

That's fine — leave Project Name (and the other project columns) blank for those rows.

**I use both timesheets and ticketing — what happens?**

For anyone who has timesheet data, their timesheet drives their R&D allocation. People who aren't in the timesheet keep using their ticketing data as usual.