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Rounding

Timers record real seconds. Clients get billed in round numbers. Rounding is where those two meet, and owntime keeps it to one rule so you can always explain a line.

The setting

Settings → Invoicing → round time to minutes on invoices. Zero means the default, which is a quarter hour. Set six if your industry bills in tenths of an hour, which some law and accounting practices do.

Where it applies

On the way into an invoice. Your stored entries keep the real time, so reports and budgets stay truthful while the invoice shows the client friendly number.

What it is not

It is not a billing rules engine. There is one rounding rule for the whole document, not a different one per client, per task or per day of week. If you need a minimum billing increment per matter, set rounding to the increment and adjust the few outliers by hand. The alternative is a rules engine nobody can audit, and the invoice number is worth more than that.

Your industry may preset it

Some industries arrive with rounding already set, because it is the norm there. You can change it, and switching industry resets it to that industry’s default rather than carrying a stale value across.

Next: invoices · industry vocabulary