Kaiten time tracking: hours on the card without manual entry

Kaiten keeps work on boards: a card moves across columns, so the job is moving. What a board can't show is the trip itself — whether the assignee reached the client, how long the drive took and how long the work on site. Taskloc adds this to the card: a GPS session per task, the route, and hours that get logged to the card automatically.

What a field job looks like on a board

• The card was moved to "Done", but whether the engineer was at the client's is known only to the engineer.
• Time is typed into the card by hand, from memory, for the whole day at once.
• The day's route isn't kept anywhere — there's nothing to plan the next trip on.
• Travel between stops and work at a stop are one indistinguishable number.

How time tracking in Kaiten works

1. Connect: your space address plus an API key. The key is in Kaiten under Profile → API key.
2. The employee opens a card from their board in the app and starts a GPS session.
3. Time and route are recorded automatically; a check-in marks the visit.
4. When the session stops, the hours are logged to the card; the comment and the move between columns go there too.

The app speaks kanban: the container is a board, the task is a card. Creating cards, comments, tags, attachments, the card type as a chip in the list and time entries are supported. Logging time works on any paid Kaiten plan, including "Start" — the separate "Time tracking" module is not required.

About statuses, to avoid surprises: in Kaiten a status is a column of a specific board; there is no single workflow across boards. The same "Done" on two boards is two different columns. The app works with the columns of the board the card lives on.

What managers get

• Hours on the card, recorded while the work happened, not typed in on Friday.
• A check-in as a fact of the visit: location, geofence, route.
• Mileage and the route of each trip on a map.
• A live team map and per-employee reports in the web dashboard.

The web dashboard runs in a browser — nothing to install on a computer. The app is needed only by people in the field.

For a kanban team this closes a gap the board can't close by design. A column tells you what stage a card is at, not how much time the stage took or where it happened. Once connected, every card gets a second side: time on site, time on the road to it, and whether the assignee was there at all.

Kaiten connector limitations

• No auto-pause: pauses are recorded in Taskloc only. Server-side auto-pause with notes in the issue exists for the Redmine connector — see time tracking for Redmine.
• No ready-made filters.
• Custom fields (mileage, address) are experimental for Kaiten.
• If your space makes a role mandatory in time entries, the app writes the time as a comment on the card instead. This is a portal setting — check with your admin.

Setup guide: connecting Kaiten.

Privacy

The employee starts the GPS session. Outside an active session no location is collected: stop the shift and you disappear from the team map. Who sees what is set by team policies.

Kaiten questions

Where do I get the API key?

In Kaiten: Profile → API key. The key and the space address are entered once, when you connect.

The key isn't accepted — what now?

Check that the whole key was copied and the space address has no typos; a stray space at the start or end of the line is a common cause. If that doesn't help, write to support and we'll look at the response your space returns.

I deleted a card from the app — is it gone?

No. A deleted card goes to the Kaiten trash and can be restored from there.

Is time logged to the card on any plan?

On any paid plan, including "Start". The only catch is a mandatory role in time entries: if your portal enables it, time goes as a comment.

Do cards from several boards show in one list?

Yes — the employee sees their cards across the boards available to them. Moving between columns always happens inside the card's own board, since Kaiten has no shared set of statuses.

Is there an iPhone app?

No. Field staff use the Android app; managers use the web dashboard in a browser.

If part of your team is on Trello or Jira

Kaiten and Trello or Jira often coexist in the same company. Those trackers are separate connectors, and tasks from different trackers show side by side in the app: connecting trackers. For field work that isn't tied to a particular tracker, see field employee tracking.

Try it on your board

Free works forever for one seat. The Team trial gives 14 days and 3 seats, once per account; no card is needed at sign-up and nothing is charged when it ends — the account simply moves to Free.

Team payments are currently accepted only with Mir cards issued in Russia and the CIS and via SBP. If you are elsewhere, contact us and we will look at your case — we can't promise a particular payment method in advance.