DeltekUse CaseUnited States

Costpoint + timekeeping AI

AI for Deltek Costpoint Timekeeping and Labor: Timesheet Exceptions and Labor Questions

Short answer

AI for Costpoint timekeeping reads timesheet, charge code and labor distribution data to flag late, missing, unusual or corrected entries and to answer labor cost questions in plain English. It is read-only by default, runs inside your network, and supports your compliance staff without replacing Costpoint controls or approvals.

ERP: Deltek Costpoint, Deltek Time and Expense
Industries: Defense, Aerospace, Government Contracting, Professional Services
Written for: Controller

Discuss your Deltek Costpoint environment See use cases

For a government contractor, the timesheet is not an administrative nuisance. It is the primary record behind direct labor charged to contracts, and auditors expect entries to be recorded accurately, contemporaneously and with proper approval. Costpoint time collection, whether through Deltek Time and Expense or Costpoint timesheet screens, supports charge codes tied to projects and labor categories, supervisor approval, and corrections with an audit trail.

The volume is the problem. A company with a few hundred employees produces many thousands of lines per period. Timekeeping administrators chase late submissions, review corrections, look for charges to closed or inappropriate projects, and answer constant questions from managers about who charged what to where. Most of this is pattern detection in tabular data, which is tedious for people and routine for software.

A private AI layer can read the Costpoint data and help with that review. It can list employees who have not submitted, find corrections made after approval, highlight charges to projects outside an employee's usual assignments, and answer labor cost questions across projects. It should not approve timesheets, change charges, or decide whether a charge is allowable. Those judgments remain with accountable people and with your written policies.

This page covers where AI helps in Costpoint labor processing, what to keep out of scope, and how to deploy it for a contractor with CUI and audit obligations. It complements the page on DCAA-ready AI for government contractors and the Costpoint CMMC page. We describe how the architecture lets you meet your obligations; we do not claim any certification.

What usually gets in the way

The problems we hear most from controller teams running Deltek Costpoint.

Late and missing timesheets

Administrators track submissions by hand or with exports. Late entries are a known audit finding, and chasing them consumes time near every period end.

Corrections after the fact

Changes after approval need review for reason and approval. Identifying patterns, such as one supervisor with many corrections, is difficult from standard screens.

Charge code errors

Employees charging to closed, unfunded or unrelated projects create cost transfers and rework. Many errors are visible in the data before billing.

Labor questions from managers

Program managers ask how many hours were charged to a task by labor category, or why hours spiked. Each answer requires a report request or a manual export.

Evidence for audits

Auditors request samples, correction histories and policy evidence. Collecting these from multiple screens and files takes experienced staff away from close.

Where AI earns its place in Deltek Costpoint

Each use case names the ERP objects it reads or writes, so your ERP team can judge the integration effort before anyone commits budget.

Submission and approval tracking

Ask who has not submitted or has not been approved for the current period, by supervisor, and produce a reminder list for the timekeeping administrator to send.

Touches: Timesheet headers, Timesheet lines, Employee, Supervisor approval status, Pay period

Outcome: Late-submission chasing becomes a short exception list instead of an export and filter exercise.

Post-approval correction review

The agent lists corrections made after approval with the user, reason and amount of change, grouped by supervisor or project.

Touches: Timesheet audit trail, Correction records, Employee, Charge code, Reason codes

Outcome: Unusual correction patterns are surfaced for compliance review. Interpretation stays with the reviewer.

Charge anomaly detection

The assistant compares each person's charges with their historical project mix and flags new, unusual or closed-project charges for review.

Touches: Project, Task, Labor category, Employee assignment, Timesheet lines

Outcome: Probable mischarges are found before billing. Flags are leads, not conclusions, and some will be legitimate.

Labor cost and hours questions

Managers ask for hours and cost by project, task and labor category for a period, with direct versus indirect split, and receive a table with the query visible.

Touches: Labor distribution, Project labor, Labor category, Pay rates, Indirect pools

Outcome: Fewer ad hoc report requests to accounting.

Leave and holiday exception checks

The agent finds employees with leave balances inconsistent with timesheets or hours charged on holidays, for HR and payroll review.

Touches: Leave balances, Timesheet lines, Holiday calendar, Employee status

Outcome: Payroll and timekeeping inconsistencies surface before pay is processed.

Policy question assistant

Employees and supervisors ask how to record specific situations and receive answers drawn from your own timekeeping policy documents, with the clause cited.

Touches: Policy documents, Charge code lists, Training materials

Outcome: Fewer repeated questions to administrators. Policy owners must keep source documents current.

Audit sample preparation

For an auditor request, the agent assembles the timesheet lines, approvals and corrections for the sampled employees and periods into a package for compliance staff to review before release.

Touches: Timesheet lines, Approval history, Audit trail, Employee, Project

Outcome: Shorter preparation time, with review by a responsible person always required before release.

Reference architecture

The layer connects to Costpoint through its supported APIs or a read-only reporting copy of the database, depending on your edition and hosting. Employee and labor data is sensitive, so models, indexes and logs run inside your controlled environment. Rules for anomalies are explicit and reviewable, with AI used to explain and search, not to decide.

