Building a Custom Report

A custom report is a report you put together yourself from Report Cards, save, and share as a link that anyone can open without signing in. This guide builds one from start to finish: a month-end check that an owner sends round once a month. It then follows the report through the months after: fixing what its warnings point at, editing it, sharing it again, and deleting it.

What you need

Owners, admins and managers can build custom reports; other roles do not see Custom. What a report covers depends on your role. An owner or admin reports on every active project, money included. A manager reports on the projects they are a member of, plus any project whose Time Tracking is set to All Personnel, and never sees money. Roles are described on Roles.

Decide what the report is for

Before you open the builder, decide who will read the report and what question it answers for them. That decides everything else: the projects, the period, and which Report Cards earn a place. A report that answers one question with a handful of Report Cards gets read. A report that holds everything is a long page the reader has to search.

The month-end check in this guide is for the owner and the account leads. It answers four questions about the month just finished: how many hours were logged, which projects they went to, who logged them, and what work was finished. It covers every project.

Open the builder

In the sidebar, open Reports and click Custom. The page is titled Custom Reports and opens on the Report Ledger, the list of custom reports you have saved. Your custom reports are yours alone: nobody else sees them in their ledger, and you do not see theirs.

Click Add Report to open the Report Builder. The catalogue of Report Cards fills the left of the page. The Composition panel on the right holds everything about the report you are building: its name, projects, range, and the Report Cards you pick.

Name it

Under Name, type a name that says what the report is for, such as "Month-end check". The name is how you find the report in the ledger. You will share the same report month after month, so name it for its purpose rather than its period. "Month-end check" stays right; "August hours" is wrong from September onward.

Choose the projects

Under Projects, click the field to open the list of active projects and tick the ones the report should cover. Find a project narrows a long list.

Leave it on All projects for a check across all your projects. The report then covers every active project each time you share it, including projects created after you saved it. The month-end check stays on All projects. Tick projects when the reader cares only about some of them: one client's work, or one team's.

If you are a manager, All projects covers only the projects you can report on, as described under What you need.

Choose the range

Under Range, click the calendar icon. You can pick a shortcut, such as Last Week or Current Month, or two dates on the calendar. A new report starts on Current Month.

A shortcut follows the calendar. The report does not store dates. Each time you share it, the shortcut is worked out for that day, so Last Month shared in October covers September, and shared in November covers October. Use a shortcut for a report you send regularly, so it never needs editing.

Two dates stay fixed. Every share covers exactly those days. Use fixed dates for a period you are closing or reviewing once, such as a quarter or a finished cycle of work.

Current Month covers the whole month, including the days still to come, so a report shared on the 12th shows twelve days of hours inside a month-long range. For the month-end check, pick Last Month and share it in the first days of the new month: the range is the whole finished month, and your team has had time to log their last hours.

Find the Report Cards

The catalogue shows every Report Card, each with its code and name. At a glance and Project card come first, outside any group. The rest follow under group headings, Effort through Origin; each group gathers the Report Cards on one subject, such as where the hours went (Effort) or value and budgets (Money).

Type in Filter to narrow the catalogue to Report Cards whose name or description holds what you type.

To see what a Report Card shows, click the magnifier on the card and read its description before you pick it. Every Report Card, with its code and what it shows, is also listed on Intelligence Reports.

Pick and unpick

Click a card to pick it. It is highlighted, and it appears under Report cards, in order in the Composition panel with its name and code. Click it again, or click the X on its row in the panel, to take it out.

For the month-end check, pick four Report Cards. At a glance (AT-001), at the top of the catalogue, gives the month's hours and where they went, with the daily trend. Hours by project (AT-102), in Effort, shows which projects the hours went to, with the billable part of each. Hours by person (AT-103), next to it, shows who logged them and how much of each person's time went on no task. Tasks finished in the range (AT-206), in Delivery, lists the month's finished work task by task.

Report Cards for other purposes

A client's monthly summary, sent by an owner or admin, covers that client's projects on Last Month. Hours by project (AT-102) shows the hours on each of their projects. Tasks finished in the range (AT-206) shows the work delivered. Value by invoice state (AT-702) shows what those hours are worth and how much has been invoiced and paid.

