Timer
The timer is the lowest-friction way to track time in the moment: one tap to start, one tap to stop. Everything else — duration, totals, attribution — is handled for you.
TimeCampus is generally available — create an account at app.timecampus.com.
Where it lives
Go to Time Tracking → Timer. Timer controls also appear as a widget you can place on your Dashboard, so starting and stopping never requires a page change.
Start
- Open Time Tracking → Timer.
- Describe what you're about to do — a short, plain-language note.
- Optionally pick a project and task so the time is attributed from the first second.
- Tap Start.
Starting the timer creates a running time entry — a real entry with a start time and no end time yet. It's not a separate thing that later becomes an entry; it is the entry, live.
While it's running
- Elapsed time counts up live so you always know how long you've been at it.
- Running timers are visible wherever timer state is surfaced — the Timer page, the Dashboard timer widget, and your day's stats (which include an active-timers count).
- You can edit the description or attribution of the running entry; you don't have to get it perfect before starting.
Stop
Tap Stop. TimeCampus closes the entry:
| On stop | What happens |
|---|---|
| End time | Set to now |
| Duration | Computed automatically from start to end |
| State | The entry stops being "running" and becomes a normal, finished time entry |
| Where it goes | It appears immediately in Time Tracking → Entries, on the Timeline, and in your totals |
Stopping is idempotent in spirit: a timer that's already stopped can't be double-stopped into an inflated duration.
Switch
Changing focus? Stop the current timer and start a new one with the new description and project. Each stretch of work becomes its own clean entry, which keeps your day legible on the Timeline and your per-project totals honest. Context switches are also exactly the pattern your work-pattern insights help you see and reduce.
Descriptions and notes
The description is what future-you reads. A good one says what the work was ("Draft Q3 proposal for Acme"), not just where it happened. Descriptions are searchable and editable later from the entries list.
Attribution: projects, tasks, billable
| Field | Why set it |
|---|---|
| Project | Rolls the time into project totals, budgets, and client-ready reports — see Projects |
| Task | Finer-grained attribution inside a project — see Tasks |
| Billable | Marks the time as billable so billable hours track separately in every stat — see Budgets & billable time |
You can set these when starting, while running, or after stopping — attribution is never locked to the moment of capture.
How timed entries are categorised
On the Timeline, your time appears contextually grouped — meetings, deep work, communication, breaks — so a day of timer entries reads as a coherent story. Entries created by the timer carry a source marker distinguishing them from manual entries, so you can always tell how a block was captured.
Forgot to start it?
That's what manual entries are for — add the block after the fact and it counts equally. See Time entries.
Next steps
- Time entries — list, filter, edit, and correct
- Time approval — submit tracked periods for sign-off
- Dashboard — put timer controls on your at-a-glance view