Jira Time Tracking Billing for Billable Projects: Ensure Every Hour Is Logged Before Invoicing
- michalkrysiuk64
- 17 lis
- 5 minut(y) czytania
Billing by the hour only works if every billable hour actually makes it into your timesheet.
In many agencies and software houses, Jira is the main source of truth for work – but not always for time. At the end of the month you export worklogs, and suddenly:
Invoices are lower than they should be.
Finance cannot close the month on time.
Clients question the numbers because the data looks incomplete.
This post shows how to use Jira together with Worklog Reminder to improve jira time tracking billing, keep jira billable hours complete, and increase jira timesheet accuracy – without turning into a professional “time tracking chaser”.
We will walk through:
Setting weekly and monthly reminders for project teams.
Using hour- or day-based thresholds for billable work.
Using Redirect to push people straight into their timesheet.
Reviewing results with View Reminder Report.
A simple PM “playbook” you can repeat before every invoice.
The Real Problem: Missing Hours = Missing Revenue
In a typical billable project:
Developers log their time in Jira worklogs.
Finance exports worklogs at the end of the month.
Invoices are based on those logs.
If people forget to log a few hours here and there, the effect compounds:
10 people in a team.
Each forgets to log 1 hour per day, 2 days per week.
That is 20 hours per week missing from your jira billable hours.
Multiply this by your hourly rate and by several teams, and you lose serious money every month. Worse: incomplete data reduces jira timesheet accuracy, so you cannot trust your own reporting.
The usual workaround is manual:
End-of-month Slack messages like “everyone, please update your Jira worklogs today”.
Spreadsheets or BI tools highlighting gaps.
Time-consuming follow-ups from PMs and finance.
It works, but it does not scale and it drains time from higher-value work.
Turning Jira Time Tracking Billing into an Enforced Policy
Jira itself lets you log work and report on it, but it does not enforce that people actually log everything. Worklog Reminder adds that missing piece:
You define who needs to log time, in which window, and how much.
The app checks automatically at the end of that window.
If someone is under the threshold, they get a reminder and a direct path to fix it.
This is exactly what you need for jira time tracking billing: clear rules, automated checks, and targeted nudges when billable hours are missing.
Let’s look at how to set it up for billable projects.
Step 1: Create Weekly or Monthly Reminders for the Project Team
For billable work you usually care about two main windows:
Weekly – to keep timesheets fresh and avoid huge backfills.
Monthly – to ensure all hours are in before you issue invoices.
In the Create Worklog Reminder screen:
Choose the relevant project.
Under Applicable users, add:
The whole project team group (e.g., Project-A Developers).
Any dedicated QA, BA, or support staff billed to that client.
Save this as a dedicated reminder, e.g.:
Client X – Weekly billable hours.
Client X – Month-end billable check.
This ensures you are only nudging people whose time actually matters for that project’s revenue.
Step 2: Set Thresholds in Days or Hours
For billing, you will usually choose one of two styles.
Option A: Day-based thresholds
Good when you expect people to log something every day they work on the client.
Examples:
Weekly policy: WEEKLY ≥ 5 DAYS logged.
Monthly policy: MONTHLY ≥ 20 DAYS logged.
Use this when:
The team works full-time or near full-time on the client.
You want to discourage batching all time into one or two days.
Option B: Hour-based thresholds
Good when you have part-time allocations, or when daily patterns are less important than total hours.
Examples:
Weekly policy: WEEKLY ≥ 30 HOURS logged.
Monthly policy: MONTHLY ≥ 160 HOURS logged (for full-time).
You can also combine thresholds per role or contract type, for example:
Full-time dev: MONTHLY ≥ 160 HOURS.
Part-time dev: MONTHLY ≥ 80 HOURS.
Contractor: MONTHLY ≥ 120 HOURS.
The idea: the reminder is tied directly to what you expect to be billable.
Step 3: Use Redirect to Push People Straight to Their Timesheet
When someone is below the threshold, you must make it as easy as possible to fix it.
For billable projects, the Redirect action is often the best choice:
The user sees an in-product banner when they open Jira.
After a short delay, a new tab opens with their timesheet or personal time tracking view.
They are already in context and ready to fill in missing hours.
Compared to a soft banner or a plain email, this gives you:
Less friction between “you have missing hours” and “I am fixing them”.
A higher chance that the user actually acts before getting distracted.
To configure this, set your reminder’s action type to Redirect, and point it to the page your team uses for time entry (for example, your Jira timesheet app or native worklog view).
Step 4: Check Timesheet Accuracy with View Reminder Report
Now you have policies and redirects in place. Before you send invoices to the client, you want a quick way to answer:
Who is under-logging billable hours?
On which days or weeks are hours missing?
Is our jira timesheet accuracy good enough to invoice confidently?
That is where View Reminder Report comes in.
The Reminder Report shows, for a single policy:
How many users are tracked.
Overall compliance rate.
Entries that need attention vs fully missing logs.
A matrix of users × days/weeks/months, with colors:
Green – target met.
Amber – partial (some hours, but below threshold).
Red – missing when hours were required.
You get an instant visual of where your billing risk is.
A Simple Pre-Invoicing Playbook for Project Managers
Here is a lightweight routine you can run every month to stabilize your billing.
1. One Week Before Invoicing: Open the Reminder Report
Open the project’s Weekly or Monthly billable reminder.
Click View Reminder Report.
Set the history window to cover the upcoming invoice period.
Look for:
Red or amber cells for key people.
Users with consistently low compliance.
2. Targeted Redirects or Emails to the Right People
For anyone with missing or partial logs:
Make sure they are covered by a Redirect-based reminder.
Optionally send a short, focused email:
Mention the billing period.
Add a link to their timesheet.
Set a clear deadline (e.g., “Please complete all billable hours by Thursday EOD.”).
The goal: no generic “everyone update your time” messages; only direct nudges to those who need it.
3. Final Check and CSV Export
The day before invoices are prepared:
Re-open View Reminder Report.
Confirm that all critical users are compliant (mostly green).
Use Export CSV:
The file gives you a clean, structured summary per user and time window.
Finance or BI can ingest it into their tools for invoice calculation or margin analysis.
With this small routine, you go from “we hope Jira billable hours are ok” to “we know they are”.
For Agencies and Software Houses: Why This Matters
If you run multiple billable projects in parallel, the compounding effect of missing hours is brutal:
You lose revenue.
Your jira time tracking billing data becomes unreliable.
Finance spends extra time reconciling numbers.
Clients may challenge invoices based on incomplete or inconsistent logs.
By turning time tracking into a clear policy, automating checks, and using targeted redirects and reports, you:
Increase jira timesheet accuracy without micromanaging.
Give PMs a repeatable invoicing routine.
Give finance cleaner input for invoice generation and margin tracking.
And you do it all inside the tools your teams already use every day.
Try Worklog Reminder in Your Jira
If you want to make sure every billable hour is logged before invoicing, you can try this setup directly in your own Jira Cloud:
Install the app from Atlassian Marketplace
Read the product documentation and setup guides
Free for up to 10 users, with a trial for larger teams, so you can test weekly and monthly billing policies before rolling them out company-wide.
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