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Tracking time - the basics#

How to track time easily and painlessly, and why you should 😊

Why track time?#

All employees are contractually obliged to track their billable time in Jira, and in most nations we operate in, its also a legal requirement. Those in the US can opt-out of time tracking if they wish. Although we recommend everyone, even US employees track it too. Here’s why.

  • Working remotely, it’s very easy to work too much or to not take enough breaks, both of which are detrimental to wellbeing. Logging hours can help you keep track of this and manage it.
  • Those who track time, benefit from Flexitime.
  • amazee.io are better placed to support you if you track time. If you are constantly tracking extra hours we can make sure you get the extra resource, or break away from work, that you might need.
  • You and your lead can get a better sense of where you spend your time at work, allowing you to more easily spot blockages, or opportunities for streamlining / sharing time heavy tasks.

Opt-out

For any US based employees only, wishing to opt-out of time tracking, you need to take proactive steps to ensure this.

  • Log into your BambooHR profie and go to the “Job” tab
  • Under “Time Tracking”, select “opt-out” from the drop down selection.

A Workstream Lead may override an employee’s choice to opt-out and/or request more detailed time tracking, if the data gained from it is deemed to be beneficial to business operations and success.

Managing time tracking

  • Time should be up to date of as Monday morning every week.
  • Do not log time into the future
  • Don’t go into too much detail, rounding to the nearest 15 minutes is fine.

Time tracking tickets#

A quick reference to the main tickets relevant to the entire team: View issues

Your lead will also have specific role/task related tickets depending on your position. Be sure to add all of these to your favourites too. Speak to your lead if you’re unsure what tickets to use.

How to track time#

Time tracking need not be labour intensive or something that gives you a headache. Following these simple steps to make it as easy as possible for yourself.

Time tracking in Jira uses the Tempo App

  1. From the main menu in Jira, go to Apps > Tempo > My Work (on the left hand side)
  2. Find the tickets that you will need to be using most often, and add them to your favourites list. This will save you a lot of time going forward.
  3. Set your timesheet to “Calendar” view. technically you can pick whichever view you prefer, but we recommend calendar view for when you link your timesheets to you Google Calendar (more on this later).
  4. Link your Google Calendar - in the left sidebar go to Apps > Google Calendar and link the two. It will take a couple of minutes for your appointments to appear.

Tip

For more tips and tricks on setting up your time tracking to make it as easy as possible for you, see this page Tracking Time - in depth

At the end of each day#

  • If needed, adjust the length of calendar events that actually took longer or shorter than you had planned for - e.g. if a 45min meeting actually took 55mins, extend it to the full hour
  • At the top of the day in Tempo Calendar view, click the “Log Activities” button - all events with the ticket already recognised will convert to logged time, as well as Jira tickets you’ve worked on
  • For event that did not have a ticket linked, you just click the edit icon, find the ticket from your favourites and click “Log time”

Then fill the gaps! - This is where the Calendar view comes in super handy. You can now see your day from beginning to end and see where the gaps in between whats pulled through from your calendar. Seeing your day laid out means you are more likely to accurately remember what you did between calendar events.

  • Add timelogs to the gaps between the events that you had, assigning to the most relevant ticket to account for your day
  • Leave gaps open for when you weren’t working, e.g. when you took a lunch break, or popped to the shops.

Note

Any questions on time tracking? You can a find a more detailed overview here on the specifics, quirks, important information if you’re on a lower working hour contract, and differences per nations of operations. If you can’t find what you’re looking for then reach out to the BizOps team via the #team-bizops-help Slack channel