Time tracking¶
Specivo lets you log time against the work you do — hours spent on an issue or a project, tagged with the kind of activity. Logged time rolls up into reports so you can see where effort goes and compare it against your estimates.
Who can do what¶
Three role permissions control time tracking in a project:
| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
| View time entries | Reading time: the project's Time area, an issue's time tab and logged total, a version's logged total and billable-time reports. Without it you see no entries, not even your own. |
| Log time | Logging time, by hand or with a timer, and editing or deleting your own entries (as long as you can see them). |
| Edit/delete any time entries | Editing or deleting anyone's entries in the project. |
Out of the box, Manager has all three, Developer and Agent can view and log time, and Reporter and the built-in Non member role have none. Without Edit/delete any time entries you can still edit or delete your own entries, as long as you have Log time in the project. Administrators can do everything. Buttons you can't use (Log Time, the log-time form on an issue, edit controls) are hidden.
Project billing rates, used by the billable-time report, are managed through the REST API. Creating, changing or deleting a rate takes the Manage project settings permission, and listing the rates takes View time entries. There is no separate billing permission.
Log time against an issue¶
Open the issue and add a time entry: the number of hours, the date, an activity, and an optional comment. Logging against an issue is the common case, because it ties the effort to a specific piece of work. You can also log time at the project level for work that doesn't map to one issue.
Activities¶
Every entry is tagged with an activity so reports can break effort down by type:
| Activity | For |
|---|---|
| Development | Writing and changing code — the default |
| Design | UI, UX, and design work |
| Testing | QA, test writing, verification |
| Meetings | Planning, standups, reviews |
| Support | Helping users, answering requests |
Development is selected by default, so the common case is one click less.
Time it with a timer¶
Instead of adding up the hours yourself, let a timer count them. Open the issue and choose Start timer next to its key (you need Log time in the project). You have one timer at a time:
- While it runs, the header shows the issue key and the elapsed time on every page, and the issue page says Timer running. Click the timer in the header to see the issue and its title.
- Stop & log asks for the activity (the default one is preselected) and an optional comment, then writes the time entry on the issue, for today. The elapsed time is rounded to the hundredth of an hour, and a timer left running is capped (at 12 hours unless your administrator changed it) and marked so in the comment.
- Discard drops the timer without writing anything.
If a timer already runs on another issue when you choose Start timer, Specivo asks first: Log it and start writes its time with the default activity, Discard it and start throws it away, then the new timer starts. To log the old one with another activity or a comment, stop it from the header first.
A running timer is checked again when you stop it or start another one: if you have lost the right to log time on its project or issue in the meantime, the timer is discarded and no time is written. After Log it and start, a short notice on the issue page says what happened to the old timer: how many hours were logged on which issue, or that it was discarded. If you can no longer see the issue, the header still shows its key but not its title.
AI agents can drive the same timer through the specivo_timer tool (see
What an agent can do).
Log time from a commit¶
When your project has a repository integration with commit
commands and time logging turned on, a commit message can log time too: ACME-12 @1h30m (also
@2h, @90m or @1.5h) logs that time on ACME-12 for the commit's author, with the default
activity, dated on the commit day. The author is the Specivo account whose verified email wrote
the commit, and they need Log time in the project. The time goes right after the issue key, on
the same line; zero is ignored, and more than 24 hours for one issue in one commit is cut to 24.
See
Commit commands.
Estimate versus spent¶
Issues carry an estimate — estimated hours, with an original and a remaining estimate — alongside the time actually logged. Comparing the two tells you whether a piece of work is on track: an issue estimated at 8 hours with 12 logged and still open is a signal worth a look. See the full field set in What is an issue?.
All three are set by hand, in hours and minutes, in the issue sidebar or the edit form, by anyone who may edit the issue. The original estimate keeps what was first planned while the estimate moves; the remaining estimate is the work left, and logging time does not lower it. The issue's Time tab totals the logged hours next to all three.
The project Time area¶
Each project has a Time area that lists time entries and rolls them into reports — totals by activity, by person, and over a date range — so a Manager can see how effort is spread across the project.
Who sees whose time
By default everyone with View time entries sees every entry. A role set to Own time entries (see What a role can see) sees only the hours its holder logged — in the Time area, on issues, in version totals and in reports. A person with several roles gets the widest setting among them.
Time logged on an issue you cannot see, such as someone else's private issue, is left out everywhere: from the lists, from every total and from billable-time reports, so the numbers never reveal work on hidden issues. Time logged on the project itself, without an issue, is not affected. Your own entries always stay visible to you, even on an issue you can no longer see.
