Time tracking
Time tracking is off until you turn it on, and once it is on your firm picks one of two modes. The mode is the whole feature: it decides whether Journey ever shows a dollar amount against an hour, and whether recorded time can become an invoice. Firms that bill by the hour want one mode. Firms that want productivity numbers and bill some other way want the other. Choosing the wrong one is not fatal, but switching later has one consequence that cannot be undone, so it is worth reading the difference before you pick.
Both switches live in Settings, under Workflow. Turn on Time tracking, and the mode choice appears underneath it.
The two modes
Bill for time. Your staff mark time as billable, set an hourly rate on it, and that time can be turned into a client invoice. This is the mode a firm uses when hours are the thing it sells. Rates prefill from each staff member's default rate and can be changed on any single entry.
Measure productivity only. Hours are recorded for reporting and nothing else. There is no billable checkbox, no rate field, no dollar amount anywhere, and no way to turn time into an invoice. This is the mode a firm uses when it bills flat fees or per return, and it wants to know where the hours went without pretending those hours are priced.
If you never choose, your firm is in Bill for time. That is what every firm did before modes existed, so nothing changed for anyone who was already tracking time.
What actually changes
The mode is not cosmetic. It changes eleven places in the product, and it changes them consistently, so a firm in metrics mode never sees a money control it cannot use.
| Where | Bill for time | Measure productivity only |
|---|---|---|
| Log time dialog | Billable switch and hourly rate field | Neither appears |
| Time entries on a return | Billable badge and a dollar amount per entry | Hours only |
| Time entries on a client | Same, plus a billable total in the footer | Hours only |
| Staff member's page | Default billing rate field | Field is hidden |
| Client Billing tab | "From unbilled time" button | Button is hidden |
| Invoice page | "Add unbilled time" | Hidden |
| Invoices page | Firm-wide unbilled time panel | Hidden |
| Reports tab name | Time and Billing | Time |
| Report summary cards | Total hours, billable hours, billable amount, unbilled amount | Total hours |
| Report tables | Columns for billable and unbilled dollars | Hours only |
| Report CSV export | Includes the money columns | Omits them |
Accounts Receivable stays visible in both modes. It reports on invoices you have already issued, which has nothing to do with whether you bill by the hour.
The one-way part
This is the part worth understanding before you switch.
Time recorded while your firm is in metrics mode is saved with no rate. Journey will only put an entry on an invoice if that entry has a rate above zero, so metrics-mode entries can never be invoiced. That stays true if you later switch back to Bill for time. The old entries do not gain a rate retroactively, because Journey has no way to know what rate they should have had.
Switching in the other direction is safe. Time recorded in billing mode keeps its rate and stays invoiceable, even while the firm sits in metrics mode. The money is hidden from the screens, not deleted.
So the practical rule is: if there is any chance you will bill for a stretch of work, be in Bill for time while that work is recorded. Journey shows this warning beside the mode choice for the same reason.
Why billable stays on by default
In Bill for time, a new entry starts marked billable. If the staff member has no default rate set, the rate field is empty, and Journey warns them right there at the field rather than waiting until they save.
If they try to save billable time with no rate, Journey refuses and explains why. That is deliberate. Billable time with no rate is invisible to every invoicing screen in the product, so it would quietly never be billed and nobody would find out. A refusal costs one prompt. The alternative costs revenue nobody notices losing.
Setting a default rate on each staff member, on their page under Staff, avoids the prompt entirely.
Who sees what
Anyone can log their own time when time tracking is on. The reporting and invoicing surfaces follow the same permissions as the pages they live on, so the Reports tab needs owner or general manager access, and the unbilled time panel and the time-to-invoice buttons follow your firm's billing permissions. Turning time tracking on or off, and changing the mode, needs permission to manage firm operations.
Changing your mind
You can switch modes as often as you like, and you can turn time tracking off entirely without losing anything already recorded. Turning it off hides the timers and the log time controls; the entries stay in place and reappear if you turn it back on.
The only thing that does not survive a round trip is the rate on entries recorded in metrics mode, for the reason above.