Projects vs activities in Sandtime.io: what is the difference?
An activity is a single time entry: one person, a start, an end, and a name describing the work. A project is the bucket activities are grouped into, and it carries the rules that come with that grouping - a billable default, a member list, and the rates used for reporting. Every activity belongs to exactly one person, while a project is optional: an activity without one sits under Unassigned.
An activity is one person's time
An activity holds a Name, a Started at and an Ended at, an optional Project, a Billable switch, and the User it belongs to. Leave the end time empty and the activity is still running. Duration is an alternative way to set the end.
Activities are where all the hours live. A project has no duration of its own, so every figure in a report is a sum of activities.
Only the person an entry belongs to, or an organization Administrator, can change it. Being a Project Administrator does not extend to a colleague's time entries, even on your own project. See Roles and permissions.
A project is a bucket with rules attached
A project holds a name, a picture, notes, a Billable setting, and a list of members. Choosing one on an activity does five things a plain label would not:
- It sets the billable default. Every project starts out billable, and picking a project sets that entry's own Billable switch. A single entry can still be flipped back. See Track breaks and other non-billable time.
- It decides who sees the time. People who share a project see each other and the activities reported to it. See Who can see whom in your organization.
- It scopes the Project Administrator role. That role is assigned per project and covers the project's team, not the whole organization.
- It carries the revenue rate. Rates are set per person per project, so the same person can be billed at different rates on two projects. See Cost and revenue reporting.
- It groups the time in reports. Project is one of the things a report can group by, alongside Activity and Member. See Create and customize reports.
Can an activity exist without a project?
Yes. Press Start tracking and the activity begins immediately as Unassigned - you can pick the project while it runs, or later. Unassigned time still appears on your timesheet and still counts toward reported time.
Assign a project when the time needs to appear as its own line in a report, to be billed, or to be visible to the people you work with. Until then, recording the time is the part that matters.
Which one do I create first?
Track first, organize second. No project is needed to start a timer.
Creating projects is a separate and more deliberate step, and only an organization Administrator can do it: open Settings, go to Projects, and click Create new project. See Create a project for reported time.
Moving time between projects
Open the entry and change its Project field. See Edit or delete a time entry.
Two things can block the move. The person the entry belongs to has to be a member of the project it is moving to, and neither the old nor the new project can be archived.
What happens to activities when a project is archived
Nothing happens to the activities themselves. The project becomes inaccessible to its members, and the time reported to it drops out of reports unless Show archived is turned on in the report's filters. Restoring the project from the archive makes those entries visible again.
Deleting a project is a different action, and a permanent one: every activity ever reported to it is deleted along with it, together with the revenue rates assigned on it. There is no undo and no per-entry restore - see Recovering deleted activities. Archive rather than delete whenever the record might matter later.