8 Ways Worklog Attributes Supercharge Your Jira Worklog Report

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There are plenty of time tracking tools for Jira. But for most teams, that power comes with a price tag and a complexity ceiling that simply doesn't match what they actually need.

RVS Worklog Time Tracking & Timesheets was built as a simple, affordable time tracking alternative. One that covers everything your team needs to track time in Jira.

But what if you can go far beyond just logging time spent without the overhead of enterprise-grade tools designed for complex workflow management ?

What if every time you enter your Jira worklog report, it could also tell you:

• Whether the work was billable or internal
• Which customer or client do the hours belong to
• What type of activity was actually performed

That's the kind of context that turns a flat list of hours into a Jira reporting tool your finance team, project managers, and leadership can actually act on.

That's exactly why RVS Softek built Worklog Attributes, custom fields that attach directly to every time entry your team logs in Jira. In this guide, you'll explore eight practical ways to use Worklog Attributes to track time more accurately, generate more meaningful reports, and get answers your Jira worklog report has never been able to give you before.

What Are Worklog Attributes?

Worklog Attributes are custom fields that appear directly in Jira's "Log Work" dialog. When a team member logs time, they fill in these fields: a dropdown, a text input, a number, or a multi-select. Alongside the standard time and description fields.

The result is that every worklog carries metadata your team actually needs: which client it's for, whether it's billable, what activity type it represents, and more.

This feature is available exclusively under the Advanced License of the RVS Softek plugin. Here's what separates it from the standard tier:

Standard License	Advanced License
Advanced worklog reporting with filters	Everything in Standard, plus…
Multiple time entry views (Table + Kanban)	Worklog Attributes: custom fields on every time entry
CSV export for billing and analytics
Dashboard gadget for Jira

Worklog attributes can be configured by Jira admins across the entire instance and appear consistently for all users when logging time.

How to log time with attributes

1. Open an issue in Jira
2. Click Log Work
3. Enter time spent as usual
4. Fill in the attribute fields (if available)
5. Click Save

 If an attribute is marked as required, you must fill it before saving.

Types of attributes you may see

When logging time, you’ll see additional fields (attributes) alongside the usual worklog fields.

Depending on how your admin configured them, attributes can appear as: 

1. Dropdowns (e.g., Billable / Non-Billable)
2. Multi-select fields (choose multiple values)
3. Text fields (enter custom input)
4. Number fields (e.g., cost or units)

Common examples

Here are some typical attributes you might encounter: 

1. Billable Status → Billable / Non-Billable
2. Customer Name → Client A, Client B
3. Activity Type → Development, Testing, Meeting
4. Cost Centre → Marketing, Engineering

8 Ways Worklog Attributes Supercharge Your Jira Worklog Report

 

1. Separate Billable from Non-Billable Hours Instantly

Who this is for: Finance teams, agency project managers, consultants

The scenario: Your team works on a mix of client-billable tasks and internal work like admin, meetings, and R&D, all logged within the same Jira projects. When it's time to send invoices, someone has to manually comb through the worklog report in Jira and make judgment calls about what to charge. 

And these are the two possible situations:

• Bill too little and you're leaving revenue on the table. 
• Bill too much and you risk a client dispute. 

Either way, the process depends on memory and guesswork rather than clean data.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Create a "Billable Status" attribute configured as a dropdown with two options: Billable and Non-Billable. Mark it as a required field so no entry slips through without a tag.

The reporting payoff: Your worklog report in Jira now has a clean, filterable column for billing status. Pull a Jira worklog report per user filtered to Billable only, and your invoice numbers are ready without a single manual audit.

2. Track Work Across Multiple Clients Without Project Sprawl

Who this is for: Agencies, MSPs, consultancies managing multiple clients

The scenario: You serve multiple clients from shared Jira projects, meaning your development team handles multiple accounts all in one place. Creating a separate project for every client would solve the visibility problem, but create unmanageable overhead. So instead, everything stays in one project, and your worklogs time reports for Jira end up as one undifferentiated pile of hours with no way to tell which client any of it belongs to.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Add a "Customer Name" dropdown attribute populated with your client list. If your client roster changes frequently, use a multi-select text field instead so admins can update options without rebuilding the attribute.

The reporting payoff: Filter your Jira worklog report by customer and immediately see exactly how many hours each client consumed in any given period, broken down by user, issue, or activity type. Clean client reporting without restructuring a single project.

3. Understand What Kind of Work Is Actually Consuming Your Team's Time

Who this is for: Engineering managers, team leads, scrum masters

The scenario: You know your senior engineers logged 45 hours last week. But how much of that was deep development work versus code review, meetings, or documentation? Without that breakdown, sprint planning decisions are made on guesswork.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Create an "Activity Type" attribute as a single-select dropdown: Development, Testing, Code Review, Documentation, Meeting, Support. Start with a multi-select to surface what activities actually exist on your team, then lock it down to a curated list once patterns emerge.

