Hi Erwin,

Which version of Odoo are you using?

This is not the view that I get in Odoo Enterprise 9 (from a June release update). It does not include that field.

The next version of the Enterprise release (Odoo 10) will include an updated timesheet app, which will solve this problem, and is expected in October this year.

I use Odoo 9.0 Community Edition Version 9.0c-20160805

Thanks for the reply Ray. Yes, "Bill Time on Tasks" is installed, and I do get the screen above as per point 4 in my question, however this does not appear in the Timesheet Form (hours per day against a project/activity in a grid, aka the traditional timesheet view the user is presented by default when creating a new weeks timesheet). This means that either the user has to enter their timesheet in the timesheet entry screen, then go to the activities page, and separately add tasks against each entry (assuming 1 day=1 task), or they don't bother with the timesheet entry screen at all and just manually create activities, which whilst not outrageously difficult, is a rather odd situation and will be confusing to consultants, especially those that are new. I'm looking for a way to make the timesheet entry screen include this task dropdown selection field so that it behaves how most timesheet applications do (and the consultants are used to). I guess it could just be a case of me modifying the timesheet view with a new field in the same way the activities page include it? Or are the data models accessed different between the two?

Just looking at this, it seems as though the Activities Page lists items from the account.analytic.line data model, whereas the timesheet entry page uses the hr.timesheet.sheet data model. Being very new to Odoo, I would assume that customisation of the view for the timesheet entry page to include a field from the analytic account data model would not be possible?

I understand your question now. You are correct. As designed, Odoo has users enter time for the Project, not the task, via the Timesheet. Time for the task can be logged via the Activities screen or via the Task itself - in both cases they are added to the Timesheet - the details tab shows that the Task is denoted in the Description column. Community modules addressed this for previous versions of Odoo but I don't know of anything for v9.

Thanks Ray. It seems we're stuck with the more awkward approach until a community module is released (or Odoo make good on the design).

What if it isn't awkward? What if, as people used it this way, they got used to it and it worked out just find for them in the end? I happen to find it more akin to the way I work. At my previous company we had 8 people logging time this way - with internal projects and tasks for the common non billable things. Since I had to update the task I worked on with notes/progress it made sense to log my time right there. Depends I guess how attached people are to one design and how open they are to another.

Unfortunately it makes the process awkward - for one, it doesn't have the Timesheet approval process behind it, which is required if this is part of a purchasing and sales invoicing process. This means we will need to have the timesheet created by the Consultant to cover that requirement, then an administrator would have to manually assign tasks to the timesheet entries for our consultants before running the billing cycle. Not really the right way to do things IMHO. We also don't manage tasks as "tasks in a project work management sense" in here (we use JIRA, JIRA Agile and JIRA Portfolio internally and Customer specific systems when consulting for proper task management), we are using the tasks in the Projects to act as part of the billing mechanism - this is how Contracts Management is designed in Odoo, for better or worse, so this is how we connect sales, work activities and supplier bills (when it is an external contractor vs internal employee).