How to export project and/or user worklogs to EXCEL and PDF in Jira?

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Other than the obvious benefit of knowing how long someone has worked for, tracking the time your team’s spent on clients’ projects can be crucial to profit and payroll. With so many different people involved with different parts of different projects, it can be challenging to keep track of each task and get information as you require it.

One of the great things about JIRA is that you are able to see the status of every single job at a glance. What’s more, you can share task progress with your clients who will appreciate knowing how their project is going. An additional benefit is that this way you can also better prioritise future projects and team capacity.   

For all of the above reasons and more, exporting the right reports quickly and easily into a format that works for you is important for your business’ day-to-day. In this article, we will talk about how you can export JIRA worklogs in different formats, namely the most commonly used .XLS and potentially .PDF. 

Let’s dive in.

How to Export Time Reports in JIRA for Further Processing

In cases where companies work with a number of clients they provide billable work for, or use a number of freelancers they need to keep track of, comprehensive timesheet reports are always required by Payroll and HR. A unified and easy way to track hours and produce reports is thus necessary. 

If your company works on a client’s project or provides support or billable work of any kind to a third party, it is crucial to be able to bill correctly for the time team members spent working on clients’ projects and issues.

Therefore, when using JIRA, worklogs data may need to be exported into a spreadsheet. This way, the datasets can pivot to any type of dimension that will deliver the most value to both organisation and clients.  When you have the right data, various visualisations, such as graphs and charts, can also be created in order to analyse it better. 

To unlock all the benefits hidden in your time tracking data, then export it in useable format, it is important to first be able to drill down a specific user, project or other JIRA entity and create the right filters before exporting.

How to Create JIRA Exports

То export time logged for a particular JIRA issue and project, you can use the default option built into JIRA to export functionality. Here’s what you need to do:

1.Go to Filters and click on Advance Issue Search.

2. Select the Project you’d like to export time information for.

3.Click on the Export button and select the format you’d data exported in. Options include HTML, XML, Word and more.

Default JIRA Exports - Limitations

Whilst JIRA export options offer a number of formats you can choose from and are easy to do, unfortunately the default functionality comes with limitations. For instance, only a total logged time per ticket is exported. That means you will not be able to see individual worklogs within the report. Also, time spent cannot be grouped and filtered by user, project or any other criteria.  

This limits how informative your reports may be, especially if you need a specific breakdown of time spent to provide to clients, payroll, HR, and management.

Thankfully, you do have a second option if you do not want to rely on the built-in JIRA reporting functionality. To gain more capability, you can always turn to the Atlassian Marketplace for more.

A number of great functioning time tracking add-ons exist on the market. In this article, we will also discuss Timescale and show you the wealth of customisable timesheet reports you can export when using it.

Customised Reports in Timescale and how to Export in Excel, .CSV and .PDF. 

Should you choose to install Timescale for Jira as an add-on from Atlassian Marketplace, you will have many more drilldown options for visualising time spent.

When you install the add-on to your instance and open it through the Apps menu, the first thing you will see is a time table of your own user. It contains a summary of your logged time within the set period of time for the different types of JIRA issues. 

The results are displayed according to your chosen date range (week time range is default, but monthly and custom range options are also available). Time entries can be grouped by Projects or Epics. Each summary can be saved as a report that can later be opened and/or exported to .CSV, .PDF and .XLSX format by a click of a button. 

If you require more customised reports before exporting, you have the following options in Timescale’s Reports section:

1. Users - create and customise your time report by any given user
2. Teams - create and customise your time report by predefined teams
3. Projects - create and customise your time report by JIRA projects
4. Customers - create and customise your time report by your predefined Customer
5. JQL filters - create and customise your time report by your pre saved JQL Filters 

The worklog files will be exported based on all the filters you have applied:

In essence, with Timescale you have a lot of flexibility on creating reports that suit your needs and the departments they will be used by. The comprehensive filtering and drilldown options make it easy to customise what data is displayed and how. 

You can easily group timelogs according to project, user, customer, component and even your own pre-saved JQL filters. All created views can be saved for later, which makes getting the same right report every time incredibly time-efficient. Exporting them to excel, .csv or .pdf happens with a click of a button.

In conclusion

We can all agree that Jira is a fantastic project management tool with effective time tracking and reporting functionality. In this article, we showed how to export project data or user worklogs using Jira’s built-in functionality. However, if your business requires customizable exports, comprehensive filtering and drill down options, the solution may wait for you in the Atlassian Marketplace.

By choosing to install an add-on, such as Timescale, you get access to a wealth of extra time tracking functionality, comprehensive reporting, data grouping and export options, as well as detailed timesheet logging that allows you to reduce revenue leakages, keep track of billable work across the board and make life much easier for payroll & invoicing.