Based on my experience and conversations with friends, my impression is that companies with strong engineering cultures don't focus on time tracking, unless they're billing clients by the hour, in which case it makes sense.

However, I've never worked for a major, publicly-traded company. I assume they know what they're doing and are extremely buttoned up from an auditing perspective.

So, anyone who's worked for a major publicly-traded software company (and understands the capex/opex distinction), how do you track software capex?