Tracking Time in Asana: Step-by-Step

Asana does many things right as a project management tool – a great one, I might add. But when it comes to its time-tracking capabilities, I have to warn you, these could use serious enhancements.

Nevertheless, I’ll teach you how to track time in Asana so you can squeeze as much as you can from this app and introduce you to a simple way to track time in more detail.

What you’ll get out of this article? You’ll learn how Asana time-tracking is done while benefiting from the best of both worlds – automatic and detailed time-tracking in your preferred PM tool where you can work natively.

Key takeaways:

• Time tracking in Asana comes at a cost of $24.99 per user/mo for smaller teams, as it’s available only from the Advanced plan onward.
• Asana offers two ways to track time: manually adding your time entries or using a timer that’s inside each project or task.

🕒 What’s wrong with Asana time tracking?

• You need to enable time tracking for each project manually – It can’t be enabled for your entire workspace.
• The ways to track time are highly manual, time-consuming, and disruptive.
• There are high chances of compromising your time tracking data, as you can forget the timer running, let alone that Asana’s reports on time tracking are quite rudimentary.
• You can only estimate time at a task level, not on a member level or a project level, which stops single users from doing time estimations.

✅ The solution?

Integrate Asana with a specialized time tracker that passively tracks your time spent at work and using different tools, apps, and browsers. All your work is captured down to the minute in your timesheets, without any input needed from your side.

Asana versus EARLY time tracking

Does Asana have time tracking?

Though a PM tool, Asana includes basic time-tracking features. Your time-tracking values will be obtained in Asana by manually entering the time spent on tasks or by clicking a timer icon on any task name. This allows you to enter time in hours and minutes.

Also, the time tracking feature in Asana includes both estimated time and actual time fields, and you can view the data in dashboards and reports, although the reporting capabilities are somewhat limited.

How to track time in Asana

To enable the time tracking feature in Asana, take the following steps:

1. Open your Asana account and go to an “Asana project” or to “My tasks,” depending on what you want to track time on.

As an example, I added a project called “Marketing Campaign”, folder in which I want to track time.

2. Add time tracking to your custom field library

Simply head to the column near “Priority,” and on the plus sign, add “time tracking.” Once you click on it, it will automatically create two fields in your project: actual time and estimated time.

3. Now, start tracking time

In your custom field library, for each specific project, you have two custom fields: estimated time and actual time. These allow you to budget time for each task using the estimated time field.

For tracking the actual time you spend on each task/project, you have two options:

1. Use the built-in timer to measure time spent on a task. Basically, the clock will start ticking and recording the time spent on those tasks once you press it. Remember not to leave it running for hours, as you won’t know the real total actual time spent on these tasks – so pause it!
2. Add your time manually, which basically means writing down in the specific field the number of hours and minutes you think or remember you worked for. Though none of these options are quite friendly, I wouldn’t suggest this one at all, as you might be biased by how hard the project or task was, or you might be interrupted while doing your work, and your data will be compromised.

Tired of time tracking in Asana? Uplift your time tracking with EARLY

The most accurate and effortless time tracking solution for teams!

Try EARLY for free

💡 Pro Tip: Need to track subtasks? Don’t worry! The time tracked on subtasks will roll up into your parent task. You’ll then be able to see the total time actual time spent on that task or project.

4. Run time reports

Then, you can add a chart in the project dashboard to view estimated time, the actual time spent, overdue tasks, and so on. This dashboard is customizable.

So, what was wrong with Asana time-tracking?

I have done a pilot test and tracked time in Asana for a little while, and the images above are the results of my own quick experiment. It’s definitely not the first time I’m tracking time in this way, so I’ll explain what’s wrong with it:

• You have to enable time tracking for each project manually. It’s simply cumbersome.
• There is no timesheet feature. Hence, if you work in a team, you’d need to chase your teammates for detailed time logs.
• It’s tiring to keep my attention starting or stopping a timer. More than that, the timer is part of an app that I have to open, click, and remember to pause once I finish a task. Honestly, I’d rather go on a break once I’ve finished a task and not spend time stopping a timer. Plus, just like me, you could simply forget, and then you’ll need to estimate the time spent on that task – it’s rare for us to remember this with accuracy…
• It’s a highly manual and time-consuming process. There’s no option for automatic time capture, and with so much automation and AI tools around us, I personally don’t want to start and stop a timer, nor do I want to scratch my head to estimate how much time I spend on a task. Plus, it’s not ethical for my clients to receive made-up reports.
• No detailed reports available. Plus, I need to build reports on my own: If you’re like me, you need to capture billable hours for accurate client billing, and Asana does not cover that. All reports need to be created manually.
• There are no reminders that might help you to start-stop tracking or take a break.
• Asana lacks integrated budget tracking features and truly makes it difficult to keep project budget in check, assign billing rates, measure profitability, and control deadlines with time budgeting.
• Asana time tracking is available only for Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ customers. If you have a Personal or a Starter subscription, you must find alternatives to log your time.
• Time tracking in Asana is too expensive for smaller teams: $24.99 per user/mo.
• Time estimations are done at a task level, not a member level or a project level, impeding single users from doing personal estimates.

