How to Improve the Quality of Logged Time in Your Team?

June 16, 2025

Anna Kwaśny

Many teams track time, but very few reflect on how well they do it. It’s a daunting task that everyone vaguely understands as important, while at the same time rarely stopping to think about why. It doesn’t take a genius to realize what benefits a high quality time tracking can bring. But what makes time tracking high quality?

In this article, we’ll be exploring the notion of time tracking as a powerful management tool that, if taken seriously and attentively, will impact your team’s work and make you never look back again.

Why logged time quality matters?

In the age of remote and hybrid work, time tracking allows you to keep an eye on what your team’s doing with their time. However, limiting time tracking to just that – an online supervision tool, is simply wasteful. Time logs are not just for compliance – they’re critical data inputs for planning, decision-making, and learning. Neglecting the completeness and accuracy of your time logs can lead to a number of consequences.

Low-quality logs might:

Mislead reports and forecasts
Undermine billing accuracy
Create stress during audits or client invoicing
Make it harder to understand what’s actually being worked on
Obscure project risks and blockers
Lead to false assumptions about productivity

That’s why it’s not enough to just have time logs – it’s about what those logs say. When the quality of those entries drops, so does the value of your data. Suddenly, you’re managing projects with a foggy windshield – unsure of what’s ahead, where things went off track, or how long something actually took. It becomes nearly impossible to identify trends, allocate resources effectively, or learn from past mistakes.

What makes logged time “high quality”?

There’s more to time tracking than meets the eye. It’s the beating heart of your work, and it needs to be taken good care of in order to be healthy. High-quality time logs are more than just a record of hours – they’re a clear, detailed account of how work gets done. That means each entry should be:

Specific – naming the task or issue worked on.
Timely – recorded as close to the time of work as possible, to avoid guesswork.
Purposeful – tracked with clear intention and structured around it.
Context-rich – including notes that explain the purpose or outcome of the work.

When time logs are consistent and informative, they become a powerful tool for analyzing workflows, spotting inefficiencies, and planning smarter. They make it easy to tell how a task progressed, where time may have been wasted, and how similar work can be approached better in the future. Think of them as a detailed map of your project’s journey rather than just a rough sketch.

How to improve the quality of logged time in your team

Here are 4 main rules of high-quality time tracking that will transform your time logs from meaningless numbers to priceless information.

#Rule 1: Well-constructed setup

Let’s say two developers each log 8 hours a day. On the surface, they look equally productive. But when you dig into their entries, you find:

One logs “Dev work” every day with no details.
The other logs “Add pagination to user list view – 1,5h,” “Fix broken image upload on profile page – 2h,” and so on.

Guess which one helps the team plan, analyze, and improve?

In reality, high-quality time logging begins a long time before the first worked hours are even reported. Its very foundation lies in your tasks set up and the time logging rules you lay down before your team.

If you create a vague “Meetings” task, everyone will just dump all sprint plannings, daily meetings, tech calls, quick catch-ups, lengthy brainstorming sessions, and everything else even remotely related to the notion of a meeting into this one place, creating a time log so monstrous in size that it won’t serve any other purpose than occasionally freezing your whole system up.

However, if you make an effort to prepare specific tasks for different types of meetings, and do so in corresponding projects (if applicable), the whole game changes. You’re no longer dealing with countless worthless ‘meeting’ time logs. Instead, you get an abundance of data on where the meeting time actually goes – which projects consume the most of it, what types of meetings are strangely irregular in duration, which ones tend to go on for much longer than estimated, etc.

From a broader perspective, you get to know how much of your team’s time is spent on actual work, and what part of it is swallowed up by the endless meetings. Every single analysis of this kind can lead to optimizations that will revolutionize your team’s work and skyrocket its efficiency.

#Rule 2: Regular and accurate time logs

Now, onto the more challenging stuff. Your setup might be flawless, but it won’t bring any benefits, if people keep forgetting to log time. Chances are, you already know this problem first hand, since it’s one of the battles most project managers and team leaders have to fight.

On average, people will be forgetting to log their time – that’s just how it works. There usually is plenty of more urgent stuff on their plate, and recording their worked hours naturally falls down to the bottom of their priority list. Over and over again, until it’s the end of the month and they have no other choice but to quickly dump a bunch of time logs from the past few weeks into the system, hoping they’re at least somewhat correct. A long, tiresome and utterly unproductive process (trust us – we’ve tested it!).

And that’s how you receive critical data that serve as a foundation for important decisions. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

The first thing you must realize is that you can’t make people log their time regularly. It just won’t happen. What you can do is help them in this process and make it as easy and approachable as possible.

Here are some useful tools that we’ve implemented in our teams:

Clear and easily accessible instructions on how to log time correctly.
Automatic reminders that inform team members if there are any missing hours in their time logs.
Personal dashboards with overview of all recent task- and time-related activities.
Quick time logging options from the personal dashboard level.
Automatic timers that track the time spent on specific tasks.

Ultimately, the goal is to not just get more data, but build smarter tracking habits that result in better cost visibility. And yes, that even includes surfacing where your logged time is helping – or hurting – your bottom line, since many people miss this connection between time tracking and its actual financial impact.

