Why the timer lives in the shell.
A timer on the Hours page is a timer you forget. Ours sits in the application shell, visible from every screen, with three ways to start it depending on what you already have in front of you.
The failure it fixes
Timers get abandoned in two ways: started and never stopped, or never started at all. Both come from the same cause — the timer lives somewhere you are not. If clocking in means navigating to a time page, then the moment you actually start working is the moment you are least likely to do it.
Three entry points, on purpose
The fastest is the composer: you are already typing in a channel, so a shortcut clocks you into that project without leaving the message. The one with the most context is the sidebar picker, where you choose the project from a list. The most specific is a board card, which clocks you into the project and attaches the ticket.
What happens when you clock into something else
Starting a new project stops the previous segment and starts a new one. It does not ask. Two concurrent timers are a data problem — one person cannot bill two clients for the same hour — and a confirmation dialogue at that moment is just friction in front of the obvious answer.
The stopped segment stays editable in the week view. Correcting a wrong entry afterwards is cheap; losing an hour because a dialogue was dismissed is not.
Visible while running
When a timer is running the shell says so, everywhere, including on a phone where it becomes a strip above the bottom bar. The most common cause of a bad invoice is an hour nobody noticed, in either direction.
Afterwards: the week
The timer is the fast way in, not the whole story. Every segment it records becomes an entry you can open and change: the project, the note, the times. Rounding a 4:58 to five hours is allowed, because the person who did the work is the one who knows. Days you forgot are filled in by hand on the same screen.
Timer and Timesheet are two views of the same week, and both carry the other as a tab, because the first people to use the timer could not find where to send the week for approval. A submitted week goes to the owner’s Approvals screen; only an approved week locks. Editing a submitted week simply reopens it.
The door is open.
Thirty days free for a team, free forever for one person. If it does not replace at least three things you pay for, do not keep it.