💡 Pro Tip: While you can track time in Asana, using a purpose-built time-tracking app that integrates with Asana is more efficient and unlocks valuable productivity insights.

Is there a better way? Yes, an integration with EARLY!

The simplest thing you can do to keep your preferred PM tool, but with a serious time-tracking layer on top of it, is to integrate Asana with an automatic time-tracking app. I am definitely biased, but I’ll introduce you to EARLY and how I’m tracking progress for my “Marketing Campaign” project with it and Asana.

How to track time in Asana with EARLY

Having to open Asana to track time when switching from one task makes the workflow so clunky. So, here are the best and simplest ways to time tracking in Asana with EARLY:

• Automatic time capture

With this method, you only have to enable automatic time tracking in your EARLY account and do your work. Seriously – just go use the apps, tools, and websites you need to, and you’ll find automatically generated time entries in your timesheet.

Here’s my example for the Marketing Campaign and the activities the automated time tracker captured for me in the right-hand column. You can see that from approximately 14:30 onward (please do ignore that I watched a White Lotus episode in my lunch break on Max 😅), I used two apps:

• Surfer SEO (this is the app I use to create content – hence, these small time entries will go to my “Content creation” task)
• The Asana app (see the Asana logo there), where I wanted to check the progress made on the project, and I changed the progress on it.

What will happen to these time entries? I’ll unify them into one big task, which is “Content creation,” and I’ll remove the hassle of starting or stopping a timer in Asana from tracking my entire time creation process or manually adding the time I think I spent on content creation.

See? With one click, my work was automatically turned into a time entry, and now I know precisely how much time I spent on Content Creation.

Other reasons to integrate EARLY time tracking in Asana?

• You can track your time in other ways, too, such as with keyboard shortcuts or with a physical time tracker. If you really want, you can use manual time-tracking, too.
• You will get AI time entry suggestions based on your calendar events.
• You are able to track and distinguish billable from non-billable hours with one click, a feature that doesn’t exist in Asana. Set hourly rates for each team member or task and track billable hours automatically.
• You can view your time budgets, namely how many hours are left for a project or a client – another feature that Asana doesn’t have.
• You won’t ever forget to track time, as you’ll get custom reminders to start and stop tracking.
• You get automated and detailed time reports. While time reports in Asana are limited to two dimensions at a time, in EARLY’s time reporting system, you can obtain all time-related data. You’ll be able to see how much time each team member worked on a given project and how many overtime hours someone in your team did in the last month.

“I love the reporting tool. It’s very graphic, and the visuals really help me understand how things are going. The colors make it easy to digest, too. I can filter, export, and share as I wish, and that’s really important.”

Richard Wingfield, Head Geek at Envision Design

How to set the EARLY – Asana integration

You can easily connect EARLY with Asana via Zapier. A Zapier subscription is not required; it’s free for up to 100 integrations.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Sign up for EARLY to start your free 30-day trial
2. Sign up for Zapier
3. Ensure you have your Asana credentials at hand
4. Create a new Zap where the Trigger is “New Task in Project in Asana” and the Action is Create Activity in EARLY
5. To connect EARLY with Zapier, you need an API key and a secret API; find them in EARLY > Settings > My account > API > Create a new API key
6. Set the ZAP live, and you’re all set to track your Asana task in EARLY.

Tired of time tracking in Asana? Uplift your time tracking with EARLY

The most accurate and effortless time tracking solution for teams!

Try EARLY for free

Wrap-up

While Asana offers basic time tracking functionality, you’ve seen that it comes with significant limitations – from manual processes and limited reporting to its availability only in premium plans. By integrating Asana with a dedicated time-tracking solution like EARLY, you unlock a powerful productivity system that gives you the best of both worlds.

With automatic time capture, detailed reporting, and seamless integration, you’ll transform your time management from reactive to proactive. No more forgotten timers, inaccurate estimates, or missing billable hours.

Instead, you’ll have a comprehensive view of how you spend your working hours, helping you make data-driven decisions about your productivity and project profitability.