Time Tracking is an essential part of project management. It gathers important data that can help you to make decisions about the future of your projects. You might be wondering, what is the time tracking? What are some tips to make it work for your business? What does time tracking in Jira look like? How can you maximize the value of time tracking? This article will address these questions.
TL;DR
- Effective time tracking is a project management "must-have" that can boost revenue by up to 61% and reduce team stress by 25% by preventing overwork.
- While Jira offers essential logging fields, it lacks a dedicated timesheet module and often fails to capture non-ticketed work like meetings or emails.
- Accurate tracking allows managers to verify project profitability, evaluate task realism, and reallocate resources before team members reach burnout.
- Using tools like ActivityTimeline provides advanced functionality, including one-click timers, multi-day logging, and automatic synchronization with Google or Outlook calendars.
What is Time Tracking?
Time tracking is one of the most important activities in a development project. It can help you improve the quality of provided service and save a lot of money on the project. Recent data shows that effective time tracking can boost revenue by up to 61% while reducing team stress by 25% by preventing overwork.
So what is a time tracking? The answer is rather simple: it's a way of measuring the time that your team spends on tasks & projects. Usually, companies have multiple teams working on several projects with dozens of tasks. In such a situation, time tracking along with proper resource planning is just a must-have as it helps teams to stay on the same page.
From a project manager's standpoint, it is crucial for your team to capture the time they spend on projects and tasks. This is important because you can use that data to forecast future projects and set up the right estimates. Wellingtone’s 2025 research reveals that 38% of organizations mostly or always complete projects on time.
Time tracking in Jira can help you to understand how long it takes for each task to get completed. You can easily manage your projects, workflows, time spent, and more.
There are a bunch of ways to track time. You can use basic Jira time tracking features or try Jira time tracking plugins with advanced time tracking functionality in the Atlassian Marketplace that allow creating Jira timesheets and time tracking reports while providing automatic trackers.
Below, we are going to describe some ways of efficient time tracking in Jira.
So what is a time tracking? The answer is rather simple: it's a way of measuring the time that your team spends on tasks & projects. Usually, companies have multiple teams working on several projects with dozens of tasks. In such a situation, time tracking along with proper resource planning is just a must-have as it helps teams to stay on the same page.
From a project manager's standpoint, it is crucial for your team to capture the time they spend on projects and tasks. This is important because you can use that data to forecast future projects and set up the right estimates. Wellingtone’s 2025 research reveals that 38% of organizations mostly or always complete projects on time.
Time tracking in Jira can help you to understand how long it takes for each task to get completed. You can easily manage your projects, workflows, time spent, and more.
There are a bunch of ways to track time. You can use basic Jira time tracking features or try Jira time tracking plugins with advanced time tracking functionality in the Atlassian Marketplace that allow creating Jira timesheets and time tracking reports while providing automatic trackers.
Below, we are going to describe some ways of efficient time tracking in Jira.
Why Time Tracking Matters for Jira Projects?
Project managers are responsible for generating accurate estimates. Proper estimation prevents missing deadlines and saves time & money as well as the employees' efforts. One of the best ways to do this is by using time tracking to compare similar past tasks and time spent on them to avoid some mistakes in the future. Furthermore, you can absolutely automate dynamic time tracking and facilitate your employees, who don’t want to spend much time on such things, as they want to be focused on their own work.
Time Tracking Tools for Jira
Time tracking in Jira is incredibly useful when you need to monitor time spent on tasks and projects or generate timesheets with accurate data to invoice clients and contractors while maintaining a clear understanding of project progress, estimates and deadlines.
Jira provides an essential time tracking feature. Users can track their work hours and log time with the help of the Jira time tracking fields:
Jira provides an essential time tracking feature. Users can track their work hours and log time with the help of the Jira time tracking fields:
Users can then open filters and add these fields to clearly see the progress on their specific tasks:
While Jira software allows for logging time and viewing hours spent on various issues, it doesn’t provide a dedicated timesheet module. Jira does not reflect timing data per user and can only provide general information about individual issues. Native tracking also often misses non-ticketed work like meetings, emails, or internal communication. So, with Jira it is difficult to see the full picture of a team’s actual capacity and to understand whether tasks are over- or underestimated. For those who require more advanced features, there is a great variety of third-party time tracking Jira plugins that can simplify your workflow.
When to use Jira Time Tracking Report
Using Project time tracking software with detailed reporting is essential for your business for several reasons:
- To provide financials of projects for clients and check project profitability. This is especially useful when you have to calculate project costs, determine billable and non-billable hours, and provide customer invoices.
- To verify if task estimates are realistic. The time tracking report can help to evaluate challenging tasks by comparing the original time estimates with the actual time logged.
- To know team performance. Based on time reports, the manager can easily see how the current project is progressing. Also reports allow them to show colleagues and clients exactly how the team is spending its time.