A manager's weekly team check covers the team's projects on Current Week and is shared on the last working day of the week. Hours logged (AT-603) shows who has working days with no hours logged. Tasks needing attention (AT-601) ranks the open tasks that are past their end date. That Report Card appears only when the range includes the day you share, and Current Week always does.

A delivery review after a cycle of work uses two fixed dates, the cycle's first and last days. Finished work by project: estimate against actual (AT-205) sets each project's finished tasks against their estimates. Throughput (AT-305) shows how many tasks finished each day. Return on effort (AT-201) shows how much of all the hours logged went into work that finished.

Put them in order

The list under Report cards, in order is the order of the finished page, top to bottom. Drag a row up or down to move it. Order matters because the reader reads the page from the top. Put the summary first, then the breakdowns, then the detail. The page also takes its title from the first Report Card: with At a glance first, the month-end check is titled for the month it covers, such as "September 2026 at a glance".

For the month-end check, the order is At a glance, Hours by project, Hours by person, then Tasks finished in the range.

Save

Click Save. It is available once the report has a name and at least one Report Card. "Report saved" confirms it, and you are back in the Report Ledger with the new row. Cancel leaves the builder without saving.

Saving does not run the report. You see a custom report only by sharing it.

On the report's row, click the Share icon. Share takes the report's range as it falls today and copies a link to the report to your clipboard; "URL copied" confirms it. Each link is a snapshot: it shows the numbers as they were when it was made, and it does not change afterwards.

Before you send it, paste the link into a new browser tab and read the page yourself. It is exactly what your reader will see. Check the range, check that the projects are the ones you meant, and read any warning at the top.

Then send the link wherever the reader is: an email, a chat, a ticket. Nobody needs an AbleTime account to open it. The link ends with its six-character code, so sent whole it opens straight onto the report. You can also send the link without the code at its end and give the code separately. Whoever opens it is then asked for the six characters first, and a wrong code shows only that the report was not found.

What the reader sees

The reader sees one page, an intelligence report. At the top are the words Intelligence report, the title, the range with its number of days and working days, when the report was created, and the projects it covers.

If something that is not set affects a Report Card on the page, a Warning box above the first Report Card names each gap once, so the reader sees it before the numbers.

Then come your Report Cards in the order you set. Each is headed by its name and code, with a sentence saying what it shows, and many end with short footnotes on what their numbers include or leave out. Some Report Cards are left off the page when they do not apply: Tasks needing attention, for example, appears only when the day you share the report falls inside its range.

Under every Report Card are Copy link, which copies the page's address with its code, and Print, which prints the whole page, not only that Report Card. Printing is the only way to take the report out of the browser: there is no CSV, Excel or PDF export.

Fix what the warnings point at

A warning is not a fault in the report. It says what could not be priced or measured because something is not set, and names what to set: a rate on a billable category (see Categories), an estimate on a task (see Tasks), or a budget on a project (see Managing Projects). Set what it names, then share the report again for a link with the new numbers. The rate is recorded on each entry as it is logged, so billable hours logged before you set a rate stay unpriced, and the warning goes on counting them.

Edit a saved report

To change a report, click Edit (the pencil) on its row. The builder opens with the report as you saved it. Change the name, projects, range or Report Cards, then click Save to replace the saved report, or Cancel to leave it as it was.

Editing never changes a link you have already sent. That link goes on showing the report as it was when you shared it, until it expires. To send the changed report, share it again and send the new link.

Once the report is saved, sharing it again is the whole job. With Last Month, each month's share covers the month before, and nothing needs editing.

Each share makes a fresh link with the current numbers, and earlier links keep showing what they showed.

A link stops working fourteen days after it was first made, and the page then says only that the report was not found. When one has expired, click Share again and send the new link.

Delete a report

Click the X (Delete) on the report's row, then Delete in the Delete Report dialog; "Report deleted" confirms it. Deleting removes the saved report from your ledger. Links you have already sent keep working until they expire.

Done

You are done when the Report Ledger has a row named for its purpose, its Report Cards are in the order you want them read, you have read the page yourself, and the link is with your reader. Next month, click Share and send the new link.

Every control on the ledger and the builder is described on Custom Reports.