Duration and date rules

For members, managers and admins

Every entry in ChronoTab has a duration and a work date. This page is the reference for the formats the Duration field accepts and the rules the Work date field follows, and it is for every role. The same rules apply in the dashboard, in the browser extension and in a /spend comment.

Duration formats

The Duration field accepts several common ways of writing the same amount of time. These all mean 150 minutes:

You type	Format	Meaning
2.5	Decimal hours	Two and a half hours
2h 30m	Hours and minutes	Two and a half hours
2:30	Hours and minutes with a colon	Two and a half hours
150m	Minutes only	Two and a half hours

You can leave out a component:

• 2h means two hours, and 90m means ninety minutes.
• .5h means half an hour, the same as 0.5h.
• 2h30m works as well as 2h 30m — the space is optional.
• Input is not case-sensitive: 2H 30M is accepted.

The dashboard’s Log time sheet and the browser extension’s form also offer quick chips for 15m, 30m, 1h and 4h, which fill the field for you.

What is rejected

• Zero or a negative amount. A duration must be greater than zero, so 0, 0:00 and -1 are refused.
• A minutes part of 60 or more. Minutes are a part of an hour, so 2h 70m and 2:60 are refused; write 3h 10m instead.
• Anything the field cannot read. abc, 2x, 1.5.5 and 2:30:45 do not parse and are refused.
• More than 24 hours. A single entry cannot be longer than 24 hours; 25h and 100h are refused.

Long entries

An entry of more than 12 hours is accepted, but ChronoTab flags it as longer than a typical day so you can double-check it before saving. Exactly 12 hours carries no flag. A duration is recorded to the nearest minute; a decimal amount that rounds to zero minutes is treated as zero and refused.

Rounding on timesheets

ChronoTab records the exact duration you enter and never rounds it while you are logging or reviewing time. Rounding applies only when a timesheet is generated, and it is applied to each line, then frozen into that timesheet:

• Increment — 1 minute, 6 minutes, 15 minutes or 30 minutes.
• Direction — Nearest or Up.

The rounded total is the sum of the rounded lines, not a rounding of the time kept underneath. Reports never round, so a report and a timesheet can show slightly different totals for the same period. An admin sets the organisation’s default in Organisation settings, and a manager or admin can override it for one timesheet in Generate a timesheet.

Work dates

A Work date is the calendar date the work was done, as it was on your clock — not the moment the entry was saved. It is a calendar date with no time attached.

• The field defaults to today. What counts as today comes from your timezone, not the server’s: work you log at 1am lands on the day it was for you, in the week you expect. See Your profile to set your timezone.
• You can choose any date in the past. You cannot log time for a future date; the field says Future dates are not accepted.
• A work week runs Monday to Sunday, and months are calendar months, whatever your timezone.

Typing a date

In the dashboard and the browser extension, date fields show dates as DD Mon YYYY (for example 08 Oct 2026) and also accept these shorter forms. Upper or lower case does not matter.

You type	Means
today, yesterday	Relative to today in your timezone
8 Oct, Oct 8, 8 October	That day in the current year
8 Oct 2026, Oct 8 2026	That exact day
2026-10-08	That exact day (year first)
08/10/2026, 08.10.2026, 08-10-2026	That exact day, day first: 8 October 2026
10-08, 10/08	Day first in the current year: 10 August, not 8 October
8	That day in the current month

A date that does not exist, such as 31 Feb, is refused rather than rolled over into the next month. If the field cannot read what you typed, it says Use the format 11 Oct 2026.

Note

Only the date matters, never the hour. Two entries logged at different times on the same day are shown under that one date on My week, in reports, and on a timesheet.

Next steps

• Log time from the dashboard — where these fields live.
• Glossary — what a void and an approval mean.