- To estimate similar projects. During the initial planning, you can compare the time estimates of past issues. This estimation method can save a lot of time.
- To assist with resource reallocation when reports show that certain team members are overloaded while others have the capacity to take on more work.
- To drive agile success and improve project outcomes. Accurate tracking turns your data into a powerful tool for refining your agile processes and overall business performance.
How to set up Time Tracking in Jira
The Time Tracking setting is enabled by default. Administrators can disable time tracking at any time depending on project requirements. You can enable time tracking by following these steps:
- Go to “Settings” and navigate to “Issues” (for Server) or “Work items” (for Cloud).
- Under “Issue Features,” select “Time Tracking.”
- Click on “Activate” to turn the feature on for the Server version.
4. Or select “Enable” in Cloud.
In Jira Cloud, ensure that “Jira provided time tracking” is selected as the active provider.
Also, grant users the “Work on Issues” or “Work on Work Items” permission in your permission schemes, as they cannot log time without this specific authorization.
Also, grant users the “Work on Issues” or “Work on Work Items” permission in your permission schemes, as they cannot log time without this specific authorization.
How to generate Time Tracking Report in Jira
To generate a Time Tracking Report in Jira follow the steps:
- Select the needed project;
- Go to the “Reports” section in the sidebar;
- Select the “Forecast & Management” section;
- Go to the “Time Tracking Report” option;
- Select the according settings for the report: the fix version, how to sort the issue, what sub-tasks to include, and what issues to include in the report:
- “All”
- “Incomplete” (excluding completed and non-time-tracked issues).
ActivityTimeline plugin for Jira Time Tracking
ActivityTimeline is a resource management add-on for Jira that helps create plans, manage teams, track time, keep an eye on project progress, and much more.
With the help of the planning Dashboard, users can visualize their workflows, get a cross-project view for shared resources, effortlessly track time, and log work directly from the dashboard. ActivityTimeline is fully synchronized with Jira, so all projects/issue data is always up to date. Jira time tracking fields are fully synchronized with the app, so time tracking settings are reflected on Jira issues and vice versa in the timeline.
Timelines offer full visibility into your team's workload, providing a clear understanding of who is responsible for each task and when it is scheduled for completion. This helps to plan future undertakings, track current tasks and avoid bottlenecks. Users can enjoy personal and team timelines, assign tasks or create tasks directly from the dashboard, as well as set estimates immediately.
It provides a seamless way to log time in the same place without spending precious time searching for tasks in Jira. ActivityTimeline helps you log time in a few clicks, as it shows the current workflow, and you have a visual overview of all your tasks in one place. Just open a log work dialog, fill in the data, and add a description if needed. Click submit, and that’s it!
With the help of the planning Dashboard, users can visualize their workflows, get a cross-project view for shared resources, effortlessly track time, and log work directly from the dashboard. ActivityTimeline is fully synchronized with Jira, so all projects/issue data is always up to date. Jira time tracking fields are fully synchronized with the app, so time tracking settings are reflected on Jira issues and vice versa in the timeline.
Timelines offer full visibility into your team's workload, providing a clear understanding of who is responsible for each task and when it is scheduled for completion. This helps to plan future undertakings, track current tasks and avoid bottlenecks. Users can enjoy personal and team timelines, assign tasks or create tasks directly from the dashboard, as well as set estimates immediately.
It provides a seamless way to log time in the same place without spending precious time searching for tasks in Jira. ActivityTimeline helps you log time in a few clicks, as it shows the current workflow, and you have a visual overview of all your tasks in one place. Just open a log work dialog, fill in the data, and add a description if needed. Click submit, and that’s it!
Key features
ActivityTimeline plugin has significant Time Tracking features:
- Time Tracker. This is a simple timer on your personal workspace. When the timer is stopped the work is logged automatically.
- Personal time tracking. All hours are logged and displayed in personal space for simple and transparent Jira time logging.
- Team time tracking. The manager has a view of the whole team's logged work.
- Advanced timesheet reports. Jira time tracking reports by user or by team can show all logged data in one single report; a Planned vs Logged report will show how accurate your planning is.
- Custom fields in reports. All needed data is customizable that can be simply used by a manager.
- Excel export. All reports can be created in web or Excel for simple further reporting in your company.
- Work Categories and Attributes. Includes a clear division between billable and non-billable hours out-of-the-box, with the option to add specific fields like “Overtime,” "Location," or "Cost Center."
- Approval Workflow. Allows managers to review, approve, or reject timesheets to ensure total data accuracy and maintain control over logged work.
All these features in action we described below.
Extending Jira Time Tracking with ActivityTimeline
It’s no secret that employees often dislike spending their time learning how to log time in Jira, as it can sometimes require significant time and effort. It is a common practice for companies to use Excel sheets to track time, but with the popularity of resource and time-tracking apps, this approach has become obsolete. For example, Medtronic moved away from Excel because the method was slow, error-prone, and became almost impossible to manage as their operations expanded. It’s uncomfortable and time-consuming, especially if you’re using Jira tasks to monitor your work hours. It usually takes an extra amount of time to enter all your hours and fill out the worksheets manually.
