Time

What it solves

Logging hours is usually the last thing done and the first forgotten: on Friday Monday is rebuilt from memory. Time records what you spend while you spend it and carries those hours into the project cost and its invoice.

Who it is for

For anyone who bills by the hour or needs to know what a job really costs: agencies, consultancies, studios and internal teams that split their time across projects. And for one person alone: logging your time is free.

The timer

Open Time, press Start timer and it starts in one click without asking anything. When you stop it, the time is already saved; only then are you asked what it was for, and if you close that question the entry stays as it is and you fix it whenever you like. What the timer recorded is just another entry: it is edited and deleted like the rest.

Logging by hand and from the task

For yesterday, or whatever did not go through the timer, the plus button opens a form with hours and minutes, the date and, if relevant, the project and task. You can also log from the task itself: under Reported hours, Log hours opens the same form, and a bar compares what was reported with the estimate if the task had one.

Pick the period (this month, this year or all) and Your total is recalculated for the whole period, not for the page in front of you. Knowing how much you have done does not require adding it up by hand.

If you get it wrong

An entry is corrected or deleted from its row, and stays for 30 days in the trash in the organisation settings. The only real lock is an hour that has already gone into an invoice: that one cannot be changed or deleted, because it would unbalance an amount already issued.

Your week and approvals

Under Your week you see each day total and move between weeks with the arrows. Submit week sets the sheet to Submitted and notifies the approver; the button only shows while the week is a draft, and a submitted week waits to be validated or rejected.

The approver opens the Timesheets inbox, reviews the hours of each submitted week and presses Approve or Reject. An approved sheet can be rejected later and goes back to the person who submitted it. Approvals belong to the Team edition.

Billable hours

Each hour is marked billable or not, and by default it is. Billable hours are moved to the invoice, and from then on they are locked. That transfer belongs to the Team edition; a project cost, the approval and the invoice come from the same data.

Editions and price

Logging your time is free on Free: the timer, hours by hand and your hours per task and project. Free costs 0 EUR and goes up to three people. Team costs €7.95 per person per month, removes that cap and opens timesheet approvals and billable hours with their transfer to the invoice.

How it differs

Compared with a spreadsheet of hours or a separate timesheet tool, here the hour is born attached to a task in a real project, so the project cost, the approval and the invoice come from the same data. And if you would rather not open the screen, you can ask how much you have logged with one sentence to Kern or to any agent client you have connected.

What each entry carries

Each entry carries hours and minutes, the date, the project, the task and a description of what you did. Project and task are optional: the form offers no project and no task, so you can log a stretch of time without deciding right then where it goes. When you do pick them, the hour is attached to that task and adds to that project cost.

The period total at the top is computed from all the entries in the chosen period, not only those that fit on screen. If you work in several organisations, the timer running in any of them is checked separately, so the one most easily forgotten, the one in the other organisation, does not keep running without you knowing.

An ordinary day

Monday morning: you open Time and press Start timer as you sit down with a task. At noon you stop it, the question about what it was for lets you pick project and task, and that is it. In the afternoon, a stretch that did not go through the timer goes in by hand from the plus button. On Friday, under Your week, you check each day total and press Submit week. The approver sees it in their timesheets inbox, validates it, and those hours are already where whoever invoices needs them. No spreadsheet in between.