Track your time

What the Time Log is for

The Time Log keeps a simple record of the hours you work. Each entry has a customer, the hours, whether the work is billable, and an optional description. It tracks hours only — no rand amounts — so you price the work yourself when you invoice. To see your hours added up against what you quoted, open Hours vs Estimate, under Scheduling Reports.

You will find it under the "Scheduling System" tools card — the group that also holds the Diary and Travel Log — or the "Work" group on the desktop sidebar. The screen is called Time Log.

Before you start

• You do not need to add the customer to your Customers first. You can start typing to pick an existing contact, or just type any name. You can also leave it blank.

Log your hours

1. Open the Time Log and tap + New in the top right.
2. If the work was for a diary appointment, pick it under Diary appointment — only customer appointments are listed — and Worklog fills in the customer, date, purpose and any linked quote for you. Otherwise leave it on "Not from the diary".
3. Check the Customer — who did you work for? Start typing, or tap 👤 List, to pick one of your customers, or just type a name. You can also leave it blank. Only customers are listed: the hours are for work you charge customers for, and link to their quotes.
4. In Purpose - optional, note what the work was.
5. Check the Date (it starts on today, tap to change it) and in Hours worked type the hours. You can use a decimal, for example 2.5 for two and a half hours.
6. At "Can you bill this?", choose Billable if you will charge the customer for it, Non-billable if you will not, Admin for paperwork and running the business, or Travel for time on the road. This is just a label on the hours — no amount is recorded.
7. Tap Log Time to save.

Reading your list

Every entry you save shows in a list, with the customer (or the description if there is no customer), the date, the hours, and a coloured tag for the type. The list starts in A–Z order by customer.

• Search box — type a customer, a word from the description or the entry's number (each one gets one, like TIM-2026-0031) to narrow the list, the same way Contacts, Sales and Purchases work.
• Show ▾ — pick Billable, Non-billable, Admin or Travel to see only that kind, who logged it (once two or more people have — everyone's, yours or one person's), and When (this month, last month or this tax year). All entries brings everything back.
• Under the list, 📄 PDF and 📊 CSV / Excel print the entries as you have them — date, number, customer, description, billable or not, hours, overtime and total hours — with the hours added up at the bottom.
• Sort ▾ — customer A → Z (the default) or Z → A, hours most or fewest first, number, or newest or oldest first. A small count under the buttons shows how many entries are showing.

Open and change an entry

Tap any entry in the list to open it — the same as in your price list, contacts, sales and purchases. You can change the customer, the hours, the date, the purpose, whether it is billable, and the quote it is linked to. Tap Save changes when you are done. Hours you log through Quick Log arrive as Billable, Not billable, Admin or Travel, whichever you answered when it asked "Can you bill this?". The WhatsApp bot asks it only when it isn't sure, when your message doesn't make clear what kind of work it was (it names no customer the work was for, like "for Thandi", and doesn't call it billable — "Sipho worked 8 hours" only says who worked, so it asks), or when it reads the hours as Not billable, Admin or Travel. A name after "for" is the customer unless that person is on your Staff register: then the bot asks one question first, whether they are the CUSTOMER or who did the WORK. Reply CUSTOMER to log the hours for them, or WORK to log them as their hours with no customer, after which it asks "Can you bill this?"; NO drops it. Hours it is sure are Billable it logs straight away and says so in its reply ("… billable"): reply UNDO to remove one that's wrong. Open an entry to change its kind or link it to a quote.

Remove an entry

1. Find the entry in the list.
2. Tap the ✕ on the right of that entry.
3. When it asks Remove this time entry?, confirm.