Time as effort — not attendance
Projects lets you log time against a task: hours, a date, an optional note, and whether the time is billable. The worker defaults to your own employee record, so logging your own effort is a single field, but you can attribute time to another employee when recording on someone's behalf. Set estimated hours on a task and the page shows "X logged of Y estimated", turning over- and under-runs into something visible early rather than at the post-mortem.
The critical distinction — and a favourite exam point — is that task time is effort, not attendance. Effort answers "how long did this work take, and is it billable?" and it feeds project costing and budgets. HR attendance answers "was this person present, and for how many hours?" and it feeds rosters, overtime and payroll. AWRA keeps them in separate systems, with separate permissions, on purpose: a project time log is never a clock-in, and you never end up reconciling two timesheets that disagree.
Logging time is gated by its own permission, distinct from editing tasks, so an organisation can let people record effort without granting broader edit rights. Because the log lives on the task, effort naturally rolls up to the project and to per-employee summaries for costing and capacity conversations.
Key takeaways
- Log hours (billable or not) per task; the worker defaults to your own employee record.
- Estimated hours give an "X of Y" read to catch over/under-runs early.
- Task effort ≠ HR attendance: effort feeds budgets/costing, attendance feeds payroll — separate systems.
- Time logging has its own permission, distinct from task edit.