# Why we don't track start and end times

Many people want to track exactly when people arrive and leave, and any breaks they take. At present, Zipwire doesn't do this and only tracks the time spent on an activity.

## Why not?

There are a few reasons why Zipwire does not track start and end times.

* Most working people arrive and leave at the same time each day, and so don't need to record this information. The activity they track time against can include the usual hours in its name, such as **ABC Leisure > Townsville > 7am - 4pm**. See [Naming activities](/use-cases/for-senders/naming-activities.md).
* In some countries, contract staff who are stipulated to arrive and leave at certain times fall into a different legal category.
* Thankfully, many people today work flexibly and it doesn't matter precisely when they start or stop work.
* People round up or down to the time when they're supposed to start or stop and effectively don't track the exact truth.
* You can use the notes feature to print additional information on the timesheet.
* It makes using the Journal much quicker because the UI can be designed for rapid input of duration rather than picking times.
* It allows Artificial Intelligence to understand much shorter, more convenient descriptions such as "Last week I worked all week on night shift" where *night shift* is the name of an activity which implies the normal working times.

Please reach out to us if you have a compelling reason to track times. We are considering opening the Journal up as an API so other tracking systems can automatically write duration and notes into Zipwire.


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