The problem is never the tool. It is always the habits behind it.
In fact, most teams turn on Redmine time tracking on day one and never revisit the setup. Engineers log hours. Managers pull reports. Finance exports to a spreadsheet and manually cleans the data before billing. However, that gap between what Redmine records and what your team can actually use is entirely fixable. It does not require a new tool. It requires consistent habits and the right structure from the start.
Log time against issues (not projects), define activity types before anyone starts logging, add a comment on every entry, log on the same day work happens, run weekly spent time checks, and separate billable from non-billable work. These seven habits produce time data that managers, finance teams, and clients can trust.
The issue is not Redmine. Instead, the issue is that most teams configure time tracking without agreeing on what they are actually measuring.
Here is what inconsistent time logging looks like in practice:
When any of these habits exist, no report Redmine produces is reliable. As a result, a delivery manager asking “how long did this feature take?” cannot trust the answer. A finance team asking for billable hours has to rebuild the data before they can use it.
Fortunately, the fix is seven habits, applied consistently.
Redmine time tracking organises entries by activity type. However, most teams leave the defaults unchanged and never agree on what each activity actually means. That is the first thing to fix.
Set up a short, clear list of activities that maps to how your team works:
| Activity | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Development | Writing, reviewing, or debugging code |
| Design | UI, UX, wireframes, visual assets |
| Testing | QA, test case execution, bug verification |
| Project Management | Planning, standups, status reporting |
| Client Communication | Calls, emails, written updates to clients |
| Documentation | Specs, guides, internal documentation |
| Support | Handling tickets or post-delivery issues |
Keep the list to 6–8 activities maximum. In practice, every activity your team has to think about before selecting is an activity that will be chosen incorrectly.
Admin: Set your activity list under Administration → Enumerations → Activities. Disable any defaults that do not match your workflow.
Redmine allows time to be logged against a project or against a specific issue. However, most teams mix both without realising it.
Consequently, project-level time logging gives you a number with no context. You know 12 hours went into the project. You do not know what those hours were for. That data cannot support sprint reviews, client billing, or delivery planning.
Set one rule and enforce it log time against the issue, always. If there is no issue for the work, create one before logging. As a result, this single change makes every spent time report meaningful, because every hour traces back to a specific piece of work.
The comment field in Redmine’s time entry is marked optional. However, treat it as required.
A useful time entry has three things: hours, the right activity, and a comment that explains what was done.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| “Development work” | “Refactored API authentication — removed deprecated token method” |
| “Done” | “QA pass on invoice export — 3 bugs filed, 2 resolved” |
| “Meeting” | “Sprint planning — agreed scope for release 2.4, updated issue priorities” |
One sentence is enough. In fact, that sentence is what transforms a log entry into a record your team can stand behind during a client review, a sprint retrospective, or an audit.
End-of-week time logging is the most common accuracy problem in Redmine time tracking.
Specifically, hours logged from memory are consistently inaccurate. By contrast, same-day entries are more precise. A developer who logs daily gives you data you can rely on. A developer who reconstructs a full week on Friday afternoon gives you an estimate dressed as a record.
Set a clear team norm log time on the day the work happened.
For teams where this feels like friction, the Redmineflux Time Tracker Desktop App lets engineers log time directly from their desktop without opening a browser or navigating to the Redmine issue. As a result, the barrier to daily logging drops to a single click.
Most teams run time reports at the end of the month when they need the numbers for billing. By then, errors are baked in and corrections take time.
In contrast, a weekly check takes 10 minutes. Correcting a month of bad data takes much longer.
At the end of each week, pull the spent time report and scan for:
In Redmine: Project → Spent Time → Filter by this week. Export to CSV if you need to share it or keep a weekly record.
Redmine does not distinguish between billable and non-billable time by default. For teams that bill clients, this separation must therefore come from your activity setup or from a plugin.
The manual approach — paired activity names:
| Billable | Non-Billable |
|---|---|
| Development (Billable) | Development (Internal) |
| Testing (Billable) | Testing (Internal) |
| Client Communication | Team Communication |
This works for small teams with simple billing. However, for teams managing multiple clients at different rates, manual activity naming becomes difficult to maintain and easy to get wrong.
The Redmineflux Timesheet Plugin handles billable classification and per-user billing rates directly without building workarounds into your activity list. Billing rates are set per user or role. Additionally, reports export in client-ready format. No spreadsheet cleanup required.
If a manager reviews work before invoicing, Redmine’s native spent time report is not built for that workflow. It shows the data. However, it does not let anyone approve or reject it.
Teams that need an approval step use one of two approaches:
Option A — Manual export: Export to spreadsheet, mark rows as approved, send to finance. Workable for very small teams. Difficult to scale. Error-prone.
Option B — Structured approval inside Redmine: The team submits time entries, a manager reviews and approves or returns them all inside Redmine. Approved entries lock. Rejected entries go back with a reason. Finance gets a clean export.
If your process involves client billing, payroll reporting, or regular timesheet sign-off, Option B removes the spreadsheet and keeps every step in one place.
When these seven habits are in place, your time reports become genuinely useful:
Ultimately, none of this requires replacing Redmine. It requires consistent habits and when the manual approach reaches its limit the right plugin to handle the approval and billing layer.
FAQ
What are the most important Redmine time tracking best practices?
Log time against issues not projects, define a short clear list of activity types before anyone starts logging, require a comment on every entry, log on the same day the work happens, and run a weekly spent time check. These five habits produce time data your team, managers, and clients can rely on.
Can I enforce time tracking standards in Redmine without a plugin?
You can set expectations through team policy required comments, daily logging norms, agreed activity types. However, Redmine does not have built-in validation that blocks blank comments or enforces same-day entry. For structured enforcement with submission deadlines and approval workflows, you need a timesheet plugin.
What is the difference between Redmine spent time and a timesheet?
Spent time is Redmine’s raw log hours recorded against issues and projects. A timesheet, however, is a structured, period-based view of that data with a submission and approval workflow. Redmine provides the former natively. The Redmineflux Timesheet Plugin provides the latter with approval routing, billing rate assignment, and locked entries after sign-off.
How do I export a billable hours report from Redmine?
Filter the spent time report by project, date range, and your billable activity types, then export to CSV. For automated billable reports with per-client rates and client-ready formatting, the Redmineflux Timesheet Plugin generates this directly no manual formatting required.
Does Redmine time tracking work across multiple projects?
Yes. The spent time report filters across all projects or scopes to a single one. Furthermore, cross-project time visibility in one unified view is one of Redmine’s structural advantages over single-project tools.
Key takeaway: Redmine time tracking is only as reliable as the habits behind it. Define activities. Log to issues. Write comments. Log daily. Check weekly. Separate billable work. Add approval before billing. When the manual approach reaches its limit, the Redmineflux Timesheet Plugin handles the rest.
