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Long-running entries

Time trackingWhat the 8-hour flag means and how to clear Needs attention.

Long-running entries

If you've ever started a timer on Friday afternoon and noticed Monday morning that it was still running, you've met a long-running entry. TAB flags these so they don't end up on a client invoice as a 64-hour workday.

What the flag means

When you stop a timer whose duration is greater than your firm's long-running threshold (8 hours / 28800 seconds by default), TAB sets flagged_long_running = true on the entry and shows a LONG tag next to the duration column in Time entries. The flag is computed once, at stop time, against the firm's threshold at that moment.

Almost every long-running entry is one of two things:

  • You forgot to stop the timer. (Most common.)
  • You genuinely worked an unusual block, an all-day audit visit, a marathon close, an emergency at a client.

The flag is a prompt to double-check, not an accusation. Sometimes 9 hours is the right answer.

Changing the threshold

The default is 8 hours, configurable per-firm. Open Admin → Firm settings and edit Long-running threshold (hours) (range 1, 48). The value is stored in seconds in the database.

The threshold applies to all users in the firm, there's no per-person value.

Future entries pick up the new threshold the next time they're stopped. Entries already flagged keep their existing flag (it's stored on the row, not recomputed from the current threshold).

Where flagged entries show up

Two places:

  1. The entry row in Time entries shows a LONG tag in the duration column.
  2. The dashboard's Needs attention tile lists the count with the label "long-running, review duration". Clicking the row jumps you to Time entries with flagged=1 in the URL and the matching entries highlighted with a gold left border.

The flag is also visible to managers on the Approvals page (a LONG tag appears next to the duration there too). Managers can still approve a flagged entry, TAB doesn't block them, but most will ask for context before doing so.

Clearing the flag

Edit the entry's Ended at to a realistic value. As soon as the new duration drops below your firm's threshold, the backend recomputes duration_seconds, but today the flagged_long_running boolean is not recomputed on edit, the LONG tag stays on the row even after the duration shrinks. The entry can still be approved as normal.

If the entry is wildly wrong:

  1. Open the row's ⋯ menu and pick Delete (only available for running/stopped entries).
  2. Start a fresh timer for what you actually did, then edit its start/end times to the real values.

After the long entry is reviewed

A submitted long entry behaves the same as any other submitted entry in the approval queue. The LONG tag is visible to the reviewer; the approve / reject buttons work the same way.

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