Most service desks do not record time, they reconstruct it. Round numbers get typed into a spreadsheet on a Friday, which understates the short interruptions and overstates the long jobs. By the time an invoice goes out, nobody can say what the figures rest on.
This is established platform capability in both HaloITSM and HaloPSA, not a recent addition. Halo does not state which version introduced it, and the current HaloPSA release, version 2.236, the 2026 Second Release, contains no timesheet items.
Time is captured three ways: on a ticket action through the Time Taken field, with a timer that starts when the action opens; as quick time with no ticket open, from the timesheet side pane or the CTRL SHIFT L shortcut; or from shifts, where agents clock in and out and Halo records start, end and break times.
All of it feeds a timesheet showing Start Time, Finish Time, Target Hours (working hours minus breaks), Hours Worked, Hours Logged and Charge Hours, the billable figure. Further views cover forecasting, planning and an hourly timeline. The detail is in the Halo documentation.
The shift is from time estimated to time evidenced. Once timers run, the difference between an agent who is busy and an agent who is slow becomes visible, which a ticket count never showed.
Approvals are the part that gives it teeth. Enable Timesheet Approvals gives every agent an approver, set on their record or inherited from their team. Agents submit a day or a week, managers approve or reject with a memo, and invoicing can be held until approval completes. Time Taken also works as ticket rule criteria, so a job past a threshold can be reassigned or escalated automatically.
No divergence in the mechanics has been identified between the lines. What differs is the use: for HaloPSA the invoicing gate is a commercial control, and for HaloITSM the same data feeds cost recovery, chargeback and capacity.
End users Indirect only. A ticket past a time threshold can be reassigned or escalated by rule.
Service desk agents Time captured while working rather than remembered later, submitted daily or weekly.
Team leaders Target, Worked, Logged and Charge Hours per agent per day, plus approve or reject with a memo.
IT management Utilisation and billable recovery measurable rather than estimated, with approval as a gate before invoicing.
Almost everything sits under Configuration then Time Management. Switching timers on is perhaps half a day; configuring it properly should be scoped at several days.
The work that takes the time:
Two prerequisites are easy to miss. The quick time ticket type needs the Charge Type (Actions) field added before charge types appear in the quick time dialog, and shift based agents need Calculate Target Hours using Shift hours for Agents using Shifts enabled.
No data model change or migration is required, and the core capability has no integration dependency. Halo also states there are no tiers, editions or add-ons, and that timesheets and time tracking are included in the per agent price, but that comes from its pricing page rather than contract documentation, so check your Halo edition.
Action sub event entry, which records start and end dates rather than a duration, is incompatible with the timer, so choosing one rules out the other.
Deletion is awkward. An action based entry goes by deleting the action, a quick time entry by deleting the whole quick time ticket, and a break by setting Time Taken to zero. Agents need permissions for all of it, or an administrator steps in.
The invoicing gate has a hole. Holding invoicing until approval only applies where the ticket type charge rate is not No Charge. Approving the weekly Total approves every unreviewed day in one click, which is also how a bad week gets rubber stamped. Reversion runs one way: an agent can revert before approval, but only the manager can undo it.
The problem that surfaces six months in is not a product defect. Target Hours are only as good as the agent working hours and workdays behind them, and those decay through part time changes and leavers. Halo's documentation shows the pro rata logic with a holiday example: four hours from 13:30 to 17:30 against an 08:00 to 16:00 day removes only 2.5 hours from the target. Get those wrong and every utilisation report built on the timesheet is wrong with them.
Hikon is a Halo partner working with SMB and mid market teams across the UK and Israel. Switching timers on takes an afternoon; the decisions underneath take longer and matter more. We help you settle what counts as chargeable, the Charge Hours basis, the approval rhythm, and whether your working hours data supports Target Hours at all. We keep that data correct after go live, because it is the part that decays and takes the reporting with it.
Halo's full Time Tracking guide is at usehalo.com/guides/1924.
If you are running Halo and cannot say what your utilisation was last month, get in touch and we will work through it with you.
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