Archive, Trash and Delete

There are three ways to make something go away in TimeTracker, and they are not the same. Picking the right one saves a lot of anxiety later.

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Archive: finished, but keep it

Archive means “this is done, stop showing it to me, but keep it in the books.” An archived project:

• Disappears from your project list and pickers
• Still appears in reports and invoices
• Keeps every hour, every task and every number attached to it
• Comes back exactly as it was when you restore it

This is what you want for a client project that has shipped. You do not want the 2024 website redesign cluttering everyone’s dropdown, but you absolutely want its hours in your annual profitability report.

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What can be archived

Records that cannot be archived are records that only make sense as raw history – an hour either happened or it did not, so there is nothing to “finish”.

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Trash: probably a mistake

Trash is a staging area on the way to permanent deletion. A trashed record:

• Disappears from lists and from reports
• Can be restored, putting it back exactly as it was
• Is permanently removed after the retention period

Use Trash when you think something should go, but you would like a safety net.

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The 30-day retention

Trashed items are permanently removed after 30 days by default. A workspace can change that period in settings. Until the retention period runs out, nothing is destroyed – a trashed record is fully restorable. See trash and restore.

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Delete: gone for good

Permanent delete removes the record and everything that depends on it. There is no undo and no recovery. TimeTracker makes this deliberately hard to do by accident:

• High-impact deletes open a confirmation modal that spells out exactly what will be destroyed
• You must type the record’s name to match before the button becomes active
• The name is provided ready to copy, so you cannot mistype it into the wrong record

That applies to deleting a workspace, a project, a client, an account and any bulk delete.

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The one exception

A recoverable delete – one that only moves a row to Trash – can happen instantly without a modal, because it is not destructive. When that happens you get an Undo option in the toast that appears. You will see this on the standalone Tasks page. Deleting a task there is one click, and one click to undo.

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Which should I use?

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What happens to the things inside

Archiving or trashing a parent takes its children with it. Restoring the parent brings them back together. This is why archiving a client is safe – you are not unpicking anything by hand. Time entries are the exception. They are never archived along with a project, because they are the historical record the reports read. Archiving a project keeps its hours fully visible in reporting.

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Where to find archived and trashed items

Both pages let you filter by kind of record, and restore in place. Many list pages also carry a scope filter so you can switch a single list between active, archived, trashed or all – handy when you just want to find one archived project without leaving the page.

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Permissions

You need the same capability to archive, trash or restore a record as you need to manage it in the first place.

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Common questions

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