The Fastest Way to Track Time on Trello Cards

[#1]

I used to work as a remote QA engineer. I juggled multiple projects at once, and each task took several rounds of work. The stream of tasks was huge, and I needed a way to track how much time I spent on each one.

I started with a spreadsheet — too tedious. Then I set up a Trello board and tried every time-tracking Power-Up I could find. Surprisingly, none of them fit: clunky interfaces, no useful reports, or mandatory sign-ups on third-party services. I just wanted to type how long I worked and hit Enter.

So I built Time Spent — a Trello Power-Up focused on speed and simplicity. It started as a personal tool, but now it works for teams too — each member logs their own time, and everyone sees who did what. Here's what it looks like in practice.

One field, one Enter — done

Open a card, type your time, press Enter. That's it. No popups, no modal windows, no multi-step forms. Everything happens right inside the card, and you never have to leave your keyboard.

Add a comment if you want to describe what you worked on — or skip it and just log the hours.

Type time in any format you like

Don't want to convert minutes to decimals in your head? Don't. Type time however it feels natural:

• 1.5 or 2.25 — decimal hours
• 1:30 or 2-15 — hours and minutes
• 2h 15m or 45m — text format

The Power-Up recognizes all of these and converts them automatically. No dropdowns, no pickers — just type.

See where your time goes — weekly dashboard

Open Time Spent Dashboard from the board menu and get a full picture of your week: 

chart, table, and metrics in one screen.

Useful for weekly standups, personal reviews, or understanding where your team's time actually goes.

Export reports

Need to send a time report? Pick a date range and export:

• HTML report — opens in a new tab, clean and print-ready
• Excel report — downloads as .xlsx with entries grouped by lists

Both formats include a Member column, so you can see who logged each entry. One click to generate, ready to attach to an invoice or share in a meeting.

Works for teams — each person's time is tracked separately

When multiple people log time on the same card, each entry is tied to the person who created it. You'll see:

• "My time / Total time" on card badges — so you instantly know your share vs. the team total
• Author name under each entry — no guessing who logged what
• Protected entries — you can only edit or delete your own records

No setup needed. Everyone just logs their time as usual, and the Power-Up handles the rest.

It's free

Time Spent is free — no trial period, no feature gates, no "upgrade to unlock."

All features you see in this article — logging, dashboard, charts, reports, Excel export — are available to everyone, right now.

A few more things worth mentioning

• Inline editing — click on any entry to fix the date, time, or comment directly, no extra screens
• Data stays in Trello — all entries are stored using Trello's built-in Power-Up storage, nothing is sent to external servers
• Card badges — cards show "my time / total time" right on the board, so you can scan your hours and the team total without opening each card

Who is it for?

• Freelancers tracking billable hours per project
• Small teams where everyone logs their own hours and you need a clear picture of who did what
• Project managers reviewing how time is distributed across lists
• Anyone who needs simple time tracking without extra tools

Disclosure: I'm the developer of Time Spent. I built it to scratch my own itch and published it on the Marketplace. I'd love to hear what works for you and what doesn't — feedback is what drives the roadmap.

Install Time Spent from the Marketplace 

Happy tracking!

[David B]

Are there limitations to the amount of entries per card, we keep hitting a wall with cannot save after 20 time entries 

[arbaev]

Hi @David B ! Thank you for reporting this and for using Time Spent!

You're right — there is a limitation. Trello Power-Up storage is capped at 4,096 characters per card, which is a platform-level restriction we can't bypass. With the previous data format, this meant roughly 20–25 entries per card (fewer if your comments are long). Good news: this has been addressed in the latest update.

Here's what changed:

- Compact storage format — entries now take significantly less space. You should be able to store ~40–50 entries per card (with short comments), roughly 2x more than before.

- Clear error message — instead of a generic "Error saving", you'll now see exactly what's happening: how many entries you have, how full the storage is, and what you can do.

- Early warning — when storage reaches 80%, a yellow banner appears so you're not caught off guard.

To get the update: simply refresh Trello (Ctrl+Shift+R / Cmd+Shift+R). The Power-Up updates automatically to version 1.3.0 — no reinstall needed.

Workaround for long-running cards: if a card accumulates many entries over time, you can export your data via the Reports tab (XLSX or HTML), then remove old entries to free up space. Or simply continue tracking in a new card.

Thanks again for the report — it helped make the plugin better for everyone!

[arbaev]

Looking ahead: unlimited entries

The 4KB storage cap is a hard Trello platform limit. The only way to go beyond ~50 entries per card would be to store data on an external server — which would be a significant architectural change.

If this is something you'd find valuable, please like this comment — if there's enough interest, I'll prioritize adding an external storage option (likely as a premium feature) to remove the entry limit entirely.