Time-sheet by tasks

[crossword.bob]

Hi,

Would I be right in thinking that there is currently no way to request a timesheet broken down by task rather than project?  I am looking for something that will show me the total time allocated to tasks that may be stopped and started several times per day, so don't want the individual time entries, but as far as I can tell, this is only possible by defining a separate project per task and requesting a timesheet report.  If a configurable option were added to have the timesheet report grouped by task, this app would be a perfect fit!

[Adam]

Correct.  Time Sheets do not do Tasks.  There are a couple reasons for this.  First would be that if you tried to "total" the task, it would be hard to also show the total of the "Project" and the totals would be confusing.  The other thing is if you were using Global Tasks, they could fall under different Projects and would have separate totals, so that could also be misleading.  Hope that makes sense?

That being said, you can always go into the Reports tab and set the Task "Filter" to a specific Task and run the report on that.  Just make sure that that date ranges cover your needs.  Also keep in mind if it is not a global task that it will fill in the Client and Project filters, so don't forget to clear those out afterwards (tap on the grey X).

[crossword.bob]

Yes, it does make sense, and I can see that it would make project totals non-obvious.  However, the weekly timesheet I have to submit needs my time broken down by task, so the absence of such an option is the one fly in the ointment of an app that otherwise does exactly what I was looking for.  What would be ideal for me would be a separate report type, with projects represented by empty highlighted rows, and a task breakdown following each project row.  I personally don't need project totals, but those would still be available using the existing timesheet report.

Of course I can certainly work around this, or construct my own report from a raw CSV dump of time-entries, and totally understand that adding a bespoke report type for one user wouldn't be the best use of your time; I just thought it'd be worth mentioning as a feature suggestion.

[Adam]

Hi Bob,

Yes, of course we always do appreciate the feedback and thank you for taking the time to write!  Although we have added many user requested features, it is not always possible or practical to add every one.  We will keep you request in mind and if we ever do figure out some way to make it make sense, we may handle it then.   

[crossword.bob]

For what it's worth, should anyone else be interested in a similar report, I've found that a time-entry report, exported to CSV and opened in Excel can fairly easily be rendered into a timesheet type report.  By creating a pivot table, selecting date as a column type, project then task as rows, and duration as a summed value I get exactly what I was looking for.

Defining the data for the pivot table using =OFFSET(report!$A$1,0,0,COUNTA(report!$A:$A),24), you can "grow" the report over time, so that adding task rows and refreshing he pivot table will update he timesheet.