Time Accounting

If you want to know how much time you need for your each project or ticket, enable the time accounting (turn on the switch on the top left side of the page).

Time Accounting Management Screen in Zammad

How it works

Settings

Zammad’s time accounting uses ticket Selector (filter) to check if a ticket is considered for the time accounting or not. If a ticket is applicable, Zammad will request the agent to provide how much time was needed to process the current ticket step.

In order for Zammad to bring up the time accounting dialog to an agent, the agent has to update the ticket together with an article of any type. The article part is mandatory.

However, the time accounting dialog is not mandatory and can be canceled by your agents if needed. You cannot enforce time accounting.

If a ticket is no longer considered for the time accounting, the already accounted time will be preserved.

Tip

The selector applies to the ticket state before any attribute changes have been saved. That means if your agent is e.g. going to close a ticket alongside writing an article, the ticket selector has to match the ticket state before closing for the time accounting dialog to appear.

Hint

👋 Looking for more depth explanation on conditions? 🤓

Many condition settings in Zammad, no matter if in ticket scope or not, re-appear in several places of Zammad. For this reason we created a dedicated documentation section to avoid duplicate content.

Have a look at Object conditions to learn even more! 🎉

Time Accounting Ticket Selector

By default, agents account time as a unitless numerical input. However, it is possible to show a specific unit by configuring Unit setting, which provides several options:

no unit

Default behavior, no unit is shown next to the time value.

hour(s)

Shows hour(s) as the unit next to the time value.

quarter-hour(s)

Shows quarter-hour(s) as the unit next to the time value.

minute(s)

Shows minute(s) as the unit next to the time value.

custom unit

Shows a custom unit that can be specified as free input.

Time Accounting Unit

Warning

The configurable time accounting unit is used only for display!

No numerical transformation will be applied to the values, the unit is merely used to indicate to the agents in which units their time is accounted. The original time values will be preserved.

Time Accounting Unit when Recording

Activity Types

Activity Types can be used to group the different ticket time accounting entries together. For example, entries that are relevant to a “Billing” type.

Time Accounting Activity Types

When you enable the recording of the Activity Type, the agents will be able to select a type from this list.

Time Accounting Activity Type Selection for Agents

Additionally, a column with an associated activity type will be rendered for an entry in the Activity table under the Accounted Time tab.

You can manage available activity types in this screen like any other Zammad object. Only active types will be available for the selection when recording new times.

New Time Accounting Activity Type Dialog

Activity types can be set as default, and in that case they will be pre-selected for the agents when they are asked to account their time. It is also possible to unset default activity type, in which case no type will be pre-selected and the agents can make their choice.

Accounted Time

Under the Accounted Time tab, Zammad provides a section for reviewing all accounted times for your tickets. Accounted times are displayed per years and months.

If you have tickets that are overlapping several months, you can differentiate by time units and time units total (e.g. to allow partial billing) in the downloaded file.

Select the right month

Usually you want to bill accounted time of other months than the current one. Just select the relevant year and month to receive the accounted times and ticket information.

Screenshot showing a selection for year and month on time accounting
Tickets and their accounted time

Zammad allows you to receive the accounted information just like you need them. For this you currently have four options to review and also download the relevant data as CSV.

To download the CSV data, use the download button right next to each heading (e.g. “Ticket”).

This can also be automated with API calls.

Hint

Only the first 20 entries are shown for each table. To see all of them, simply download the records in CSV.

Activity

This filter works similar to the ticket filter, with one exception: You’ll find each individual time accounting step of your agents. This is what you’d also see in the ticket’s history before Zammad 5.2.

In this list you’ll see the following ticket information:

  • Number

  • Title

  • Customer

  • Organization of customer (if applicable)

  • Agent that accounted the time

  • Time units accounted in the current activity

  • Activity type (if enabled)

  • Created at

Ticket

This filter contains all relevant tickets from the selected month.

In this list you’ll see the following ticket information:

  • Number

  • Title

  • Customer

  • Organization of customer (if applicable)

  • Agent currently assigned (ticket owner)

  • Time units accounted in the current month

  • Time units total (time accounted during ticket life)

  • Created at

  • Closed at (if applicable)

Customer

This provides you a per user filter on accounted time units. Each user has a total of time accounted in the current month (over all applicable tickets).

In this list you’ll see the following ticket information:

  • Customer

  • Organization of customer (if applicable)

  • Time units accounted in the current month

Organization

This provides a list of all organizations where customers have caused accounted time in that month.

You can also see entries for customers that are part of a primary organization. Users without an organization can be found in the Customer filter.

Time accounting view with time accounted filters

Each heading allows you to download the CSV versions of the provided view via the download button next to it.