Track costs, not only time.

[mmoollllee]

Hey there!
I need to track costs for projects and tasks, not just time-entries. For example traveling costs that were planned within a project. Would be awesome! If someone could help me sketch this feature, I'd be happy to propose a basic implementation!

[mmoollllee]

Hello again,
I'd like to start working on this and make a pull request.

The idea is to add an "Other cost entry" item next to every existing "Manual time entry".

I had a closer look at the codebase to sketch how this could land cleanly. Let me know about adjustments on this before I start.

Design decision: separate cost_entries table

A cost has no duration, different validation, and flows through reports differently than time. I'd lean toward a dedicated cost_entries table and CostEntry model rather than overloading time_entries. That keeps the existing time-tracking paths untouched and mirrors the TimeEntry structure so naming and patterns stay consistent with the rest of the codebase.

Proposed schema (mirroring time_entries where it makes sense):

• id (uuid, pk)
• description (string, 500)
• date (date) — single point in time instead of start/end
• amount (integer, cents) — stored in the smallest currency unit, same convention as billable_rate
• billable (bool, default false)
• user_id, member_id, organization_id, project_id, task_id, client_id (uuid, same FKs as TimeEntry)
• tags (jsonb)
• timestamps

Alternative: add a type enum + amount column to time_entries. Less code, but every aggregation, filter, and report query would need to branch on type. I'd prefer the separate-table route?

Backend changes

• Migration create_cost_entries_table
• app/Models/CostEntry.php mirroring TimeEntry (HasUuids, auditable, same relations to Member, Organization, Project, Task, Client, Tag)
• app/Service/CostEntryService.php
• CostEntryController + UserCostEntryController with CRUD mirroring the time-entry endpoints
• CostEntryPolicy with the matching cost-entries:* permission set, registered in PermissionStore / the relevant seeders
• Extend ReportService, DashboardService, and TimeEntriesReportExport so costs appear alongside time in reports/exports (totals become hours × rate + costs)
• Add the new endpoints to openapi.json

Frontend changes

• Add an "Other cost entry" item to TimeTrackerMoreOptionsDropdown.vue, emitting a new costEntry event
• New modal resources/js/packages/ui/src/CostEntry/CostEntryCreateModal.vue, modeled after TimeEntryCreateModal.vue but with amount / date fields (no start/end, no duration)
• Wire it into resources/js/Components/TimeTracker.vue next to showManualTimeEntryModal
• Extend the Time / Reports / Dashboard tables to render cost rows (either a variant in TimeEntryGroupedTable.vue or a sibling CostEntryRow.vue, whichever fits better stylistically)

Testing

• PHPUnit endpoint tests mirrored from TimeEntryEndpointTest.php, plus service and policy tests
• Playwright e2e spec in e2e/cost.spec.ts patterned after e2e/time.spec.ts
• composer fix / composer analyse and npm run lint:fix / npm run format before committing, as per CONTRIBUTING.md

Let me know if the direction looks right? :)

[Onatcer]

i'm honestly not really a fan of having another cost concept in the main application. solidtime really is a time tracking application, not a business management software. especially combining the those cost entries with the time-based costs in the reporting might get confusing. i can see that people want to have cost tracking in solidtime but i think this would be a good fit for an extension in the future rather than going in the core. its theoretically possible to load extensions currently but the frontend doesn't have any way to insert components yet.

[mmoollllee]

I totally understand your concern and absolutely think that solidtime should not be bloated with unrelated stuff.
From my perspective, solidtime collects the data for invoicing. As I also order stuff for my clients and need to travel to project-/client-related appointments, it would be awesome to have the expenses calculated with the defined budgets and collect all data for invoices within one tool.
If I'd do a fork and build the feature I'm looking for, would you have a look and reconsider based on my work? :)