In Productive, rounding billable time entries helps ensure consistent, accurate, and fair billing.
By adjusting recorded time to a set interval, you can simplify invoicing, avoid fractional minutes, and maintain alignment between worked and billable hours.
Rounding is flexible. It can follow the default global setting or be fine-tuned for individual budgets and deals, giving you precise control over how each client is billed.
Here’s how to set up and manage time rounding effectively.
Rounding Options
You can set the rounding for billable time entries using four rules.
1) No Rounding (default)
Keeps the recorded time exactly as it is, ensuring every minute worked is billed accurately.
📌 Example: A worked time entry of 13 minutes will remain 13 minutes of billable time.
2) Round to nearest
Rounds the recorded time to the nearest interval (6, 15, or 30 minutes). This offers a balanced approach, aligning billable time closely with worked time.
📌 Example: With a 15-minute interval, a logged time of 13 minutes will be rounded to 15 minutes, and a logged time of 7 minutes will be rounded to 0 minutes.
3) Round up to
Rounds the recorded time up to the nearest interval (6, 15, or 30 minutes). Useful for ensuring small increments of work are fully billed, maximizing billable hours.
📌 Example: With a 15-minute interval, a logged time of 13 minutes will be rounded up to 15 minutes of billable time, while logging 16 minutes rounds up to 30 minutes of billable time.
4) Round down to
Rounds the recorded time down to the nearest interval (6, 15, or 30 minutes). This approach ensures billable time does not exceed certain thresholds, providing a conservative billing method.
📌 Example: With a 6-minute interval, a logged time of 14 minutes will be rounded down to 12 minutes of billable time.
Rounding Intervals
Rounding intervals define the “chunks” of time used when adjusting billable entries. In Productive, you can choose 6, 15, or 30 minutes as your interval.
A 6-minute interval rounds time in small steps, giving fine-grained control over billing.
A 15-minute interval is a balanced approach, smoothing out minor variations while keeping billing accurate.
A 30-minute interval rounds time in larger blocks, which can simplify invoicing for longer tasks.
Setting Up Default Time Rounding
To set up default time rounding for all billable entries:
Go to Settings > Budget > Time rounding.
Choose your preferred rounding rule and interval and save your changes.
Custom Settings
The rounding settings can be applied on a per-budget or per-deal basis. This means you can set different rounding rules for different budgets and deals, providing greater flexibility and control over how time is billed.
1) Default Organizational Setting
By default, the organizational setting will apply to all new budgets and deals created.
2) Custom Settings per Budget/Deal
You can override the default setting for specific budgets or deals by adjusting the rounding settings within the budget or deal itself.
To do so, open the budget sidebar, navigate to the settings tab (marked by the gear icon ⚙️), and adjust the time rounding settings for the budget or deal.
📌 Example in Practice
If you have the default organizational setting to "round to nearest 15 minutes," any new budget or deal created will use this setting.
However, you can change the setting for a particular budget to "round up to 6 minutes," and it will apply only to that budget. Similarly, you can set a different rounding rule for a specific deal.