How to log hours properly: a guide for project teams

Logging hours means recording how much time was spent on each piece of work. It looks like admin, which is why it is almost always done badly: late, from memory and in bulk. The result is a figure nobody trusts, and without reliable hours you cannot tell whether a project is going over budget, what a delivery really cost or how much to charge for the next one. This guide explains how to do it so that the hours are useful.

What logging is for

Logged hours answer questions the team asks all the time:

• How much have we spent compared with what was planned? (the hours deviation)
• Which phases or tasks are eating more time than estimated?
• How much work has each person done, and on what?
• How much should be invoiced, if you bill by the hour?
• What data to use to estimate the next similar project.

If the record is poor, none of the answers is worth anything. If it is good, it comes almost for free.

What a good time entry looks like

A useful entry has four facts: who worked, how much, which day and on what. And two properties that matter more than those:

1. It is a sum, not a total that gets rewritten. Each time someone works, a record is added. The hours of a task, a phase or the project are the sum of their records, so you can see who contributed what and when.
2. It is tied to the specific piece of work, not just the project. Logging to a task lets you compare actual with estimate task by task; logging "to the project" only gives a total that explains nothing.

Practical rules for the team

• Log daily, or at least at the end of each block of work. After three days you no longer remember whether it was three hours or four; after three weeks, you are inventing.
• Log to the right task. If there is no task for what you did, that is a signal: either a task is missing or that work was not in the plan. Both are worth knowing.
• Describe in one line what you did. "Reviewing mappings with the client" works; "work" does not. The description is what lets you discuss the figure later.
• Do not round down to "make it fit". A hidden deviation is the hardest one to explain when it comes to light.
• Separate planned work from support work. Mixing them hides what each really costs.
• Log meetings and management too if they are part of what the project costs, always with the same criterion for everyone.

The most common mistakes

1. A single entry at the end of the month. It loses all the detail and forces you to split it from memory.
2. Always logging eight hours. The formality is met, but the figure stops reflecting the work.
3. Only some people logging. If part of the team does not record, the total underestimates real effort and the deviation looks better than it is.
4. Not being able to correct. If a mistake cannot be fixed, people stop trusting the record. The sensible approach is to let people edit their own entries and let whoever manages the project correct the rest.
5. Logging without estimating. Actual hours are only meaningful against an estimate. Estimate by task from the start.

How it works in PjMan

PjMan treats hours as records that add up and lets you log them in several ways:

1. From the task page (or the issue page), with the Log time button: you choose hours and minutes, a date (today by default) and a mandatory description. (Time entries)
2. By voice or text, with the assistant: "log 2 hours to T0003 for the mapping review". The assistant prepares the entry and, unless you have turned that off, shows it on a card for you to confirm. (Voice)
3. On behalf of someone else, if you are the project's owning PM. It works for people without an account or to complete what someone did not record. Each record stores whose hours they are and who recorded them.
4. A consultant logs only on what is assigned to them and only for themselves. They can edit and delete what they recorded; the PM, everything in their project.
5. My work → My time entries shows a monthly calendar with each day's total and the list for the chosen day, so you can review your own hours at a glance. (My work)
6. Optional reminder: if you have saved your own assistant key, the assistant can tell you inside PjMan that you did not log hours yesterday, with a button to do it right away. It can be turned off in Settings.

To see and extract the data, Queries gathers all the time entries of your projects, filterable by project, phase, person, who recorded them and dates, and exports them to a spreadsheet (.xlsx) with the same filters. (Queries) Each project's header and each phase compare logged with estimated hours, so every entry shows up instantly in the deviation.

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Frequently asked questions

Can hours be logged on an issue? Yes, with the same rules as on a task: it is useful for knowing what it cost to resolve problems.

Can I log a past day? Yes, the date is editable and there is no limit of hours per day. But the later you record it, the less reliable it is.

How long should an entry be? As long as the block of work. Some prefer one per task per day; what matters is always using the same criterion.

What if I make a mistake? Edit the entry or delete it and log again. You cannot change whose hours they are or the task of a record: in that case, delete it and create it again.