How to Track Time in SimpleBoard — From Timer to Report

Time tracking answers three questions that matter in every project: How long did this actually take? What should I bill the client? Where is my team spending its time? Without accurate time data, you're guessing at all three — and those guesses compound into bad estimates, under-billing, and burnout.

SimpleBoard has time tracking built in. No integrations, no third-party apps, no toggling between tabs. Everything happens inside the board, on the card, where the work already lives. Here's how to set it up and use it effectively.

Step 1 — Enable Time Tracking on a Board

Time tracking is a per-board setting, so you can enable it for client projects that require billing and leave it off for internal boards where it isn't relevant.

To enable it: open the board, go to Board Settings (the gear icon in the top-right corner), and toggle on Time tracking. That's it. Every card on the board will now show a time tracking section when you open it.

You can enable or disable time tracking on any board at any time. Existing time entries are preserved — they're just hidden if you turn tracking off, and visible again if you turn it back on.

Step 2 — Start the Timer on a Card

Open any card on a time-tracking-enabled board. You'll see a timer section in the right sidebar. Click the ▶ Start button to begin tracking time against that card.

The timer runs in the background. You can close the card, navigate to other boards, even close the browser tab — the timer keeps running and is always accessible from the header bar at the top of the app, which shows the currently running timer and the card it's tracking.

Only one timer can run per account at a time. If you start a timer on a new card while one is already running, you'll be prompted to stop the current one first.

When you're done working, open the card (or click the timer in the header) and click ▮▮ Stop. The entry is saved automatically, to the second.

Step 3 — Add a Manual Entry

Forgot to start the timer before a call? Logged time in your head and want to record it after the fact? Manual entries have you covered.

In the card's time section, click Add entry. Enter the duration using natural format: 1h 30m, 45m, or just 90 for 90 minutes. Pick the date the work happened — it defaults to today. Add an optional note if you want to describe what you did during that time. Click Save.

Manual entries appear alongside timer entries in both the card view and in reports. They're treated identically — there's no flag or distinction between "this was timed" and "this was entered manually."

Step 4 — View and Export Reports

Once time entries start accumulating, reports are where the data becomes useful. Navigate to Menu → Reports → Time tracking.

The report view shows all time entries across your workspace, with filters for:

• Board — see time for a specific client project
• Member — see how much time a particular person has logged
• Date range — filter by week, month, or a custom range
• Label — if you use card labels to categorize work types, filter by those

The totals update in real time as you adjust filters. When you have the view you need, click Export to download as CSV or PDF. The CSV includes card title, board, member, date, duration in minutes, and any notes — everything you need to build a client invoice or a team workload report in a spreadsheet.

Who Benefits Most from Time Tracking

Time tracking in SimpleBoard is especially useful for three types of teams:

• Freelancers billing by the hour — the timer gives you accurate records for every client, and reports give you the numbers to put on the invoice without any manual tallying
• Agencies with multiple client projects — run one board per client, filter reports by board, and you have per-client hours in seconds
• Team leads monitoring workload — filter by member to see who's logging the most time and where bottlenecks are forming