Wondering how much time you spend on each task? You can now track it with the Time Tracking Column! ⏰

How to add the Time Tracking Column

To add it, click the + icon in the top-right corner of your board, then select More columns.

Once in the column center, select the Time Tracking option.

How the Time Tracking Column works

Whenever you start a task, simply click on play to start the timer. You can pause it anytime and start it again. 

Note: The timer activity of each item can be found in the Activity Log.

You can also manually add a time range by clicking a cell in the Time Tracking Column and selecting Add session manually.

Note: Keep in mind that you can't enter future values!

Choose how your time is displayed

By default, the Time Tracking Column displays the time tracked in seconds. However, you can toggle this off to show the time in minutes if you wish!

To do this, click into the down-facing arrow next to the Time Tracking Column title and select Column settings. From there, simply uncheck the Show seconds box, and you'll be good to go.

Get a time tracking log history

Clicking a specific time-tracking cell opens the Time Tracking Column's history and log.

You can easily view the progress of each task and the time intervals. All of the entries can be manually edited. Just click the time, and you will have the option to enter a different date and time. Edited values will turn red.

Hovering over an entry in the time tracking log will reveal an X to the right of the time, allowing you to delete the entry if you wish. 

Tracking time in Subitems

If your items or tasks include smaller steps that need time tracking, you may consider adding the Time Tracking Column to the Subitems on your board! In order to do this, simply open up a Subitem and add in the Time Tracking Column just as you would for a normal item on your board.

Get a visual overview of time tracked in the Subitems

In order to easily see a summary of the total time tracked within the subitems, you can choose to aggregate the subitem time tracking column data directly into the parent item. To do this, open up the Time Tracking Column settings from within the Subitems, and select Show Summary on Parent Item.

Export the Time Tracking Column to Excel

To export the entire Time Tracking Column to Excel, click the column menu dropdown and select Export Column Data to Excel.  This will allow you to export all column data to a single spreadsheet for easy reporting.

When exporting the entire column to Excel, you will see all details, including the item name, the user who recorded the time tracking, and time totals at both the item and board levels.

Tip: If you'd like to export Time Tracking Column data for specific items or groups, try saving a board filter with your desired items or groups, then follow the steps above to export your column!

You also have the option to export single items within the Time Tracking Column to Excel rather than the entire column.  To do so, click on the item within the Time Tracking Column and select Export to Excel at the top right of the Time Tracking window.

This option will export only the details of this specific item to an Excel spreadsheet.

To learn more about importing and exporting from Excel, check out this article.

Create a total sum for your time tracker

Although the Time Tracking Column is not automatically summed, you can see the total time tracked across all items in the group summary using the Formula Column!

In our example below, we have a creative agency using the Formula Column to create a total sum of hours spent by team members working on different design projects:

Formula: {Time Tracking#Hours}

Tip: You can also choose to round the above sum off to the nearest decimal place or 2 decimal places by adding a ROUND() function and specifying the decimal places in the second argument of the function:

ROUND({Time Tracking#Hours},2)

Additional calculations with the time tracking column

There are many ways to use the Formula Column in relation to the Time Tracking Column to provide an overview of time spent on different projects. 

• Tracking minutes 

The formula used can also be adapted to capture different units of time. If the projects being worked on required recording the total sum of minutes, such as in the case of calculating the run time working on short films:

Formula: ROUND({Short Film Length#Minutes},1)

Note: If there is an ongoing session in the time tracking column, the formula will not automatically update to reflect the changing time. Only after the session is paused will the formula adjust to include this new session.

• Tracking billable hours

The Time Tracking Column can be used to track the billable hours spent working on different designs. This information can then be used to calculate each client's total cost at the end of the project. Say there is another column on the board that indicates the hourly rate charged for this particular project:

Formula: ROUND(MULTIPLY({Time Tracking#Hours},{Hourly Rate}),0)

With the addition of the Formula Column, the information stored in the time-tracking column can be used to calculate many useful values. For more examples of possible formulae that can be used, read our article Available functions in the Formula Column.

Tip: There are three integrated apps that are useful for advanced time tracking.

• Tracket
• Time Reporting Solution
• TMetric

You can access these apps in the monday.com Marketplace.

To learn more about the Formula Column, check out this article. 

Limitations

There are a few areas where the Time Tracking column behaves differently from other column types. Keep these in mind when building automations or working across boards.

See all Time Tracking column limitations

• Active sessions are not logged in real time; time is only committed after a session is stopped or paused.
• Threshold-based automation alerts (for example, "notify me if someone logs more than 4 hours") are not supported while a timer is running. Automations can only act on committed session time.
• The Time Tracking column cannot be mapped when using automations to create or move items to another board. Time-tracking data does not transfer between boards via automation.