#Rule 3: Logging time with purpose

Once we have the basics ready, it’s time to dig even deeper. It might seem like a lot of work at first (because it is), but things will only get easier once you and your team get the gist of this whole time tracking process. And, most importantly, it’ll turn out to be worth the effort – truly!

So, what does it mean to log time with a purpose? It means to simply be mindful of the information you send out to your team each time you log your hours. Is your work log complete and understandable? Or is it just an empty number?

Purposeful time logging is:

Descriptive – Includes a meaningful description of what was done.
Contextualized – Connected to a relevant task or a goal.
Categorized – Includes relevant tags or labels consistent with your internal work organization rules.

The more complete time log information is provided, the more advanced analysis can be conducted based on the data. The trick is to build a shared understanding of the benefits brought by a purposeful time tracking:

For project managers and team leaders, it provides data necessary to effectively manage resources and steer projects and teams in the right direction.
For team members, it improves communication and collaboration, making everyone’s job easier and more productive.
For stakeholders, it ensures highly useful data is always available, allowing for more informed decision making.

When time logs are stripped of context, they fail to communicate anything useful. But when they’re logged with purpose, they become a source of shared truth – one that everyone on the team can rely on. For example, if someone picks up a ticket that was previously worked on, a clear and detailed log helps them understand what’s already been tried, what problems were encountered, and what remains to be done. It cuts down on handover friction and reduces the risk of duplicate work.

#Rule 4: Custom time reports

No time tracking is complete without proper reporting. After all, accessing time logs for analysis is one of the main points of this whole process. Time reports can and should be the backbone of your business decisions, helping to steer the project in the right direction. They are also the best reflection of your team’s work, its strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

Time reports can be a source of priceless information. Some ideas:

Total time spent per project: Helps gauge project scope, manage budgets, and assess whether you’re on track or over-delivering.
Time spent per task or issue: Reveals hidden complexities, identifies bottlenecks, and supports better task estimation in the future.
Time logged by individual team members: Offers visibility into workload distribution and helps spot burnout risks or underutilized resources.
Billable vs non-billable hours: Critical for invoicing accuracy and understanding profitability across clients or internal initiatives.
Time spent per client or department: Assists in evaluating client value and deciding where to focus attention or resources.
Weekly/monthly time trends: Enables trend spotting – such as rising overtime or declining productivity – and supports capacity planning.
Time allocation across project phases (e.g., planning, development, QA): Useful for improving workflow balance and identifying where time leaks occur.
Time spent on unplanned vs planned work: Improves forecasting accuracy and helps reduce scope creep or interruptions.
Idle time or gaps in logging: Signals potential process inefficiencies or time tracking habits that need improvement.
Estimated vs actual time: Highlights estimation accuracy, encouraging better planning and accountability.

These are just some of the ways in which you can utilize time tracking data. The possibilities are quite endless. However, it’s crucial to understand that no two organizations are exactly alike, and things that work for one might be useless for another. For that reason, the best course of action is to select a time reporting tool that allows you to create custom time reports, and compare whatever data you need.

Another thing to consider is the ability to export your reports to spreadsheets. It’ll prove essential when sharing them with your stakeholders.

How to train for better time logging habits

Getting your team to log time regularly and accurately isn’t about cracking the whip – it’s about creating an environment that supports good habits. Like any process improvement, time tracking works best when it’s treated as an evolving practice, not a top-down mandate.

Here are a few simple, yet powerful strategies to help your team build better time logging habits:

Use reminders and nudges – Gentle reminders via Slack bots, calendar pings, or apps can make a huge difference. People don’t forget because they don’t care; they forget because they’re busy. A well-timed nudge is often all it takes.
Add log templates – Make it easier to write a good log by including mini-templates in your tools. Prompts like “What was done? Why? What’s next?” give structure and take the guesswork out of it.
Run spot-checks and share examples – Occasionally review logged time together during retros or team syncs. Highlight good examples and discuss what could be improved in a supportive way.
Reward consistency, not just quantity – Instead of praising whoever logged the most hours, celebrate those who consistently provide clear, useful entries. You’re trying to reinforce quality, not just compliance.
Find a time tracking tool that matches your needs – The best habits stick when the tools make it easy. Look for a solution that fits your team’s workflow and encourages detailed, timely logging. If you’re using Jira, check out this guide to smarter time tracking in Jira.

Above all, remember: habit-building beats rule-setting. Think of it like any other agile practice – it starts rough, but with time and iteration, it gets embedded into your team’s rhythm. The more you model and support good logging habits, the more natural they’ll become.

Final thoughts: Quality over quantity

When it comes to time tracking, more doesn’t always mean better. Logging eight hours of vague, recycled phrases like “Worked on tasks” won’t help anyone. But four hours logged with clarity and context? That’s gold.

High-quality time logs lead to better visibility, more accurate forecasting, and fewer unpleasant surprises. They empower your team to reflect, adapt, and improve continuously – just like any good agile process should.

So don’t aim for perfection. Aim for improvement. And remember: it’s not just about tracking time – it’s about making time work for you.If you need assistance in building and maintaining high quality of your time tracking, check out SolDevelo apps on the Atlassian Marketplace: Worklogs – Time Tracking and Time Reports for flexible time reporting and Time Assistant – Time Tracking and Workload Dashboard for handy time logging options.