Time in Vylan works two ways, because there are two honest situations: you are about to do something, or you already did it and forgot to say so. Both end up in the same list.

Time in the sidebar

Time has its own place in the sidebar. Its panel lists the two time pages, Time Entries and Timesheets, then Start a new timer, then a card for every timer you have open, the running one first.

Each card is the whole timer. Its top line is the stopwatch — hours, minutes and seconds, like 00h 55m 25s — with Pause (Resume once it is paused), Save and Discard; under it, the day it started. Every field is on the card, always: Select client, Select a service item, Search for a job, Search for a task, and What are you working on? for the note. Fill them in while it runs, or when you save it.

The Time icon carries a dot while you have a timer open: green while one runs, grey when every open timer is paused, and no dot when you have none. While a timer is open, a small timer beside Chats shows it too and opens the same cards, so it does not matter which one you reach for.

The timer

Start a new timer starts one at once; say what it is for on its card, now or later. A job and a task have their own clock as well, in their time pill: press it and a timer starts on that work (see Time on a job and its tasks, below).

What a saved entry must have is your firm's choice, under Required fields in the Time settings. A timer can always start with nothing on it; the required fields are asked for when it is saved, and if one is missing the timer's card is brought into view with the missing fields marked.

Saving a timer is one step, wherever you press it: Save on its card, Stop timer on the timer beside Chats, or the clock on its job or task. The entry is written straight away, and the Edit time entry window opens with the hours it ran, so a wrong minute is one correction. A timer left running is saved at twelve hours, and the window says so — unless it is missing one of your firm's required fields: then it is paused at twelve hours instead, and Vylan asks you to add what it needs and save it.

Only one timer runs at a time. Start another — from the Time panel, the timer beside Chats, My Timers, a job or a task — and the one that was running is paused, without a question: nothing is saved or thrown away behind your back. Every open timer can be picked back up, saved or thrown away from its card, and Discard offers Undo for a few seconds before the timer is gone.

Time on a job and its tasks

Every job and every task carries a time pill: a clock, the time logged, and the budget beside it. Press the clock to start a timer on that work — it turns green while that timer runs — and press it again to stop and save it. The budget half only states the budget; to change it, open Edit budget from the ⋯ menu at the top of the job.

Press the time in the pill for Track your time. My Timers lists your open timers on that job or task, with Start a new timer at the top: the timer it starts is already on that work, and the one that was running is paused. My Saved Time lists your own saved entries there, newest first, with Add time entry at the top — the window opens on that client, job and task — and Load more at the bottom. Each entry shows how long it took, its day, and what it was for; ✎ opens it in Edit time entry, and the archive button takes it off the lists, with Undo to bring it straight back. If your role lets you see your teammates' time, View all time entries opens Time Entries on that job or task.

A job's pill counts the whole job — the time logged on the job itself and on every one of its tasks — against its whole budget: the job's own hours, its services' and its tasks'. A task's pill counts only that task. The number turns red when a job or task is over its budget.

Edit budget is where those hours are typed: the job's own hours, every task's beneath them, and the running Budget total they add up to beside the hours already worked. If your role lets you see what time is worth, it ends with Value and fee — what the job's billable time is worth, beside the fee the client agreed to, the first amount red when it is over. Nothing there is typed: the value comes from people's rates and the fee from the job's priced services.

On the Jobs list, the Budget filter picks Blank, Over budget, At or under budget or Unused budget — a budget set, and no time logged yet. On the capacity board, each column's heading shows the time logged against the time budgeted for its jobs.

Time Entries

Time Entries is every hour you have logged, in one list — and your teammates' hours too, if your role lets you see their time. From the top:

• Hours tracked — one line: Total hours, Billable hours and Internal hours for whatever the list below is showing, filters and all. If your role lets you see what time is worth, Value joins them: those hours at your team's billable rates.
• My Timers — your open timers as a table, a row per timer and every field ready to change: the same timers as the Time panel's cards. Start a timer starts another, and the arrow beside the title folds the table away.
• Saved Time — the entries themselves, newest first, 50, 100, 200 or all of them to a page.

Saved Time opens on This month; All time and Archived sit beside it.

A client's page has the same list on its Time tab, for that client alone: there is no Client column, My Timers shows only the timers on that client, and Add time entry opens on them. The hours beside the client's name open it on this year so far, and add up to the same hours.

The small ▾ on a column heading sorts and filters by that column: Contains for a client, a job or a task; Is any of for a service item or a team member; Billable or Not billable; and for the date, This month, Last month, This quarter, Year to date or Custom dates. The count above the list says how many entries match, and Reset filters puts the tab back the way it opened. The Team member column is only there for people who can see more time than their own.

A link from a job opens the list on that job alone — its Job heading reads Is and the job's name, and ⊗ or the × beside the name clears it. A client's name opens their Time tab.

Change a filter, or the order, and a link beside the count says how many you changed — “Save 2 filters”, say. It offers Save as new filter view: name it, and it opens as the last tab. On one of your saved views, Update existing filter view keeps the list as it is now instead. Filter views are personal: nobody else sees yours. They are the same on a client's Time tab, except one that filters by client, which stays on Time Entries.

