TimeSheets adds time tracking, approvals, leave and billing to Jira Cloud. It runs entirely on Atlassian Forge, so there is nothing to host and no data leaves your Atlassian site except email.
This page takes you from a fresh install to a first logged entry. It should take about ten minutes. Steps 1 and 2 are for an administrator and must both be done before anyone else opens the app.
1. Install the app
Install TimeSheets from the Atlassian Marketplace. On first load the app creates its own tables, which takes a few seconds; if a screen looks empty immediately after installing, reload it once.
You need to be a Jira site administrator to install and to reach the admin screens.
Do not hand the app to your team yet. Nobody can log a single entry until an administrator has created a cost centre and assigned it to a project — step 2. A person who opens the Hub before that finds an empty project list and no way forward.
2. Create a cost centre and attach it to a project
This is the one step that cannot be skipped. Every worklog entry carries exactly one cost centre — the label that says how the work is classified for reporting and billing — and a cost centre is only offered on projects it has been attached to. A project with none attached does not appear in the Log time dialog at all.
Do both halves before anyone else opens the app:
- Create the cost centre — go to Admin Settings → Cost Centers and add one. A name is all that is required; code, parent, billable, hour allotment and budget are optional and can be filled in later. One general cost centre is enough to get started — you can add the real structure once people are logging.
- Attach it to your projects — open Project Settings → Cost centres for each project that will track time, and assign the cost centres that may be used there. Repeat for every project; nothing is attached automatically, including projects created after the cost centre.
Detaching a cost centre later stops it being used for new entries only; existing entries keep theirs. Full detail in Cost Centers and Project Settings.
3. Open the Hub
Everything a person needs day to day lives in one place, called the Hub. Find it under Apps → TimeSheets in the Jira top navigation.
The Hub has these tabs:
| Tab | What it is for | Shown to |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | A configurable grid of gadgets — your week, pending approvals, leave balance and so on | Everyone |
| Summary | Month totals, missing working days, and what your team is up to | Everyone |
| Calendar | Month and week views of what you logged, plus leave and holidays | Everyone |
| Approvals | Anything waiting on your decision, with the pending count in the tab label | Approvers only |
| Reports | Team matrices, breakdowns and exports | Approvers and project admins |
Which emails you receive, and the mute and snooze controls, are in your personal settings rather than a tab of their own.
4. Log your first entry
- Open the Hub — and stay on the Dashboard, or go to the Calendar.
- Click Log time — or double-click a day in the Calendar to start on that date.
- Pick a project and a cost centre — the cost centre is how the work is classified for reporting and billing.
- Enter the time — in hours or minutes. Entries go in 5-minute increments.
- Optionally link a Jira issue — type a key or search by summary.
- Save — the entry appears immediately on your Calendar and Dashboard.
If the project you want is not in the list, it almost always has no cost centres attached yet — go back to step 2. The other cause is that you cannot browse the project in Jira. Both are fixed by an administrator — see Project Settings.
5. What an administrator should set up next
Cost centres are already in place from step 2. Beyond them, three things are worth deciding early because they shape everything else:
- Approvals. Whether time needs approving at all, per entry or per week, and who approves it — see Approvals.
- Working hours and days. The basis for capacity, missing-day detection and leave — see Admin Settings.
- Leave types. Which categories your organisation uses. Health-related types arrive switched off on purpose — see Leave Management.
Billing is entirely optional and off until you add a client and a rate. If you only want timesheets, you can ignore it.
6. Where to go next
- Logging in bulk, copying weeks and using templates — Logging Time
- Getting time approved — Approvals
- Booking and approving leave — Leave Management
- Turning approved hours into invoices — Invoices
- What is stored and who can see it — Privacy & Data Handling