Understanding rounding in Timesheets reports

Understanding rounding in Timesheets reports

If you notice small discrepancies between your time totals in different views, the cause may be your rounding option. This article explains how rounding works in Timesheets reports, why totals may differ depending on your report setup, and how to choose the right rounding method for your needs.

You will find these options in your RescueTime Timesheets settings under "Default rounding."

How rounding works

Rounding in Timesheets reports is applied at the  row level, not the overall total. Each row of your report is calculated in seconds, then converted to decimal hours and rounded according to the strategy you selected. The total at the bottom is then the sum of those row values.

This means:

• Per-day rows → rounding is applied daily, and the daily totals are added together. Small “rounding up” differences can accumulate across days.
• Per-month rows → rounding is applied once on the monthly total, which avoids accumulating those daily rounding extras.

Default rounding

The default rounding strategy is  0.01 hours. This means each row total is rounded to the nearest hundredth of an hour (about 36 seconds).

Available rounding options

You can change the rounding method in your Timesheets report settings. Options include:

• Precision-based rounding (rounds to the nearest value):
  • 0.1 hours → tenths of an hour (6 minutes)
  • 0.01 hours → hundredths of an hour (36 seconds, default)
  • 0.001 hours → thousandths of an hour (3.6 seconds)
• Minute or hour–based rounding (always rounds up to the next increment):
  • Hour → rounds up to the next whole hour (e.g., 1.2 hours → 2.0)
  • 15 minutes (¼ hour) → rounds up to 0.25 increments (e.g., 1.1 hours → 1.25)
  • 6 minutes (¹⁄₁₀ hour) → rounds up to 0.1 increments (e.g., 1.05 hours → 1.1)

Note on billing

If a single row contains multiple billing rates, the total is calculated as the  sum of each rate’s rounded time in that row.

Troubleshooting discrepancies

It’s common to see differences in totals depending on your report setup. Here are the most frequent cases:

• “My daily totals don’t match my monthly totals.”
  This happens because rounding is applied each day and then added up. Across many days, those small differences accumulate. When you switch to a monthly view, rounding is applied once to the monthly total, which reduces those discrepancies.
• “Why is my total time higher than expected?”
  If you use minute or hour-based rounding (like 15 minutes), each row is rounded up. If you have many small entries, the rounding can add extra time to your total.
• “My billed total looks different than my raw time.”
  This occurs when rows include multiple billing rates. Each rate’s time is rounded separately, then added together, which can make the billed total slightly different from the unrounded raw total.