Timesheet

Starting and stopping records

Re-start timesheet records

• Click one of your last activities in the modal, opened through the upper toolbar - this will start a record for the same customer/project & activity “now”
• Click the restart action from one of the records in your timesheet - this will start a record for the same customer/project & activity “now” and copy description and tags

Start new records

• Clicking the big play button in the toolbar (if no record is active right now)
• Click the “+” action is the upper right page actions to open the “edit new record” modal
• Select a time-range in the calendar (deactivated if the timeclock-mode is active)
• Click a day in the calendar (deactivated if the timeclock-mode is active)

Stop records

• Click the stop button in the “active records” dropdown in the upper toolbar
• Click the stop action in the running record in your timesheet
• Save a running record after setting an end date (deactivated if the timeclock-mode is active)

Problem: cannot be stopped

Kimai has a few rules in place, which could prevent to stop a running timesheet, e.g.:

• prevent excessive long timesheets from being accidentally created
• prevent a timesheet to be stopped before it was started, which can happen if you create a running timesheet with a start date in the future

When a user tries to stop such a timesheet, a warning like one of the following will be shown:

• End date must not be earlier then start date
• An empty duration is not allowed
• Maximum 08:00 hours allowed

You have several options to solve this problem. All of them involve that you switch to My times and find the record (usually the last one created):

• Edit the record and set a different start date
• Edit the record and set a different end date
• Edit the record and set a shorter duration
• Delete the record from the listing

An administrator can fix the problem by opening the All times view and filtering the user.

Administrators can also configure the duration for this check or deactivate it entirely at System > Settings > Timesheet.

Batch update

You can change many timesheets at once, by using the “Batch update mode”. First use the search to filter the correct results (tip: increase page size to see everything on one page).

Now click the checkbox in the top left corner of the results list to select all records (or select individual records if you only want to change a few). Scroll down to the bottom of the table where the new “Batch Mode” buttons appeared. Click “Edit” and confirm that you want to edit all the selected records.

You will see a new “Batch Update” page with various options to update all the selected timesheets.

Time input

The begin and end time input fields accept various formats, to allow correct and also speed typing.

• Leave the end field empty, if you want to record a duration greater than 24:00 hours
• Conversion between 12 and 24 hour format happens automatically when leaving the field

Here are some examples of valid user inputs and how Kimai will interpret them:

User Input	Result 12-hour	Result 24-hour
0	12:00 AM	0:00
7	7:00 AM	7:00
12	12:00 PM	12:00
17	5:00 PM	17:00
545	5:45 AM	5:45
1645	4:45 PM	16:45
845am	8:45 AM	8:45
1245pm	12:45 PM	12:45
1245 pm	12:45 PM	12:45
12:45 pm	12:45 PM	12:45
13:45 PM	1:45 PM	1:45
13:45 AM	1:45 PM	13:45
1045	10:45 AM	10:45
2:15	2:15 AM	2:15
13:15	1:15 PM	13:15
2:15 PM	2:15 PM	14:15
2:15 AM	2:15 PM	2:15
:	12:00 AM	0:00
:1	12:01 AM	0:01
1:1	1:01 AM	1:01
19:1	7:01 PM	19:01
:1 PM	12:01 PM	12:01
0:1pm	12:01 PM	12:01

Duration

The duration field provides several easy ways to change its value, the most obvious one being the dropdown next to it.

Important

• Using 0 or 00:00 as duration will stop the entry with a duration of zero seconds
• To create a running entry the end and duration field needs to be empty

Change the duration

The duration field can be changed by using your keyboard:

• ArrowUp key to increase the duration either 5 minutes or 1 hour, depending on the cursor position
• ArrowDown key to decrease the duration either 5 minutes or 1 hour, depending on the cursor position
• PageUp key to increase the duration by 1 hour
• PageDown key to decrease the duration by 1 hour
• Home key to set the duration to 00:00
• End key to set the duration to 08:00

Input format

Please read the full documentation about accepted inputs for the duration format.

Short version:

• The main format is time span, as example 2:30
• The other option is decimal input where a value like 2.5 will be converted to 2:30
• You can also use time periods format, where 2h30m will be converted to 2:30

Exported records

Exported records will be locked to prevent manipulation of cleared data.

The permission edit_exported_timesheet does allow editing and deletion of these locked entries nevertheless, which by default is given to users with ROLE_ADMIN and ROLE_SUPER_ADMIN.

The export state can be set manually or via the invoice and export screens.

Billable vs. not billable

You can define whether a timesheet record is billable or not.

Non-billable timesheets are excluded from invoices and budget calculations.

Please read the billable documentation to understand the billable flag.

Filter and search

The search supports filtering by the fields:

• user (only in team timesheets)
• daterange
• customer
• project
• activity
• tags
• state (running / stopped)

Besides these filters, you can query for a free search term, which will be searched in the fields:

• description

Additionally, you can filter for custom fields by using a search phrase like location:homeoffice. This would find all entries with the custom field location matching the term homeoffice.

The search terms will be found within the full value, so searching for office would find:

• I love working in my office
• Office
• This office is beautiful
• Our offices are very noisy

Attention: checkboxes have the values 0 (not checked) and 1 (checked).

You can mix the search term and use multiple meta-field queries:

• location:homeoffice hello - find all entries matching the search term hello with the custom field location matching the term homeoffice
• location:homeoffice contract:fulltime - find all entries with the custom field combination: location matching homeoffice and contract matching fulltime
• expired:0 finds all items whose expired checkbox is off

There are also special operators, which can be used in conjunction with custom fields:

• The   empty string (e.g. location:) will find all entries whose value in the location field is either empty or not existing
• The ~ search term (e.g. location:~) will find all entries that are missing the custom field (created before the field was created)
• The * search term (e.g. location:*) will find all entries that have any value in the location field (basically the opposite of ~)