Rates, currency and rounding
Four settings — the hourly rate, the currency, whether work is billable by default, and how time is rounded — can be set in three places: on your profile, on a client, and on a project. You rarely need to set all three.
Where a value comes from
Each setting is looked up from the most specific place first: project → client → profile. The first level that has a value of its own wins.
So a rate on your profile applies to everything by default. Give one client a different rate and their projects use it instead. Give one project of that client its own rate and only that project changes. A project without a client simply skips the middle step.
Following, or holding its own value
Every one of these settings on a client or project form is in one of two states:
- Following the level above. The form shows you what it currently resolves to, and where that came from — for example From client “Acme” · Round to nearest 15 min.
- Holding its own value. You typed something here, and it stays put.
The difference matters later: a setting left to follow keeps following. Change your profile rate and every client and project still set to follow moves with it, without you editing them one by one. A setting holding its own value ignores that change — which is the point of overriding it, but also the reason a forgotten override looks like a bug six months on.
Switching a setting back to following is always possible, and it takes effect immediately.
Rounding has three states, not two
Rounding is the one setting where “no rounding” is a real choice rather than the absence of one, so its control offers three:
- Inherit — follow the level above, whatever it says.
- No rounding — deliberately don’t round here, even if the level above does.
- Round to… — round here, to an interval you choose.
Without the middle option there would be no way to say “this client rounds, this one project doesn’t”.
What rounding actually changes
Rounding is applied when time is presented, never when it is recorded. Your entries keep the exact seconds they were logged with, a running timer always shows real elapsed time, and turning rounding off later gives you the original numbers back — nothing has been thrown away.
What rounding affects is the totals: each entry is rounded on its own and those rounded values are added up. That is why two entries of seven minutes each can total half an hour under a 15-minute rule, and why a report total is not always the plain sum of the times you see on the rows.
On the Dashboard and in the Cumulative report you choose which time the charts count: Actual time, as you tracked it, or Rounded time, as your rounding rules turn it into what you bill. It starts on Actual time. On the Dashboard the choice applies to the Time by client and Time by project charts only — the totals above them and the Billing status chart always show their own times. In Cumulative it applies to the table and both charts. Either way it changes which time is counted, never an amount. More on the switch in Report charts.
Amounts and currencies
An entry’s amount is its rounded time multiplied by the rate that applies to it — and only if it is marked billable. The “$” marker on a row is that billable flag alone; it doesn’t indicate a currency, and an entry can be billable at a rate of zero.
The currency is inherited the same way as the rate, so one report can contain more than one — and its totals then list each currency separately, never added together. How that works, and what changing a currency later does to past entries, is in working in more than one currency.