How to log billable time with categories#

Audience: both — staff log the time, admins own the taxonomy the categories come from.

Every time entry records what kind of work it was, and that one field decides how it bills. The category is a slug from your org's taxonomy, not free text. This page covers both halves: logging it, and owning the list.

1. Log an entry#

Three surfaces write time, and all three take the same two fields.

• Timer stop on the workbench or the day page.
• Quick log on Today.
• The entry form on a ticket or a project phase.

You pick a category from the ordered picker the admin arranged in Settings. The picker shows live categories only, in the order the admin set. Two fields ride with it:

• Billable — the category's default applies, so most entries need no thought.
• Reason — required when a category is set to demand one and you turn billing off. The set is fixed: warranty, courtesy, in_retainer_block, sla_covered, internal, mistake. Sending an entry non-billable with no reason is refused with a 422.

On a ticket the wrap-up sheet also offers a suggestion chip from the billing audit, showing the probability it read of the entry's billability ("Looks billable", "Looks non-billable — add a reason?"). Clicking it prefills the form. Nothing is written until you submit.

2. Where a category lands#

The slug keys three places at once, which is why it is a slug and not a label:

• The entry's work_type.
• The T&M rate card on the contract, so a rate card row for on_site prices on-site work.
• The reports and scorecards, which read the same column, and the report builder's field catalog.

A label can change any time. A slug never does, because changing it would re-point every historical entry and every rate card row at once.

3. Work logged before the taxonomy existed#

Capture surfaces normalize pasted free text through a mapping table, so an old value still lands correctly. onsite resolves to on_site. Anything unmapped is refused rather than guessed — a silently mispriced entry is worse than a rejected one.

Admins manage that map on the same settings page. Add a row: the free text a tech might type, and the category it should resolve to. Matching is case-insensitive and ignores surrounding spaces. Migration 0110 seeded the map once from the free text already in the database; anything you add shows as "added here" rather than "migration 0110".

Re-key history is a separate, deliberate action on a row you added. It rewrites every entry (and rate-card row) still carrying the legacy value onto the category's slug, and reports how many it touched. Adding a mapping does not rewrite history on its own.

4. Admin: run the taxonomy#

Open Settings → Time categories. Each row carries the three flags the capture surfaces read:

• Billable by default — applied to new entries in that category.
• Ask for a reason when non-billable — the entry form demands a typed reason before billing can be switched off.
• Keyed by cards — documentation that T&M rate cards are expected to price this category. It is a hint for whoever maintains contracts, not a write path.

The up and down buttons set the order, and that order is what every capture picker shows. Reordering writes the whole order in one call.

5. Admin: retire, never delete#

Retire takes a category out of the pickers while leaving its entries alone. Entries and rate-card rows keep the slug they were written with, so historical work keeps its meaning, and the Entries column on each row tells you how much history rides on it before you retire anything. Retired rows group at the bottom of the list for reading; their stored positions are untouched. Restore puts one back in the pickers.

Deleting a category would orphan entries and silently re-price them at the contract default. There is no delete for that reason.

6. What an admin cannot see here#

Rate-card rows. Contracts stay contract-owned: a category's "keyed by cards" flag says what a contract is expected to price, and editing the card itself happens on the contract. See how to price a service contract.

What you learned#

• A category is a permanent slug, and it decides billing before approval.
• Turning billing off on a reason-demanding category requires a typed reason, or the entry is refused.
• Legacy free text normalizes through a mappable table. Unmapped values are refused.
• Categories are retired with their history intact, never deleted.