1
Costpoint data access
Read-only access via Costpoint web services where available, or a read replica of the SQL Server or Oracle database. Connections use a dedicated least-privilege account.
2
Rule and anomaly layer
Documented rules for late entries, corrections and unusual charges. Thresholds are set by your compliance staff and versioned.
3
Retrieval over policies
Your timekeeping policy, charge code guides and training documents indexed for cited answers.
4
Model serving
Open-weight models on your own servers. Employee data is not sent to public AI services.
5
Controls and logging
No write access by default. Every query and answer is logged, and role-based access limits who can see individual employee detail.

Integration notes for your ERP team

Confirm whether your Costpoint release exposes the web services you need. If not, use a read-only replica and document the data path for your assessors.
Time may be captured in Deltek Time and Expense, a separate application. Check whether labor data flows into Costpoint before analysis, since submission status may sit in the time system.
Map charge codes to project, task and labor category so answers speak the language of your contracts.
Document every anomaly rule and threshold in writing and have compliance sign off, since they become part of your internal control evidence.
Restrict individual-level output by role. Managers may need aggregates, not each employee's entries.
Test on a closed historical period first, comparing flagged items with known issues found in past reviews.

Deployment options

On-prem next to Costpoint

Contractors hosting Costpoint themselves with CUI handling

Models and indexes run on your servers inside your existing security boundary, with network rules mirroring your Costpoint access.

GovCloud or FedRAMP-aligned private hosting

Costpoint in a government-oriented cloud environment

Run the AI layer in an environment appropriate to the data classification, selected and assessed by your security team.

Read-only compliance pilot

Teams starting with timesheet exception reports

A narrow rule set and a read-only connection, evaluated on a past period before running on live data.

Compliance and data control

How the architecture supports your obligations. Certification and accountability stay with your organisation; the design keeps the evidence straightforward.

DCAA timekeeping expectations

The tool helps spot late, missing or corrected entries. Your adequate accounting system, policies and approvals remain the controls. We make no claim of audit approval.

FAR cost principles and allowability

Allowability decisions remain with accountable personnel. The assistant surfaces data and does not label costs allowable or unallowable on its own.

CMMC and NIST SP 800-171

Labor data may be sensitive. Local serving, access control and logging help the customer meet their own control requirements. Certification is the customer's responsibility.

Employee privacy

Role-based access limits who sees individual-level results, and retention of query logs follows your policy.

Separation of duties

The assistant cannot approve or alter timesheets, preserving separation between preparation, approval and review.

Where Netray fits

ERPray

Natural-language labor and timesheet queries, exception dashboards and read-only agents, with visible queries and role controls.

Custom build

Policy retrieval, custom anomaly rules, and integration with the separate time collection application or HR system.

How an engagement runs

Phase 1 . 1 to 2 weeks

Discovery

-Review of timekeeping process and system landscape
-Security and CUI boundary plan
-Draft exception rules with compliance
-Data access design

Phase 2 . 3 to 4 weeks

Read-only pilot

-Connection to Costpoint data
-Exception reports for late, corrected and unusual entries
-Back-test on a closed period
-Query logging

Phase 3 . 2 to 4 weeks

Policy and Q&A layer

-Index of policies and training documents
-Cited policy answers
-Role-based views for managers and administrators
-Evaluation set

Phase 4 . 2 to 3 weeks

Production

-Deployment in your environment
-Monitoring and access reviews
-Training for timekeeping staff
-Runbook and change control process

Questions to ask any vendor, including us

A short list that separates real Deltek Costpoint AI work from a chatbot demo.

Can the assistant approve or change any timesheet?
Where do employee data and models reside, and who can access them?
How are anomaly rules defined, versioned and approved by compliance?
How does it handle Time and Expense data if that is separate from Costpoint?
What evidence can we give an auditor about how the tool is controlled?
How do you avoid false accusations from flagged anomalies?
What is the data path and does it meet our CUI requirements?
How are query logs retained and protected?

Frequently asked questions

Can AI help with DCAA timekeeping compliance?

It can help your staff find late, missing, corrected or unusual entries faster and answer labor questions. It does not make your system DCAA compliant or approved. Your written policies, approvals and accounting system remain the controls an auditor evaluates.

Does it replace Costpoint approval workflows?

No. Submission, supervisor approval and corrections stay in Costpoint or Time and Expense. The assistant reads data and produces exception lists for people to act on.

Is employee timesheet data safe with an AI layer?

It can be, when the models run on your infrastructure, access is limited by role, and queries are logged. Avoid public AI services for this data. Your security team should assess the deployment against your own requirements.

How are unusual charges decided?

By documented rules that compliance staff define, such as charges to closed projects or a sharp change in a person's project mix. A flag is a prompt for review. Many flags will have legitimate explanations.

Can it support audit requests?

It can assemble the records for sampled employees and periods into a package for review, saving preparation time. A responsible person should check the package before release to an auditor.

Which Costpoint versions are supported?

That depends on the available APIs and database access in your version and hosting model. We assess this in discovery, and a read-only replica is a common fallback when web services are limited.

Can employees ask it questions?

Yes, for policy questions with cited answers, if you want that. Keep any individual-level data views restricted by role and consider offering policy Q&A separately from data queries.

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