Part 3 · Projects, time and knowledge

Timesheets

Log the hours worked on projects and tasks, correct them, and analyze them by employee, by project or by task.

Symbifox 18.0 (September 2026 catalogue) · Modules: Timer - Feuilles de temps, Timesheet from the chatter · Base applications: Task Logs · Revised 2026-09-12

The Timesheets application collects the hours worked and ties them to a project and a task. It is for everyone: each person enters their own hours, coordinators read what has been used, and invoicing draws its figures from it. The concrete result is one line per block of work, dated, described and attributed, which three pivot reports can then add up. Symbifox adds two ways to create these lines without opening the application: a timer, and a checkbox under the chatter of a task (the message thread at the bottom of the form).

Overview#

A timesheet is not a weekly form to fill in. It is a line, meaning a duration tied to a date, a project, a task, a person and a description. Lines pile up day after day, and the reports group them on demand.

Hours exist only on projects that accept them. Each project has a setting for this, described in Project; without it, neither the hours tab on the task nor the timer appears. A line is always tied to a project, and most often to a task in that project.

The reference screen is the list of all the organization's hours, with the date, the person, the project, the task, the description and the duration.

Boréal has 112, spread over five months and six projects. Time is shown in hours and minutes, in the 07:12 format, and not in hundredths of an hour.

This application is a crossroads. Hours start in Project, in the timer described in To-do, Notepad and Timer, or in Helpdesk (tickets). They are then read by Hour bank to calculate the balance of a customer on a prepaid package, and by Invoicing to bill for time spent.

Configuration#

Access and permissions#

Permissions are granted in Settings › Users & Companies › Users, on the Timesheets line of each person's user form.

Two prerequisites apply to everyone: your account must be linked to an employee record, and the target project must accept hours. See Employees for the first point.

Settings#

Go to Timesheets › Configuration. The page opens on the application's own section, within the general settings.

The timer's rounding settings are on the same page and are described in To-do, Notepad and Timer.

Base data#

Before entering hours, check that you have:

• projects that accept hours, with their tasks;
• an employee record linked to each account that has to log time;
• if needed, description presets for the timer: Boréal has four, Développement, Réunion, Support and Révision (development, meeting, support, review).

Getting started#

This walkthrough logs a first entry on a Boréal engagement, then finds it again in a report.

1. Open Timesheets. Your hours appear, empty until you have entered anything.
2. Select New. An editable line appears, dated today.
3. In Project, choose the Clinique dentaire Rosemont compliance engagement.
4. In Task, choose “Formation du personnel clinique” (clinical staff training).
5. In Description, enter “Workshop preparation”.
6. In Time Spent, enter “1:30”, then confirm the line.
7. Go to Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets › By Project.

Result: the line appears in your hours for the day, and the pivot table adds an hour and a half to the current month's total for that project.

Common tasks#

Enter a line of hours#

Direct entry suits time you record after the fact, at the end of the day or at the end of the week.

1. Go to Timesheets › Timesheets › My Timesheets.
2. Select New.
3. Enter the Date if it is not today.
4. Choose the Project, then the Task.
5. Enter the Description of the work done.
6. Enter the Time Spent, in hours and minutes.
7. Confirm the line.

Result: the line is added to your list and to the total at the bottom of the Time Spent column. It appears at once in the task's hours tab and in the three analysis reports.

Log time from a task#

This is the surest way not to pick the wrong task, since you start from the task itself.

1. Open the task in Project.
2. Open the Timesheets tab.
3. Select Add a line.
4. Enter the date, the description and the duration.
5. Select Save.

Result: the line is created in your name, on the task's project. Two other paths lead to the same result: the Temps (time) checkbox under an internal note in the chatter, and the timer. Both are described in Project and in To-do, Notepad and Timer.

Correct or delete a line#

A wrong task, date or duration is fixed straight from the list.

1. Go to Timesheets › Timesheets › My Timesheets.
2. Select the cell to correct and enter the right value.
3. Confirm the line.
4. To remove a line, check it, then select Actions › Delete.

Result: the total is recalculated, and the reports and the customer's hour bank balance follow at the next display.

Find the hours of a period or an engagement#

The search bar filters and groups the demo's 112 lines like any other list.

1. Go to Timesheets › Timesheets › All Timesheets.
2. Open the drop-down of the search bar.
3. Apply a period filter, for example the current month.
4. Add a grouping by Project, by Task or by Employee.
5. Optional: save the configuration in Favorites to find it again.

Result: the lines fold into groups, each with its total hours. The foot of the list shows the grand total.

A line's form shows the only six pieces of information it carries.

Analyze hours by employee, by project or by task#

The three reports share the same pivot table and differ only in their opening grouping.