Once you have saved one, Customize list — the icon before the export icon — opens Customize filter views. Drag a view by its handle, or use Move up and Move down in its ⋯ menu, to change where its tab sits; the same menu has Rename, Copy and Delete. This month, All time and Archived are built in and can't be deleted. Nothing is saved until you press Save and close.

Every filter, and the order, is kept in the page's address: reload the page, or keep its link to come back to, and it shows the same list.

Press an entry's Duration to open it in the Edit time entry window and fix it. The ▷ at the end of each of your own rows starts a fresh timer on the same work.

Tick entries to change them together: Assign client (which takes the job and task off, because a job belongs to its client), Assign service item and Archive, which offers Undo. You can tick your own entries, and anybody's if you manage the firm's time. If some of the ticked entries cannot change — say the change would leave out a field your firm requires — the rest are done, and a message says how many were left and why.

An archived entry is not deleted. It leaves every list and every total, and waits on the Archived tab — Archived time in the ⋯ menu opens it too — where its Duration opens it to look at, until you tick it and press Restore. If you manage the firm's time, Delete permanently removes the ticked entries for good; it asks first, because it can't be undone.

Export current list, in the same ⋯ menu and as the export icon beside the count, downloads exactly the entries the list is showing — its tab, its dates and every filter — as a CSV file, one row per entry. On the Archived tab it downloads the archived time with its cost columns left empty: archived time counts toward no total.

Adding time you already spent

Most time is remembered rather than timed. On Time Entries, press Add time entry. From any page, Time entry in the sidebar's Create panel opens the same Add time entry window over the page you are on — and so does every Log time: a job's, a task's and the calendar's. Give it the Date and the Time spent — it starts at 30m — typed the way you would say it: 1.5, 1:30 and 90m are all an hour and a half, and 1.5 becomes 1h 30m when you leave the box, so nobody has to convert minutes into decimals in their head. Add start and end times gives it the hours it ran instead, and the time spent is worked out from them. The Assignee is you: nobody logs time onto a colleague's name.

On the calendar, drag down across the hours it took, or press New entry and choose Work time. If you only know how long it took, tick Just the hours and type the length — 1h 30m, 1.5 or 90m all work. On the Timesheet, type the hours straight into the day.

Pick what it was for: Client, Service, Job and Task — a task can be picked once a job is. Your firm's Required fields apply here too: Save stays greyed out until they are filled in, and says which one is missing when you point at it.

What you type in Add note is what makes an entry useful in three months. e.g. T2 review call tells a story on an invoice; a blank note does not.

The firm's own work — admin, training, the hour that is real work but belongs to no client — goes on a job with no client, or on a service item your firm has marked not billable. Either way it is internal work, and internal work is not billable: it is never charged, it counts at $0 of value, and it still counts against a job's hour budget, because the hours were spent. Move a logged hour onto internal work and its Billable switch turns off. Marking a service item not billable later does not change hours already saved on it.

Timesheets

Timesheets is one person's week as a grid, Monday to Sunday: a column for the client, one for the job, a column for each day, and the week's total. Type hours straight into a day and they are saved as you type; Add row starts a row for work that is not on the week yet, and the bin at the end of a row takes it off the week — its saved hours are archived, not lost. A cell with several entries in it opens the list of them, and a cell with one has a ⋮ for Billable and for opening the entry itself. Time in the sidebar opens it on this week.

The columns are the firm's to choose in Settings → Time: Service item, Task and Note each become a column of their own, and a field you require is always one. A column also decides what shares a row: with Service item showing, two hours on one job for different service items get a line each, so each can be typed into. Days you never work can go from your own sheet — Visible days in the ⋯ menu — and that changes nobody else's. Hidden days keep their hours, and the week's total still counts them.

If your role lets you see your teammates' time, the picker at the top switches whose week it is. A paper time sheet can come in too: From a photo reads each line, and nothing is logged until you have checked it.

With Log time for teammates on your role, a colleague's week is not only readable but fillable: type into a day, add a row, or read in their paper sheet, and the hours go on their name, not yours — priced at their rates. The same permission puts an Assignee line in the time entry window, so an hour can be logged for someone from anywhere, or moved to them if it landed on the wrong person. Two things it cannot do: a running timer belongs to whoever started it, and a week already sent for approval takes nothing new.

Fixing it afterwards

Every entry is fixed in the same Edit time entry window, wherever you find it: on the calendar, from its duration on Time Entries, in a Timesheet cell, or with ✎ under a job's or a task's time. Once Vylan has recorded it, its first line says who last changed it, and when. Change its date, its times or just its hours, what it was for, and its note, then Update. Archive — the small button at the bottom right — takes it off the lists, and the Archived tab on Time Entries can bring it back.

Seeing it on the calendar

The calendar reads by Day, Week or Month. Each day shows the time logged on it, the period shows its total beside its name, and a running timer grows on the hours while you work, so it is obvious whether a week is actually written down or only half of it is.

If you have the permission for it, tick teammates in the calendar's side panel to see their time beside yours.

To take the hours away as a spreadsheet, use Export time in the Timesheet's ⋯ menu, or take the list away from Time Entries. It starts on the days you are looking at.