What Timely imports is your structure, not your hours

How do you export from Timely?

Timely rebuilt its export flow, and the current version works in two steps: define the report you want, then choose the format. You can preview the result before downloading, adjust the settings without leaving the page, and set the whole thing to run on a schedule so the file arrives by email instead of being remembered every month.

Which format you pick is a real decision here rather than a formality, because the exports are not all one table.

The Excel behaviour is the useful one. If you ask for both the entry list and the totals in a single export, CSV has to flatten them or you take two files. Excel keeps them as separate sheets in one workbook, which is the difference between one attachment and a folder.

Time Entries and Workspace Breakdown, formerly Entries only and Totals only

The two things you can ask for were renamed when the export flow was rebuilt. What used to be Entries only is now Time Entries, the raw list. What used to be Totals only is now Workspace Breakdown, grouped by clients, projects and people. Older guides still use the old names, which is worth knowing if you are following instructions written before the change.

When you generate a CSV or Excel export you select the columns you want, and Timely lists the available fields with descriptions rather than making you guess from a header name.

Integration links behave differently by format

Timely pulls work items in from connected tools, and those links survive the export in a format-dependent way. In Excel they export as clickable links. In CSV they export as plain URLs. Neither is wrong, but if the file is going to someone who needs to open the linked item rather than copy a string into a browser, that decides your format for you.

What does a Timely export not carry?

The same structural limit that applies across this category. An export is a report about time, so clients, projects and labels appear as text alongside the hours rather than as records with their own rates, members and archived state. The Workspace Breakdown gets closer than most, because it is explicitly organised by client, project and person, but it is still a summary of a structure rather than the structure itself.

What can Timely import?

This is where Timely is genuinely different from its competitors, and it is worth being accurate about both halves of it.

Timely publishes a direct importer for projects and clients from Toggl and Harvest. No file, no column mapping, no export step: you connect the other account and Timely reads the structure across. Among the tools in this comparison, only Jibble does anything similar, and Timely got there for two of the biggest names in the category.

What it does not bring is time entries. Your project list, your client list and the relationships between them arrive; your hours do not. For a team switching at the start of a quarter and content to leave history behind, that covers the tedious part of the setup. For anyone who needs continuity in their reporting, the hours still need a separate route.

It is a reasonable design choice rather than an oversight. Structure is small, stable and painful to retype. History is large, and every tool in this category treats it as the harder problem.

Where can Timely data go next?

Timely is one of the better-connected tools here in both directions, which makes leaving it comparatively painless.

Worth knowing before you pick: Jibble publishes a Timely import tool, though its page does not say what transfers.

How do you move Timely data into Timen?

Timen connects to Timely through OAuth. Open Settings, go to the Import tab, choose Timely, and authorise. Pick the account and choose what to bring across. Because it reads the API rather than a report, your hours come with their start and end times attached.

Two honest limits. Invoices do not come across, so export any billing history you want to keep before closing the account. And Timely's AI memory and automatic activity capture have no Timen equivalent and are not imported, because Timen tracks time you record rather than reconstructing it from your desktop.

For a feature-by-feature view rather than a migration one, the direct comparison covers where the two approaches differ.

Common questions about exporting Timely data

What formats can Timely export?

CSV, Excel and PDF. CSV suits a single table of raw data. Excel is the one to pick when the export contains more than one table, because each table gets its own sheet. You can preview an export and schedule it to arrive automatically.

What is the difference between Time Entries and Workspace Breakdown?

Time Entries is the raw entry list, previously called Entries only. Workspace Breakdown is the totals view, previously called Totals only, grouped by clients, projects and people. The rename happened when Timely rebuilt its export flow.

Can Timely import time entries from another tracker?

Not time entries. Timely imports projects and clients directly from Toggl and Harvest, which rebuilds your structure but not your history. Hours have to come across another way.

How do integration links appear in a Timely export?

Linked work items from integrations export as clickable links in Excel and as plain URLs in CSV. If you need the links to stay clickable for whoever reads the file, choose Excel.

Timely is easy to leave, and half-easy to join

The export side needs no strategy. Pick Excel if your report has more than one table or the integration links need to stay clickable, CSV if it is one table headed for a spreadsheet, and schedule it if you pull the same file every month.

The importer is the more interesting half, because it tells you what Timely thinks a migration is: your structure, not your history. That is the right call for a team starting fresh and the wrong one for a team that reports year on year, and knowing which of those you are makes the decision straightforward.