Number formatting of "estimated time" in charts in hours instead of days

I have created a chart with the sum of estimated time for the upcoming month. The idea is to get an estimation of upcoming invoicing. I have one chart for the goal of invoicing and wanted to compare against the estimated invoicing of upcoming tasks.

BUT, when I sum the estimated hours, it counts days and hours instead of just hours. So in order to get the correct number I have to do this in my head: number of days * 24 + hours. I wish I could change the number format so the estimation (and other fields) could count up just a number instead of date format etc… Anyone else had this issue?

This is what we have done with reporting so far:

  1. A project with monthly income per customer is data source for chart of possible invoiceable hours per month based on the contracts we have.
  2. A project with goal of hours per month is source of charts with individual goals.
  3. A custom field ā€œinvoiceable hoursā€ in all tasks is source for sum of current invoiceable hours until now for the month for completed tasks.
  4. The field ā€œestimated timeā€ was supposed to show how many hours is estimated for the rest of the month for tasks that are not completed.

With this reporting we have full control and can focus on tasks that put money in the bank.

Here is how it looks…

Hi @Metanoia , great suggestion and completely makes sense to see the time format in hours without days so you have my vote!

However, I would suggest, until the Time Tracking feature fully rolls out over the coming months and the Asana team work out some issues already flagged, is to simply use a number-type field, customised to show ā€˜hrs’. This will give you the summation that you are looking for in your reporting and dashboards.

Here is an example below (make sure you add it to your custom fields library)

Having suggested the above, I should stress that you should prepare to (likely manually) migrate your values if you want to keep using these projects in the event you want to move to using the native time tracking feature in them. In other words, if these projects are NOT long term, then I would follow my suggestion using a number field for the time being.

Otherwise, we will all just have to sit tight, as I’m sure the Asana team are hard at work at getting this promising feature fully rolled-out whilst taking into account all suggestions in the forum.

Thanks. I did what you proposed last night. Took a few hours to migrate the numbers, but now it all comes together much better. :slightly_smiling_face:

If we use a custom numeric field, there’s no option to add a timer. The timer is a huge bonus for our team.

Any chance Asana will make a timer possible on any custom numeric field?

Hi @Amanda_Pike ! The numeric custom field I suggested above was for a custom field ā€˜Estimated Hours’, which is similar to the native time tracking ā€˜Estimated hours’ field in the sense that they both do not provide a timer. The timer is only available for the Actual Hours field, which makes sense.

I’m not sure how a timer would work for other types of numeric custom field though. What use cases did you have in mind? Perhaps you should create a new topic in the project feedback section where people could comment and vote on.

Just a note that myself, like other Partners on the forum, do not work for Asana (so we don’t have visibility of their roadmap). Instead, we provide consulting services to help teams to get the most out of Asana by designing and setting up workflows to get them up and running with ease :wink:

1 Like

Hi, Richard. Was thinking we would like to use the timer for our custom Actual Hours field until we’re able to switch to the native field. No other use in mind. Thanks!

1 Like