Time Tracking
Your team logs hours against entries, submits each week, and a manager approves it. Approved time is locked. It is what Align counts for utilization and profitability, and what it bills from when a project bills from logged time.
Before you start
- Time tracking is on for every workspace. It is not limited by plan.
- Time can only be logged on a project that bills from logged time. An admin or manager switches on Bill from logged time in the project's Cost & billing setup step (see Projects). On any other project, logging time fails with "Time logging is not enabled for this project".
- Hours go in quarter-hour steps, from 0.25 to 24 per row.
- There is no running timer: you log hours after the work.
Who can do what
| Action | Roles |
|---|---|
| Log, submit and delete your own time | Developer, Tech Lead, Product Owner, DevOps Engineer, Manager, Admin |
| Approve or reject time | Manager, Admin |
| See the utilization report | Admin |
| Unlock approved time | Admin, through the API |
Managers and admins can log time on any project in the workspace. Everyone else can log time only on projects they have access to.
Logging time
From an entry
- Click Log time on the entry's page, or on its card on the Plan workspace's Board or the Flow board.
- Enter the hours under Hours (0.25 grid) and, if you like, Notes (optional).
- Click Save draft.
The time is logged for today, as a draft. On the entry's page, Log time appears only when the project bills from logged time.
From My Week
My Time → Timesheet opens My Week, a Sunday-to-Saturday view of your time. ← Prev, This week and Next → move between weeks.
- Under Log time, enter the entry's ID. (The form asks for the entry's ID, not its number, so logging from the entry is usually quicker.)
- Choose the day, enter the hours and, if you like, a note.
- Click Log time.
Each day's column lists your rows with their hours and status, and the day's total; the week's total is under the page title. You can delete a row while it is a draft.
Submitting your week
When your week is complete, click Submit week for approval on My Week. Every draft and rejected row in that week is submitted.
A submitted row can't be edited or deleted. If something is wrong, ask your manager to reject it.
Approving time
Managers and admins review time in My Time → Time Approvals.
Pending submissions lists every submitted row in the workspace, grouped by person and week, with each group's total hours. Each row shows the entry, date, hours, rate and notes.
- Approve week or Reject week decides a whole group.
- To decide some rows only, tick them and click Approve selected or Reject selected.
- Rejection reason (optional) is sent with any rejection.
Time statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Logged, not yet submitted. You can delete it. |
| Submitted | Waiting for a manager or admin. |
| Approved | Locked. It can't be edited or deleted. |
| Rejected | Returned to you. My Week shows the reason. Submit week for approval sends it again. |
Unlocking approved time
There is no unlock button in the web app. An admin can unlock an approved row through the API, giving a reason; the row goes back to Draft. A row that has already been invoiced can't be unlocked. See the Time Entries API.
Rates
When you log time, Align records the rate that applies on the day the work was done, and keeps it. Changing a rate later doesn't change time already logged.
The rate comes from the first of these that applies:
- The labour category you have on that project, if one is set.
- The labour category your role is mapped to in Role Billing Rates.
- The workspace's active labour category with the lowest bill rate.
The category must be in effect on the work date. If none applies, the time is recorded without a rate. See Cost Management.
Rates are shown only to managers and admins.
Seeing logged time
A clock badge on an entry's page and on its Plan board card shows the hours logged against it:
- Approved hours, plus hours still in draft or submitted, for people who log time.
- Approved hours only, for clients.
- Hover over the badge for the breakdown. Its cost figure is filled in only for managers and admins.
The badge on an entry's page shows only when the project bills from logged time. A release's page shows the same total for all of its entries.
Utilization
Admins open Management → Utilization. It shows approved hours for each person, week by week. Weeks sets how many weeks to show, from 1 to 52, and Export CSV downloads the same figures.
Management → Profitability also reports billable utilization from approved time. See Cost Management.
Billing from logged time
On a project with Bill from logged time on, approved time is billable. When a release in that project is set to Released and the project creates invoices automatically, approved hours that haven't been invoiced yet are added to the release's draft invoice as one time-billing line, at the rates recorded when the time was logged. If the time can't be billed, the invoice is created without it.
Once a row has been invoiced, it can't be unlocked.