Time Tracking
Arketic measures how long tasks take automatically — there are no start/stop buttons and no timer to remember. As soon as a task starts moving, Arketic counts the working time it uses and compares it with the target you set on the task.
That gives you three things for free: a live progress bar while the work is in flight, an honest "on time" or "late" result when it finishes, and reliable timing data in your reports.
On top of the automatic measurement, you can also record time by hand on a task's Time tab — see Logging Time by Hand.
Timing comes from what you put on the task itself — the estimate or the planned dates — measured inside your department's working hours. The SLA Policies list under Tasks → Settings is a separate record of agreed response and resolution times; it does not set a task's target. See Time Tracking, SLA Policies & Business Hours.
When Tracking Starts
Tracking begins the moment a task enters an active status:
| Status | Tracking |
|---|---|
| Backlog | Not tracked yet |
| To Do | Tracking starts |
| In Progress | Tracking continues |
| In Review | Tracking continues |
| Pending Approval | Tracking continues |
| Done | Tracking stops and the result is recorded |
| Cancelled | Tracking stops, no on-time/late result |
The New Task form reminds you of this under Estimated Hours: "Tracking starts when status moves to "To Do"."
A few details worth knowing:
- A task created directly in an active status starts tracking immediately. You don't have to drag it anywhere first.
- Time in Backlog doesn't count. Parking an idea in Backlog costs you nothing.
- Review and approval time counts. A task waiting for a reviewer is still consuming its target — that's deliberate, so bottlenecks show up instead of hiding.
- If you set a Start Date in the future, tracking waits for that date instead of starting right away. Until then the task shows a Scheduled badge.
Tracking is per task, not per person. If several people are assigned, they're all working against the same target.
Where the Target Comes From
The target is the amount of working time a task is supposed to take. Arketic picks it from the task's own fields, in this order:
| Priority | Source | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Estimated Hours | A budget. The target is that many working hours, counted from the moment tracking starts. |
| 2 | Start Date + End Date | A window. The End Date is a fixed deadline — starting late doesn't push it back, it just leaves you less room. |
| 3 | Nothing set | No target. Arketic still records the working time spent, so you can see how long the task actually took. |
Estimated Hours always wins. If a task has both an estimate and a date range, the estimate is the target and the dates stay as planning information.
Set Estimated Hours when you care about effort ("this is roughly a 6-hour job"). Set Start Date and End Date when you care about the calendar ("this must be finished by Friday 17:00"). Both fields are on the New Task form — see Creating Tasks.
An End Date on its own is not a target. Arketic needs a Start Date and an End Date together to build a date-range target. A task with only an end date is still flagged on the board once that date has passed, but it has no progress bar.
Changing the estimate or the dates on a task that's already running recalculates the target immediately, and any earlier warnings are reset against the new target.
Only Working Hours Count
Time is measured inside your department's business hours only. Evenings, nights, weekends, and non-working days are skipped entirely.
So a 4-hour task started at 16:00 on a day that ends at 18:00 isn't late the next morning — it has used 2 hours and has 2 left. Teams that work different hours are compared fairly, because each task is measured against its own department's schedule.
Business hours are set per department under Tasks → Settings → Business Hours: a start time, an end time, and which days of the week are working days. See Task Settings.
Time Badges on Task Cards
On the Kanban board, each card carries at most one time badge, so a glance across the board tells you where the pressure is:
| Badge | Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking | Blue / grey | Time is being counted right now. Blue when the task has a target, grey when it has none |
| Scheduled | Amber | The task has a future start date; tracking hasn't begun. Hover it to see when it starts |
| Over time | Red (pulsing) | The task is still open and has already passed its target |
| Late | Red | The task was completed after its target |
Separately from these badges, a card whose deadline has already passed (and that isn't Done or Cancelled) is outlined in red with a pink tint — so even tasks without a target get flagged when they run past their due date.
See Kanban Board for everything else the cards show.
The Time Tracking Panel
Open any task and scroll the Details tab to the Time Tracking panel. This is the full picture for that one task.
Status chip
Top-right of the panel, a small chip tells you which phase the measurement is in:
| Chip | Meaning |
|---|---|
| active | Counting now |
| scheduled | Waiting for a future start date |
| completed | The task is finished. The banner underneath tells you whether it was on time or late |
| cancelled | The task was cancelled; no on-time/late result |
While the task is running
If the task has a target, you get:
- A progress bar toward the target. It's green normally, turns amber once three-quarters of the target is used, and red once the target is exceeded.
