Get started with Jira
New to Jira? Check out our guides for new administrators and users.
Log time on an issue
Jira provides the flexibility to set your estimation and tracking statistics differently depending on your team's needs. Time tracking features project schedule planning and time expectation management. Thanks to its reports, you can see the original and current time estimates for all the issues, and whether they're ahead or behind the original schedule. Teams often need to estimate how long a product will take to deliver in order to have conviction that the work will be completed. You'll be able to easily monitor the tracking time info by watching the issue time tracking color bars.
Jira admins can enable or disable time tracking for their entire Jira site. They can also control who has permission to log time. If you don’t see the time tracking field in your project, contact your Jira admin for help. Read more about configuring time tracking.
Time tracking: Shows the time logged so far, and time remaining. Click anywhere on the panel to log time.
If you have more than 500 child issues on an issue, you won't be able to include them in time tracking. We recommend limiting the number of child issues per issue to 500. Learn more about parent and child issues.
Before you begin
Make sure that your Jira admin has enabled time tracking, and that you have the Work on Issues, Delete Work Logs, and Edit Work Logs project permissions. Anyone with the Browse Project permission can view time tracking info on an issue.
Set an original time estimate for an issue
Before you start work on an issue, you can set an original time estimate to calculate how long you believe it'll take to resolve it.
Select the issue and choose the Original estimate field
Enter the amount of time you believe it'll take to complete work on the issue.
Tips:
You can specify additional time units after a time value 'X', such as Xw, Xd, Xh, or Xm, to represent weeks (w), days (d), hours (h), and minutes (m), respectively. If you type a number without specifying a time unit—you type "2" instead of "2h"—the default time unit that your Jira admin has specified will apply.
Default conversion rates are 1w = 5d and 1d = 8h.
Log time on an issue
Once you've started to work on a specific issue, log time to keep a record of it. This will let you compare your original estimate with how long it actually took to resolve the issue.
Open the issue and select ••• > Log work (or click on the time tracking field)
Fill in the Log time fields and select Save.
Edit a time log entry
You can edit your own time log entries if you've been granted the edit own work logs permission. You can also edit other people's time log entries if you've been granted the Edit All Work Logs permission.
Open an issue and choose Work log in the activity section at the bottom of the issue.
Find the time log entry and choose Edit.
Complete any relevant fields and choose Save.
Delete a time log entry
You can delete your own time log entries if you have been granted the Delete Own Work Logs permission. You can also delete other people's time log entries if you've been granted the Delete All Work Logs permission.
Open an issue and choose Work log in the activity section at the bottom of the issue.
Find the work log entry and choose Delete.
You'll be asked whether you'd like to adjust the remaining time estimate. If you choose to adjust it, you can let Jira automatically adjust the time remaining by adding back the deleted time or set it to another time manually.
Was this helpful?
Still need help?
The Atlassian Community is here for you.