You cannot recover hours that nobody recorded. Jira can show you where the work happened, and it can prompt your memory. A reconstruction turns those prompts into reviewed worklogs. The rule is one line: a trace can suggest a duration, and only a review can save it.
In Jira, an issue can appear as a work item in the current interface. A worklog is the record of time on that work item. Log time on a work item explains how entries work.
Where the evidence lives
Three records survive a forgotten week.
- The History tab on each work item. It shows every field change with its author and timestamp. A status move to In Progress at 08:55 tells you when the work started.
- Comments. A comment says which issue you touched, but it does not say how long the work took.
- Your calendar and team channels. Meeting invites give durations that no Jira record holds.
Worklogs are separate records from issue history. A changelog event never becomes time until someone logs it.
Build the worksheet before you log anything
Open the week, one day at a time, and work in this order.
- Write down the expected hours for each day.
- Open each work item you may have touched. Read its History tab.
- For each trace, write the evidence and a proposed duration.
- Mark each row. Use sure for a supported duration, check for one you must confirm, and gap for a day with no evidence at all.
- Confirm every check row. Cut any duration that survives only as a guess.
- Log the supported durations. Report the gaps to your team lead instead of filling them.
The gaps are the point of the worksheet. A week with an honest zero is better than a week with invented hours. Your lead can act on a gap.
Use the suggestions, then judge them
In My Timesheet, select Fill week. Daylight reads your own activity on work items assigned to you and updated that week, then suggests entries in the empty cells. Two limits matter. The suggestion comes from event counts, not from measured durations. A day off or a holiday never gets filled.
Nothing saves until you accept. Skip the cells you do not trust, adjust the durations you can support, and select the cells you do accept. If your organization uses approvals, review the whole week before you submit it. Submitted and approved periods stay read-only, and approved periods have no reopen action.
Fill week works on the current week. For an older week, use the worksheet below. The review step is the same either way.
The worksheet
Download the worksheet CSV. Mia Chen is a fictional person. ACME-42, ACME-44, ACME-51, and INT-7 are fictional work items on a fictional week.
| Date | Trace | Confidence | Suggested | Logged |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 19 | 2 updates on ACME-42 | check | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Mon 19 | Calendar meeting, INT-7 | sure | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Tue 20 | ACME-42 moved to In Progress | sure | 2.5 | 2.5 |
| Tue 20 | ACME-51 assigned, 1 comment | check | 1.5 | 0.0 |
| Wed 21 | Commit referenced on ACME-44 | check | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Wed 21 | No activity at all | gap | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Thu 22 | 3 updates on ACME-42 | check | 4.0 | 3.5 |
| Thu 22 | Stand-up note, INT-7 | sure | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Fri 23 | ACME-42 moved to Done | sure | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Fri 23 | 1 comment on ACME-51 | check | 1.5 | 0.0 |
The numbers reconcile. The traces suggest 19.5 hours. Mia logs 16.0 of them and drops 3.5 that she cannot support, so 16.0 plus 3.5 equals 19.5. Wednesday shows the honest gap: no trace, no duration, and a report to the lead instead of a guess.
After the week is logged
Submit the week when the durations are supported. From the last working day, the submit bar warns you if you logged fewer hours than expected. You can still submit.
Before you log, check the edit window. An admin can set a window for older weeks, and weeks outside it are read-only. If your week is already submitted, Unsubmit it or ask the approver to reject it. Then apply the corrections and submit again.
Read the timesheet instructions for the grid, expected hours, and the submission states.