Timesheets are a pain. Whether you’re a worker-bee who hates filling them out, or a manager who hates having to track down the people who haven’t filled them out – unless managed correctly, timesheets end up being time-consuming. The ideal scenario would be to have work automatically recorded when it happens. We've got good news! Our Atlassian app Clockwork for Jira | Pro offers a couple of ways to do exactly that - plus, when that doesn’t happen, we’ve made it easy for you to prompt team members to update their timesheets in Jira.
Live Time Tracking in Jira
The best way to ensure that timesheets in Jira are up to date is to capture time worked when it happens. Clockwork for Jira allows you to implement automatic time tracking that starts the clock when a Jira issue with an assignee is transitioned to an active status (you can customize which statuses are considered active) and stops the clock when the issue becomes unassigned or is transitioned to an inactive status. The user doesn’t have to do anything. Their time is tracked automatically, ensuring that the data needed for payroll, reports and planning is always available.
An alternative to automatic time tracking in Jira is to start and stop a timer on an issue. It requires minimal user effort – one click when they start working on a Jira issue and one click when they stop. The worklog is produced with the user, issue and time already populated. Other fields such as descriptions and worklog attributes can be filled in as needed.
Both solutions ensure your Jira timesheets stay up to date without any extra effort from users. Sounds good, right? (You’d rather have your team spend their time getting work done than filling out timesheets!). But live time tracking doesn’t work for everyone. Some people, and some teams, prefer a more hands-on approach of creating worklogs. Again, Clockwork for Jira has your back with a feature that lets you easily send reminders to team members who haven’t logged their time.
How to Send Jira Timesheet Reminders
Manually created worklogs great, as long as people remember to do them.
But sometimes they don’t.
Clockwork to the rescue. It includes a feature that allows you to identify users who have not logged the expected amount of work hours, and email them a reminder that their timesheet is due, directly from Clockwork. Here’s how it works:
- Use the Users filter to select whose hours you would like to check.
- Click on the Outliers filter to identify users who logged fewer daily/weekly hours than expected as indicated by their Working Hours. (You can also click on the Compare time reported button to compare actual hours to expected working hours.
- Click on the Email button.
- A popup will open where you can modify the email text and review the list of users who will receive the email. Click Send Emails to confirm.
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Get Maximum Value from Jira Timesheet Reports
Live time tracking in Jira and reminder notifications are great ways to ensure that timesheets perform their most basic and important function – tracking hours worked so your teams get paid. But if that’s all you’re using Jira timesheets for, you’re missing out on opportunities to do your work better. A good time tracking tool will:
- Improve project plans and forecasting by allowing you to make better estimations, and review estimates vs actuals
- Make invoicing easy by allowing you to easily track billable hours, clients and projects
- Allow you to hone in on productivity gaps by seeing where the time goes
If you’re ready to get more from your time tracking in Jira, schedule a demo or start a free trial of Clockwork for Jira. It’s about time!
