Time Reports

ELMA allows tracking and recording time resources spent executing a specific task using the time report mechanism.  

Time report – is the time spent on a specific activity type or task.

You can submit time report on user tasks, project tasks, business process tasks and document tasks.

Once an executor has completed a task, they can not only mark it as completed in the system but also specify how much time they have spent working on it. After clicking completed, a dialog box opens, where time report can be added:

Fig. 1. Task Completed dialog box

You can add time report items to a task several times. For this, open the task page and click Actions - Add Time Report Item. In the opened window, enter the time spent, add a comment if necessary and click Add.

Fig. 2. Dialog box for adding a timer report item to a task

After you add a time report item to a task at least once, the Time Report tab will be added to the task page, with the time report items and comments.

Fig. 3. Time Report tab of the task page

At the end of a certain period, the user submits a time report for approval to a manager. To do so, click Submit time report in the main menu. On the opened page, fill in the required fields. The information added earlier to the Time Report Log are added automatically.

Fig. 4. Time report

By default, the time report approver is the task author. If you need to change the approver, click Change (fig. 5). Select an activity type. Activity Type is a system object. A user who has respective access permissions adds instances to the object.

Fig. 5. Filling in the time report

You can add data to the Time Report manually. To learn more, see Help.

There are two ways to send a time report for approval:

• click Send in the toolbar;
• check the box next to the required time report items and click Send - Send Selected Items in the toolbar.

After sending, the approver will receive a notification and will be able to approve or reject the submitted time report items. To learn more about time report approval, read Help.

All the changes in the Time Report are saved automatically. I.e. if you do not send the time report for approval, the changes are saved and you can later edit the report.

There are two types of time report items:

• planned time – planned time of execution of a certain activity;
• actual time – time actually spent executing a certain activity.

If the actual time spent exceeds the time limit, the time report limit will be highlighted red.

 Fig. 6. Time limit exceeded notification

You can view the submitted time report items in Tasks - Time Report - Reports:

Fig. 7. Time report, pending approval

Here you can edit and delete time report items with the Pending Approval status.

After a time report is approved, the Approved column will display the approved time and the icon will change from . You cannot edit/delete approved items.

The summary time report table shows the total number of hours submitted on different activities or by different executors (click on the respective toolbar buttons).

Time report items, added to the report but not submitted for approval, e.g. on the last week, will be displayed as unaccounted items on the current week.

Fig. 8. Notification about unaccounted time report items

You can ignore unaccounted items (they will be deleted), or submit all the unaccounted time report items in this week (all the items will be moved to the current week).