- Three live figures underneath: the working time elapsed, the percentage used, and either the time remaining or how far over target you are.
If the task has no target, the panel simply shows how much working time it has used so far — useful for finding out what a job really costs before you start estimating it.
When the task is finished
A summary banner replaces the progress bar:
- Completed on time — green, with a check.
- Completed late — red, with a warning icon.
The line underneath reads Took and the time the task used, then Target and the target time, plus the difference in brackets — for example 45m ahead if you beat the target, 1h 20m over if you passed it. A task that had no target shows Completed on time with only the time it took.
A task that finished past its target also carries a red SLA Breached badge in the task detail header, next to the title.
Panel footer
Below the bar, the panel lists the facts behind the numbers:
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Target (Estimated): or Target (Date range): | The target time, labelled with where it came from |
| Business hours: | The working-hours window used for this task's department |
| Tracking started: / Tracking starts: | When counting began — or, for a scheduled task, when it will begin |
| Planned start: | The task's Start Date, if set |
| Planned end: | The task's End Date, if set |
The panel only appears once tracking exists for the task. A task still sitting in Backlog has no Time Tracking panel yet.
See Task Details for the rest of the detail view.
Logging Time by Hand
Automatic tracking measures how long a task was open during working hours. If you also want a record of the time you actually spent on it, log it yourself:
- Open the task and go to the Time tab.
- Under Log time, enter the Duration (min) — whole minutes, for example
30. - Optionally fill in Description ("What did you work on?").
- Click Log time. You'll see "Time logged".
Every entry is listed underneath with its duration, its description, who logged it and the date. Above the list you see the number of entries and the Total. If nothing has been logged, the tab reads "No time logged yet."
The Time tab is shown to people who are allowed to log time. By default that is everyone except the Restricted role; your organization can change it through custom roles — see Roles & Permissions.
Logged time is a separate record. It does not change the task's target, its progress bar or its on-time / late result — those always come from the automatic measurement. Logged hours do appear on the Dashboard: hover a bar in Weekly Velocity (8 weeks) to see the hours logged that week.
See Task Details for everything else on the task's tabs.
Setting Business Hours
Working hours are configured per department:
- Go to Tasks → Settings.
- Find the Business Hours panel.
- Pick the Department.
- Set the Start and End times.
- Toggle the Working Days you operate on.
- Click Save.
Rules the form enforces:
- The start time must be before the end time.
- At least one working day must be selected.
Admins and Executives see every department in the list. Department managers see the departments they manage, plus their own. Full details are on the Task Settings page.
Changing business hours changes how time is measured for that department's tasks. Set them once, correctly, rather than adjusting them to make numbers look better.
Where Timing Data Shows Up
Because tracking is automatic, timing feeds the rest of the workspace without anyone filling in a timesheet:
- Performance — the Avg Completion and SLA Compliance cards, plus the Slowest Tasks list showing which tasks overran their targets by the most. See Performance.
- Dashboard and My Team (department managers, Executives and Admins) — the SLA Breach Rate card and the SLA Performance panel on the Dashboard, and a traffic-light dot on each person's tasks in My Team so you can spot who is running hot. See Team & Dashboard.
- Notifications — approaching deadlines, warnings, and breaches are part of the SLA & Reminders notification group, which can be switched on or off for the whole organization in Task Settings.
Tips
- Estimate in hours, not days. Estimated Hours accepts halves, so 0.5, 1.5 and 6 all work — small, honest estimates make the progress bar meaningful.
- Give long tasks a Start Date. Work planned for next week shows as Scheduled instead of quietly burning its target while nobody is on it.
- Watch the amber bar, not the red one. Amber means you still have time to react; red means the conversation is already overdue.
- Keep review steps short. Time in In Review and Pending Approval counts against the target — see Approvals.
- Compare "Took" against "Target" after the fact. A steady pattern of "3h over" is an estimating problem, not a people problem.
Related Pages
- Creating Tasks — where Estimated Hours, Start Date and End Date are set
- Kanban Board — the time badges in context
- Task Details — the full task view, including the Time tab
- Task Settings — business hours and notification groups
- Performance — reporting built on this timing data
- Time Tracking, SLA Policies & Business Hours — the admin view