The reporting payoff: Your Jira worklog report per user now shows not just how long each person worked, but what they were doing. Spot if a developer is spending 30% of their week in meetings, or if QA cycles are consistently overrunning estimates. These are the insights that feed real process change.

4. Allocate Overhead to the Right Cost Centers

Who this is for: Finance, operations, department heads

The scenario: Shared resources like DevOps engineers, HR, and marketing typically split their time across multiple teams and budgets. But when they log time in Jira, that context is lost. Every hour looks the same regardless of which department it actually serves, leaving finance with unexplained overhead costs they cannot trace back to the right budget.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Add a "Cost Center" attribute as a dropdown with options: Engineering, Marketing, Operations, HR, and so on. For simpler needs, a two-option attribute (CapEx / OpEx) may be sufficient to satisfy your finance team's requirements.

The reporting payoff: Every Jira worklog report export now includes a cost center column. Budget owners can pull their own slice of the data without involving a project manager, making cross-team collaboration between finance and project teams smoother and less dependent on manual handoffs. Overhead allocation becomes an automatic output of the time tracking process rather than a quarterly headache.

5. Generate Per-User Reports That Actually Mean Something

Who this is for: People managers, resource planners, HR

The scenario: You run a Jira worklog report per user for your weekly team review. You see that one engineer logged 38 hours and another logged 22. But you don't know whether the gap reflects a workload imbalance, different task complexity, or one person being pulled into more meetings than the other.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Combine the Activity Type attribute from #3 with per-user filtering in the RVS plugin. No additional setup is needed once the attribute exists.

The reporting payoff: A Jira worklog report per user with attribute breakdowns shows you the composition of each person's week, not just the total. You can identify burnout risk when one team member is consistently logging overtime on high-intensity activity types. You can spot under-utilization. And you go into performance conversations with data, not impressions.

6. Support Grant Reporting and Compliance Without Separate Timesheets

Who this is for: Non-profits, research teams, government contractors

The scenario: Your organization receives grant funding tied to specific approved activity categories. Auditors need proof that logged hours match the grant's eligible work types. Right now, teams maintain a separate spreadsheet timesheet alongside Jira, doubling the work and creating inconsistencies between the two.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Create a required "Funding Category" or "Compliance Code" attribute. Because required attributes block save until filled, data completeness is enforced at the point of entry no chasing people down at month-end.

The reporting payoff: Pull worklogs time reports for Jira filtered by funding category and export directly to CSV. The report is audit-ready from the moment it's generated. No secondary timesheet, no reconciliation, no risk of the two systems telling different stories.

7. Get Smarter About Support Request Types in Jira Service Management

Who this is for: Support managers, customer success leads, JSM administrators

The scenario: Your support team handles a wide mix of request types under the same Jira Service Management issue type. Bug reports, onboarding questions, billing queries, and feature requests all land in the same queue. You know some categories take longer than others, but you can't prove it with your current worklog report in Jira.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Add a "Request Category" single-select attribute to worklogs. Align the options to your actual JSM request types so that data from both systems tells a consistent story.

The reporting payoff: Your Jira worklog report now reveals exactly which request categories consume the most support hours. When you discover that onboarding questions consume 40% of your team's time despite being only 15% of ticket volume, you have the data to justify investing in better onboarding documentation or hiring another person.

8. Use Text and Number Fields for Business Context That Doesn't Fit a Dropdown

Who this is for: Any team with context that's specific to their industry or workflow

The scenario: Your business has tracking needs that don't fit a standard dropdown. You want to log the cost rate associated with a worklog entry, reference an external PO number, capture a product version, or note a work order ID from an outside system.

How RVS Worklog attribute solves it: 

Worklog Attributes support text fields and number fields in addition to dropdowns and multi-selects. Admins can create these directly in the app settings, no development work required, and they appear instantly in the log work dialogue.

The reporting payoff: As your business grows and reporting needs evolve, your Jira worklog report can evolve with it. You're not limited to what Jira natively supports or waiting for a plugin update. New attribute, new insight, configured in minutes.

How to Enable Worklog Attributes in Your Jira Instance

Getting started takes less than five minutes:

1. Ensure you are on the Advanced License of the RVS Softek Worklog Time Tracking & Timesheets plugin.
2. Go to Jira Settings → Apps → Worklog Time Tracking & Timesheets.
3. Navigate to the Attributes section in the plugin settings.
4. Click Add Attribute and choose your field type: Dropdown, Multi-select, Text, or Number.
5. Name the attribute, add options (for dropdowns), and choose whether it is required or optional.
6. Save. The attribute will immediately appear in the "Log Work" dialog for all users across your instance.

To activate RVS as your time tracking provider if you haven't already, go to Jira Admin → Time Tracking and switch the provider to RVS.

Conclusion

Every hour your team logs holds more value than a timestamp. Worklog Attributes unlock that value by turning every time entry into a data point your business can act on. Stop settling for basic time logs and start generating reports that actually drive decisions.

Try it for free -> Worklog Time Tracking & Timesheets