1. Go to Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets.
2. Choose By Employee, By Project or By Task.
3. Open Measures to add or remove a measure.
4. Select the plus sign of a row or a column to expand it.
5. Switch to the graph with the view switcher icon.

Result: a pivot table of the hours, with the months as columns and the chosen grouping as rows. Boréal totals 204:42 hours over five months.

Track an engagement's consumption#

The report by project answers the question that comes up most often: how many hours has this engagement cost.

1. Go to Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets › By Project.
2. Read the row of the engagement you want.
3. Select the plus sign in front of its name to see the tasks.
4. Compare with the project's planned total.

Result: a month-by-month picture. On the demo, the Papeterie Trois-Rivières migration weighs 80:00 hours, and the Groupe Vaudreuil tenant portal 36:54.

Maintain the description presets#

The description presets are the chips offered when a timer stops. Prerequisite: the User: all timesheets level.

1. Go to Timesheets › Timesheets › Presets de description (description presets).
2. Select New.
3. Enter the Nom (name) shown on the chip and the Texte (text) written into the description.
4. Confirm the line, then drag the handle to change the display order.

Result: the chip is offered to the whole team in the timer's stop window. See To-do, Notepad and Timer for the timer itself.

The menus, one by one#

Timesheets: grouping menu, which also carries the application's name.

Timesheets › Timesheets › My Timesheets: your own lines, as a list, with the Date, Project, Task, Description and Time Spent columns. The kanban, pivot and graph views are available through the view switcher icons. The screen is empty for the capture account, which has entered nothing yet, and it then shows its invitation to get started.

Timesheets › Timesheets › All Timesheets: the organization's 112 lines, with the Employee column in addition. It is the coordination's control screen, reserved for the User: all timesheets level. Useful filters: by period, by project, by person.

Timesheets › Timesheets › Presets de description: the timer's four description presets, with the Nom and Texte columns and a handle to order them.

Timesheets › My Timesheets: the same list as above, offered a second time directly under the application's root, to reach it in one step fewer.

Timesheets › Reporting: grouping menu.

Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets: grouping menu for the three reports.

Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets › By Employee: pivot table of the hours, one person per row and one month per column, with the grand total row. Twelve people on the demo.

Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets › By Project: the same table, grouped by project.

Timesheets › Reporting › Timesheets › By Task: the same table, grouped by project and then by task, which gives the finest detail.

Timesheets › Configuration: the settings described above, in the general settings page.

Reference#

Fields of the Timesheet form#

Reports and exports#

• By Employee, By Project and By Task: pivot tables and graphs on the same data, with a choice of measures and groupings.
• The pivot table downloads to a spreadsheet through the icon provided in its toolbar.
• Any list of lines exports through Actions › Export All, following the actions described in Common actions in every application.
• The hours also feed the report of an Hour bank and an engagement's figures in Project.

Automations#

No background job runs for this application. Three mechanisms still create lines without you entering them: stopping a timer, the Temps checkbox under a task's internal note, and time logged on a helpdesk ticket. The Time Off setting, when it is turned on, also adds lines for approved time off and public holidays.

Public pages and portal#

The application has no public page. A customer sees the hours that concern them by two paths: the balance and the detail of their Hour bank, and the documents you send them. Nothing is exposed automatically.

Modules that extend this application#

Three modules extend Timesheets. The first one adds the timer.

The second logs time from the chatter.

The third reads these hours for prepaid packages.

Understanding#

A line, not a sheet. The name comes from paper, but nothing here resembles a weekly form. Each block of work is a record of its own, which lets you tie it to a precise task, correct it on its own and add it up along any axis. The trade-off is that no approval cycle exists in Odoo Community: the approver corrects, but does not sign off.

The project decides. A project that does not accept hours makes entry impossible everywhere, including from the task and from the timer. It is the first setting to check when an expected button is missing.

Hours and the invoice are two different things. Logging time invoices nothing. Hours become money on another screen: an invoice for time spent, or a debit from an hour bank. Conversely, a prepaid package is credited by an invoice, never by a line of hours. This separation prevents a correction of an entry from changing an accounting document that has already been issued.

Two units, a single truth. The encoding method changes the display and the entry, not the data: durations are stored in decimal hours and converted on screen. Changing units mid-year therefore skews no total, but it does throw off people used to the old display.

The 07:12 format is not 7.12. Seven hours and twelve minutes are written 07:12 and are worth 7.2 hours. The confusion is costly when a total is copied into a spreadsheet: export the spreadsheet rather than retyping.

Troubleshooting#

See also#

• Project: the projects and tasks that carry the hours, and entry from the chatter.
• To-do, Notepad and Timer: the timer, its rounding and its description presets.
• Hour bank: the prepaid packages that these hours consume.
• Schedule (Gantt): the planned hours, next to the hours spent.
• Invoicing: billing for time spent.
• Employees: the link between an account and an employee record.