How to Track Time in Jira Without Using the "Time Spent" Field?

[Davide Schillaci]

Hi everyone,

Some teams in my company have always used time-based estimation in Jira, using the Original Estimate field and the native Time Spent field to track progress and compare estimated vs actual time.

Recently, we have integrated Jira to our ERP system. Now, logging time in Jira requires selecting a valid Internal Order from the ERP. Since not all teams are part of this process yet, they can’t use the Time Spent field anymore.

However, these teams still would like to use Jira to:

• Estimate in time (not story points, not issue count)
• Track the actual time spent
• Compare estimates with real effort

I know we can use custom fields for estimation, but I couldn’t find a good alternative to track actual time spent without using the native Time Spent field.

Using a generic Number custom field feels too limited and doesn’t provide the same flexibility or reporting capabilities.

Has anyone faced a similar situation? How did you deal with it? Any workarounds or suggestions?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can share their experience or ideas!

[Gizem Gökçe _OBSS_]

Hello @Davide Schillaci ,

We ran into a similar situation at my previous company. Beyond just the system limitations, our developers often forgot to log time, or entered inaccurate worklogs, so the native Time Spent field became unreliable for tracking actual effort.

As a workaround, we shifted to measuring how long each issue stayed in different statuses as a proxy for effort. Surprisingly, it worked really well and gave us much better visibility into where time was actually being spent.

Our solution was Timepiece – Time in Status for Jira. It allowed us to track how long each issue spent in each status, helping us estimate effort, identify bottlenecks, and analyze team performance, all without relying on worklogs. At the time, I was working for a company in the defense industry, running Jira Data Center (actually back then it was Jira Server). Since this app operate in isolation within Data Center, security was not a concern, and we were able to adopt Timepiece very smoothly.

Now, I work with the team that builds Timepiece, but for many years I was just a happy user. So I can genuinely speak from both the customer and vendor side. The app offers several insightful reports like Status Duration, Assignee Duration, and Duration Between Statuses. It reads directly from issue history and doesn’t require any changes to your workflows.

It’s available for both Jira Cloud and Data Center, and was a game-changer for us when we needed to go beyond Jira’s native capabilities.

It’s a flexible solution that might be a great fit for your case. Let me know if you’d like help getting started!

Best Regards,

Gizem

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Davide Schillaci 

An alternate way to measure the productivity would be track time in each status of the issue workflow. You can use Jira automation or use Jira Rest API's to pull this data. Also a mktplace can help too. If you would be interested to try out one, take a look at

Time in Status Reports 

With this app you generate time in each workflow status for multiple issues with multiple filter and grouping options. The app has 20+ reports to meet a variety of use cases. Pls do reach out for any further queries.

More details here.

Disclaimer : I am part of the app team for this add-on

[Deniz Oğuz - Starware]

Hi,

"Log work" dialog of WorklogPRO is custimizable. You can add "Internal Order" options from your ERP system to "Log work" dialog and force users to chosse them. There are two different ways to do it.

- Create a simple single-select custom field. To populate this field with your "Internal Order" options, you can call our  rest api from your ERP system.

- You can create a "rest api field". In that case, you provide URL to pull valid "Internal Order" options and we pull necessary data when displaying "log work" dialog.

So, using our app, you can continue to work with Jira's estimate and time spent fields. Your existing worklogs will be recognized by WorklogPRO and later if you decide to uninstall the app, your worklogs still will be available inside the Jira. 

PS: I work for the vendor of this app.

[John Funk]

Hi Davide - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Can you help us to understand why the teams are no longer able to use the Time Spent field? What physically changed to prevent them from logging work to this field? What is the EXACT new process for logging time using the ERP? 

[Davide Schillaci]

Hi John,
Thanks for jumping in!
Just to give you a bit of context: we've set up a solution using Tempo Timesheets along with some custom development. When logging work, users are required to fill in a worklog attribute called Internal Order, which is pulled from our ERP system. The reason why some teams can not log time right now is related to our internal processes, is not a technical issue.
That said, we're not looking to change our current setup — the main focus of my question is to explore what native Jira features might be available as alternatives to the Time Spent field.
Really appreciate your input, thanks again!

[John Funk]

You are welcome - thanks for asking questions!

I don't think there are any alternatives - even Tempo Timesheets though they store the data in there own database, sync with the Timespent field. Also any native Jira reports using time would be based on that field. Other marketplace apps (basically competitors to Tempo, use the Timespent field natively instead of storing the data outside of Jira). 

[Anton from JetHeads_io]

Hi, @Davide Schillaci ! 👋

Just to better understand your case: How do you ensure that users enter the Internal Order for the worklog? Do you have any automation rules in place for this? What validation logic are you using?

This will help me suggest a more tailored solution.

[Davide Schillaci]

Hi Anton,
Thanks for jumping in!
Just to give you a bit of context: we've set up a solution using Tempo Timesheets along with some custom development. When logging work, users are required to fill in a worklog attribute called Internal Order, which is pulled from our ERP system. The reason why some teams can not log time right now is related to our internal processes, is not a technical issue.
That said, we're not looking to change our current setup — the main focus of my question is to explore what native Jira features might be available as alternatives to the Time Spent field.
Really appreciate your input, thanks again!

[Anton from JetHeads_io]

Got it.

Jira time spent field is a calculated field, it sums all work logs that you have added to Jira (Tempo also duplicates all time logged to Jira work logs). 

So if your custom solution blocks logging work on a Tempo level, then you are free to use any work logging in Jira (native or any third-party app for Data Center). If you need to have Tempo as a time tracking provider selected, then native Jira work log will be disabled and the only option is to use third-party app and use its own UI to log time directly to Jira, bypassing Tempo.

Hope that helps!

[Eduardo Anflor - MindPro]

Hi, @Davide Schillaci 

Welcome to the community!

Jira offers a simple worklog management system, where you can add estimated time. Then you enter worklogs and the system informs you of the progress. It works well if you want to keep it simple and track the time in the OOTB report. However, it does not allow you to distribute and track planned work (bags) among different teams working on the same project/activity/plan. If you are open to a marketplace solution, I recommend Mindpro Deliver. I work at Mindpro, and the app was developed to cover scenarios similar to the ones you just mentioned.

You can create Delivery Plans (you can consider them as contracts, for example) and accounts (buckets) to define the hours for the customer and how the hours will be distributed among teams:

When logging their time, users will be asked for which team they are entering the hours (exclusive feature), so you will be able to track where they are spending time more accurately:

You can also track the consumption of these hours and costs (per plan and individually) using the app reports:

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Eduardo

[Davide Schillaci]

Hi Eduardo,

Thanks for sharing this. Your app looks really interesting, but it's not quite what we're looking for at the moment. I'm particularly interested in exploring what Jira offers natively as an alternative to the "Time spent" field. Also, just to clarify, our deployment type is Data Center, not Cloud.

Thanks again for jumping into the conversation, and I wish you all the best!