Due to the before mentioned reasons, ActivityTimeline provides a special workspace for each employee with their tasks and projects. It helps users to focus on their tasks. Logging work from the personal workspace is a pleasure, as users can log their worked hours from anywhere! From a marketing and finance perspective, some managers also wonder, How can I track billable vs. non-billable hours directly in Jira? The app answers this by allowing users to select worklog categories, such as Billable or Non-Billable directly within the logging dialog to ensure accurate financial reporting.
You can find the option to log time from the left panel, where you can observe only your tasks, as well as from the “log work” button or from the columns with the workload/worklog indicators in the upper right corner:
Due to the before mentioned reasons, ActivityTimeline provides a special workspace for each employee with their tasks and projects. It helps users to focus on their tasks. Logging work from the personal workspace is a pleasure, as users can log their worked hours from anywhere! From a marketing and finance perspective, some managers also wonder, How can I track billable vs. non-billable hours directly in Jira? The app answers this by allowing users to select worklog categories, such as Billable or Non-Billable directly within the logging dialog to ensure accurate financial reporting.
You can find the option to log time from the left panel, where you can observe only your tasks, as well as from the “log work” button or from the columns with the workload/worklog indicators in the upper right corner:
For those users who need accurate time tracking, ActivityTimeline provides an excellent Time tracker available in their personal cabinet! All logged work is displayed day-by-day relative to the Jira issue.
Click on Timer when you start and when the work is done, click again – the new dialog window and the time spent will be automatically filled by the app.
Users can also take advantage of Multi-day Logging, which allows them to extend tasks over several days or weeks and log time for the entire period in a single step.
Furthermore, the External Calendar Sync streamlines the process by automatically transforming events from Google or Outlook calendars into valid worklog.
ActivityTimeline provides standard Timesheet Reporting capabilities, but it also provides additional features: approval workflows for individual timesheets, tracking of non-Jira tasks, and different categories of work logs. The app even provides a possibility to track meeting time and create timesheets based on meeting time data for your convenience. The instant logging makes this process much easier for employees and managers.
Click on Timer when you start and when the work is done, click again – the new dialog window and the time spent will be automatically filled by the app.
Users can also take advantage of Multi-day Logging, which allows them to extend tasks over several days or weeks and log time for the entire period in a single step.
Furthermore, the External Calendar Sync streamlines the process by automatically transforming events from Google or Outlook calendars into valid worklog.
ActivityTimeline provides standard Timesheet Reporting capabilities, but it also provides additional features: approval workflows for individual timesheets, tracking of non-Jira tasks, and different categories of work logs. The app even provides a possibility to track meeting time and create timesheets based on meeting time data for your convenience. The instant logging makes this process much easier for employees and managers.
Simple Timesheet Reporting
High-level timesheets are an essential part of any Jira time tracking software. With the help of the app’s tracking module, users can create different easy-to-use timesheet reports across multiple teams and projects for efficient resource planning.
There are three types of Timesheet Reports in ActivityTimeline: Timeline View, Progress View and Detailed View. They function like a modular constructor and incorporate Color-Coded Indicators and Planned vs. Actual Metrics. Simply choose the required values, click create and receive comprehensive information.
There are three types of Timesheet Reports in ActivityTimeline: Timeline View, Progress View and Detailed View. They function like a modular constructor and incorporate Color-Coded Indicators and Planned vs. Actual Metrics. Simply choose the required values, click create and receive comprehensive information.
You can also get a clear understanding of how much time employees spend on the specific project/issue:
Timeline Team Timesheets
There is also a possibility to get a detailed view of the user’s timesheet, with his/her own tasks, projects, and logged hours:
Detailed Timesheet View
Timesheet samples in ActivityTimeline are highly customizable, so you can choose different values and worklog categories to generate your favorite timesheet reports. But the need for high-level visibility often raises a bigger question: Can I see a report of how many hours my team spent on specific Epics? Actually, ActivityTimeline provides dedicated templates like Epic Summary, Epic by User, and Epic by Issue within the Track module to help you monitor large-scale initiatives.
Timesheet reports in ActivityTimeline are highly customizable, so you can choose different values and worklog categories to generate your favorite reports.
For further analysis or company-wide presentations, all reports can be exported to Excel.
Timesheet reports in ActivityTimeline are highly customizable, so you can choose different values and worklog categories to generate your favorite reports.
For further analysis or company-wide presentations, all reports can be exported to Excel.
Conclusion
Time Tracking in Jira becomes effortless if you use the right tools that help calculate worked time in a few clicks and save precious time. Jira time logging, tracking, planning and optimizing become much easier when managed directly in the Jira Software Dashboard.
