Jira time tracking settings: hours per day, fields
Checked on 6 November 2026 against Atlassian’s time tracking pages and a Community thread.
Jira’s time tracking has a handful of settings, and the questions about it come back to two: how long is a day, and why is the field not on my work item. Both are Atlassian’s settings, set by a Jira admin. This page lists them, then shows how Logline uses the same numbers.
The settings
A Jira admin finds them under Settings › Work items › Time tracking › Edit global settings (Atlassian, configure time tracking):
- Working hours per day: “the number of hours in your working day”, decimals accepted.
- Working days per week: “the number of days in a working week”, decimals accepted.
- Time display format: Pretty, Days or Hours, for the Time Spent field.
- Default unit: Minute, Hour, Day or Week, applied to a number written without a unit.
- Copying of comments to work description: comments added when a work item moves on are copied to the work description.
Time tracking is on by default and “always enabled in Jira Cloud spaces”. What each space chooses is whether the field shows. People enter an original estimate or log time in weeks, days, hours and minutes, such as 3w or 2d 4h 30m (Atlassian, log time). Logging also takes the Work on work items permission.
Why the field is missing
Original estimate and Remaining estimate are tied to the Time tracking field, so when one is missing the field is missing. Atlassian’s article on the missing fields (updated 6 November 2026) gives two routes, by the kind of space. More actions (•••) next to the space’s name says which it is.
- Company-managed: open the work type’s field configuration, find Time tracking, choose Show, then check that the field is on every screen the work type uses.
- Team-managed: Space settings › Work types, pick the work type and add Time tracking to its field layout, then Original estimate if it is still missing.
One asker: “… the original estimation and remaining time fields are not visible to me” (Community, January 2026). The replies list the same causes: the screen, and the Work on work items permission.
With Logline
Logline is our app. It reads the Time tracking field, so a work item without it has no estimate to show; Find the Time tracking field walks through it. Two things to know about the numbers:
- Logline keeps its own working day. Under Jira settings › Apps › Logline settings, Working-day length (hours) and Working days say how long a day is in the days format and which days count for gaps. They start at 8 hours and Monday to Friday, and Logline does not read Jira’s Working hours per day. If your site changed Jira’s, set Logline’s to match.
- Expected hours come from them. With people as rows, Expected is the working days so far times the day’s length, and Against expected says how far under or over each person is.
Logline’s Hours format (hours and minutes, decimal hours, days, decimal days) only changes how its reports show time, and is separate from Jira’s Time display format. Excel and CSV downloads always hold decimal hours. With the estimate columns on, a report shows Original estimate, Logged (all time) and Remaining beside the period’s hours.
The settings are in Logline settings and the days and zones in Periods, days and time zones. Jira’s Time tracking report and its alternatives covers the estimate side. More on the Logline home page.
