Top 2 Jira Time-Tracking Add-Ons for tracking cost centers, customer projects and contracts: Review

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Accurate tracking of hours is crucial for optimizing operations within a cost center, making sure your customer projects are billed accurately or just to fulfils contracts . More over having the tooling to easily categorize all hours for each case and prepare them for accountancy will save you a lot energy and time

Unfortunately, JIRA does not provide all the additional functionality that an organization needs to accurately track hours for the different cases your organization has.  That is why the solution is found in the Atlassian marketplace where a number of time-tracking apps are readily available at different functionality levels and price points. The question then becomes which one to choose and how to effectively differentiate between the available options.

There are several questions that your organisation needs to ask when choosing a complete time-tracking add-on to track hours for customer projects, contracts, Cost Centers etc.  

1. Will time-tracking be quick and easy for team members to do? 

It is important that time-tracking is intuitive, quick and easy for team members to do as this will increase compliance and ensure you get timely and accurate time tracking done on a regular basis. 

2. Can we organize each time entry by employees in different categories like, Cost Center A/B/C, Contract A/B/C , Customer Project A/B/C, or any other meaningful your organization entity

3. Can we organize employees into teams so that we can later extract all the time data also into teams time reports 

4. Will team members be able to log non-work time such as vacations, PTO, overtime, sick leave, admin, meetings etc.?

Having the ability also to log time on such activities will give you a full overview of how your teams spent their  time.

5. Can we check for missing hours that people forgot to log?

Even the easiest, most intuitive time-tracking process will leave gaps for error when team members are busy or simply forget to log worked hours. This is why you want your chosen Atlassian app to enable them to log forgotten hours easily.

6. Is it possible for users to submit timesheets for approval to their managers and team leaders?

Some Jira time-tracking add-ons offer the possibility for team members to submit timesheets for approvals to their managers so information can be double-checked and errors caught more efficiently. 

7. Can we get reliable and ideal Time Reports for each of the entities that you have defined and to be easily exported?

Having clear reports on how much time and for what period is spent on different cross project activities like Cost Centers, Customer Projects, Contracts is critical. This data should be exportable and in an appropriate format.

Top 2 Jira Time-Tracking Apps - A Comparison Table

Now that we’ve discussed what important functionalities a truly reliable Jira time-tracking app should cover, we’ve plotted our top 2 picks against them in the below table, along with their pricing information. This will help you make a more informed decision on which add-ons are worth trying and most likely to fit your unique needs. Here are a few words for each solution:

Tempo Timesheets

Pros: Tempo is probably the best known and most popular Jira time tracking app. It has extensive functionality and a sleek UI. 

Cons: It comes at a higher price point so if budget is a consideration, there may be good alternatives available if you don’t need to use all of the extra features of Tempo.Approval mechanism allows only one Approver not multiples

Timescale 

Pros: Timescale is a relatively new addition to the market. It  has proven itself as a reliable and cost-effective alternative to Tempo. It is packed with functionality, constantly updated, yet affordable for large and small teams alike. It has a true focus on service based organization, and reporting on billable hours and clients

Cons: As a new player there are still some missing extra fine tune configurations

Functionality	Tempo Timesheets	Timescale
Quick and easy time tracking
Assigning Logged Time to Cost Centers, Customer Projects, Contracts etc	Using the Account Functionality of the app(check ** below table)	Using the Account/Client Functionality of the app(check ** below table)
Team Creation and management
Tracking time on non-JIRA tickets  activities (sick, vacation, overtime, meetings, trips)	Using Internal Jira Issues
Timesheet Approval Mechanism
Teams Timesheets and adding missing hours
Reliable Time Reports per Team and Accounts
Price for up to 10 users	paid	free
Price for 50 users	206$	75$
Price for 200 users	700$	240$

*Prices are taken for Aug of 2024

** Accounts are a way to track time across multiple teams and multiple projects. By connecting accounts to specific projects, worklogs can be assigned to accounts to provide data for reporting and bookkeeping. 

Example of Accounts you can define for your organization:

• COST_CENTER_HR

• COST_CENTER_IT

• CUSTOMER_A_SLA

• PRESALES

• CUSTOMER_A_CHANGE_REQUESTS

• CUSTOMER_A_BILLABLE_HOURS

• INITIATIVE_A

• CAPEX

• OPEX

• CONTRACT_A

• INTERNAL_NON_BILLABLE

The ultimate goal is to create as many as you want Accounts on which people can track time (across multiple JIRA projects) and then to be able to generate time reports based on those accounts. 

In conclusion

We hope this comparison review has helped you think more in-depth about the features and functionality you need in a time-tracking Jira app to meet your organisation’s needs. A reliable time-tracking tool can help you bill clients accurately, expedite the invoicing process, enable your teams to track time quickly and efficiently and allow you better productivity management and visibility over team and project health. A superior reporting ability on accounts will provide you with a much-needed overview of how, where and how efficiently time is spent across your teams and organisation.