How to Improve Efficiency with Time Tracking

ProProfs Project is more than just a project and task management tool. It also facilitates tracking the time you and your team spend on a project. We provide you with all the necessary tools to achieve this effectively, ranging from a basic timer on tasks to robust timesheets and reporting.

Let us take you through different components of time tracking in ProProfs Project in detail:

The Task Timer

Task Time

When your team is assigned tasks, they should first click the little timer icon in the Time column when they start working on a task. This creates an active time entry, which is updated when they stop the timer. At this point, they can also add a description of what they were working on specifically.

Note: You can track time on sub-tasks too. The time tracked on sub-tasks is grouped by the parent task, which is worth noting when using "Timesheets" and "Reporting."

Estimated Time

You can set a budget for the number of hours you expect a project, task, and sub-task to take. Underneath the timer is a vs. icon that you can click on to set the number of estimated hours, or you can do it from the Edit page in the advanced options.

The Estimated Time feature is useful if you are basing the progress of the task on Estimated Hours vs Actual Hours (which is set up in the My Company preferences). It's also useful when creating Reports showing how many hours you expected your project to take and how many hours it took.

Users

Users must have access to a task or sub-task in order to track time. If the user is not assigned to the parent project (or task), they will see a light grey timer that they won't be able to click on.

An Administrator or Project Manager can use the User filter to see if a user is actively timing a task or sub-task. The tasks that the user is working on will be highlighted in green.

Can I stop a user's timer? Yes. You would need to go to the Time Entries page, filter to their user name, and delete the active time entry (highlighted in green).

Using the task timer is the simplest and easiest way to track time in the ProProfs Project. However, there are other ways to track time.

The Time View

The Time View is where you can manage all the time entries for you and your team.

The default view will show you a list of time entries that have been added this week when they were added, what task, and an optional description of the time entry (e.g., what was worked on). The time entries are listed in ascending time order.

Tip: You can access the time entries filtered for a particular task by clicking on the Options button on a task from the Tasks view and clicking on View Time Entries.

Adding Manual Entries

You can add time entries manually from the Time view. Just click the Add Entry button, and you'll get asked what project, task, and optionally what sub-task you want the entry attached to. You can add the date and description here too.

The manual time entry form is a great way of adding time entries if you forgot to start the task timer or if you want to add an entry on another user's behalf.

Timesheets

In the Time View, you'll see a few tabs that let you filter the default time entry list by day, week, month, or all entries. You'll also notice a Timesheets tab, which takes you to a page that shows your time entries in a weekly timesheet organized by task.

Timesheets

You can quickly and easily add entries on this page by typing the number of hours into the relevant day, pressing return, or clicking Save Timesheet.

What if I have multiple time entries on that day? If you have multiple entries and change the value, an 'adjustment' will appear in the time entries list that determines the difference between your old entries and the new value.

Exporting Time Entries

You can export your time entries by clicking on the Export to CSV button at the bottom of the page. This export will take into account the filters you have running, for example, time entries for a particular task by week or by day.

The export will be in CSV format (comma-separated values), which should work in most spreadsheet applications. If you need to export your data in a different format, for example, XML or JSON, please see our API Documentation.

Tip: You'll see this Export to CSV button at the bottom of most views, allowing you to export items such as Projects and Tasks to a CSV file.

And that's it! If you encounter any issues or have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team.

Related Articles: