Record working time and manage projects – in one system

Do you need to record the working hours of your employees or track your own working time? There are many working time tracking tools on the market. Why don’t you keep it simple and manage all in one system? Learn now how to record working time with OpenProject - directly related to your projects and tasks.

If you live in Germany, you are probably well aware of the discussions about “Elektronische Arbeitszeiterfassung” – a political decision about mandatory recording of working hours. This is not only a German topic, but relevant in many institutions or companies all over the world. If by legal obligation or request of the management or other parties, many HR departments are faced with the question of how they can record working time most efficiently.

Why should I record working time and manage my projects in one tool?

By combining project management and time tracking into one system, organizations can achieve improved efficiency, accuracy, productivity, and resource optimization. There are several compelling reasons to use your project management tool for working time tracking instead of searching for an additional time tracking tool:

• Secure and centralized data: Utilizing your project management tool for time tracking ensures that all project-related information, including time spent on tasks, is stored in a centralized location.
• Seamless workflow: By tracking working time within your project management tool, you create a seamless workflow for your team. They can easily switch between managing tasks, collaborating on project details, and logging their time without the hassle of navigating multiple systems.
• Time accuracy: Integrating time tracking within your project management tool ensures accurate time data by allowing team members to log their time directly within specific tasks, reducing errors, discrepancies and duplicates compared to separate time tracking tools.
• Cost efficiency: Using your project management tool for time tracking eliminates the need to invest in and manage an additional time tracking tool. This saves costs associated with purchasing licenses, training employees on multiple systems, and maintaining separate software.

How to log your working hours with OpenProject

In OpenProject, there are several features to ensure efficient time tracking and recording. Easily keep track of the time you spend on work tasks and add customized information using OpenProject. Simply log your time directly on the work packages you’re working on.

You can also use a widget on the “MyPage” to log new or edit existing working hours:

Tip: If you’re working with external partners, you can always include custom fields for convenient billing.

Overview: Record working time with OpenProject

These are your possibilities of tracking and reporting working time with OpenProject:

1. Log your working time
   1. directly on a work package
   2. via commit message
2. Log and edit time for other users
3. Edit or delete logged time
4. Use a widget on the MyPage to track and display spent time at a glance

How to report your working hours with OpenProject

Now you’ve seen how to record and log your working time with OpenProject. Let’s take a look at how to report and evaluate your logged time. In OpenProject, there is an elaborated Time and Costs module. As an admin, you can activate and then customize this module for your projects, e.g. configure the currency as Euros and set different cost types such as travel expenses.

As a user, you can easily report spent time and costs: View all your logged time and costs on one page and filter or group by any criteria – such as dates, projects, team member, work package and more. This way you can create detailed time reports about spent time and get a clear view, e.g. how much time was spent on a project or on a single task. In the overview table, work packages and members are linked so that you can quickly navigate to a certain task or see logged hours of a certain user.

For more information, see our user guide about time tracking and cost reporting in OpenProject.

Start now: Record working hours directly in OpenProject

Time tracking is a Community feature and therefore free of charge! Test it now in your existing OpenProject instance or start a free trial here: https://start.openproject.com/