Project Aliases: Merge Time Tracking Across IDEs

Every project has a name. It shows up in your IDE's project list, in a workspace tab, in a terminal prompt - and it's also the thing JustClock uses to group your tracked time into a report. That's usually invisible, right up until the name isn't the same everywhere.

The name isn't always yours to pick

Most IDEs derive a project's name from something you didn't set on purpose: a folder name, a workspace file, a repository name, a solution file. Rename a directory during a refactor and the name changes with it. Clone the same repository under a different folder name on a second machine and you get a second name for the same work. None of this is wrong - it's just how projects get named, and it's rarely under your direct control.

Different IDEs, different names for the same project

It gets more interesting when you work on one project from more than one editor. A common case: a project called Genial in a web-based IDE, and the same codebase opened in Visual Studio, where it shows up as GenialProject because that's what the solution file is called. Same work, same client, same billable hours - split across two names in your reports.

Sometimes you want that split. Sometimes you don't

Splitting isn't automatically a problem. If you're juggling several unrelated projects, keeping them as separate entries is exactly what you want. But sometimes a single piece of work is made of parts that were never going to share a name in the first place - a Node.js backend running on a server, tracked from one IDE, and a native Android app for the same product, tracked from Android Studio. Two different codebases, two different toolchains, two different default project names - but one client, one engagement, one number you want to see at the end of the month.

You've been asking us to fix this

This is one of the more consistent requests we've gotten: a way to tell JustClock "these two names are actually the same project" without renaming anything in the IDEs themselves - because renaming a Visual Studio solution just to match a folder name in another editor is not a real fix, and it doesn't survive the next `git clone`.

Introducing project aliases

We've shipped project aliases: a per-account setting where you map one project name onto another. Set up GenialProject → Genial once, and from then on, any time reported under GenialProject is recorded and counted as Genial. Nothing changes on the plugin side - each IDE keeps sending whatever name it always sent. The mapping happens once, in your account.

A couple of things worth knowing about how it behaves:

1. It's a single hop. If you map A → B and separately B → C, time logged as A lands in B, not in C. No chains to keep track of.
2. It only applies going forward. Existing records keep the project name they were saved under - an alias doesn't rewrite your history, it changes how new time gets filed from the moment you create it.

How to use it

Go to Account → Project Aliases and add a mapping: the name you want merged away, and the project you want it merged into. That's it. Open the target project's page and you'll also find a shortcut there to manage the aliases pointing at it, plus a list of which aliases currently feed into it - useful when you're trying to remember what you set up three months ago.

The effect shows up wherever project totals are reported: the project list, a project's daily and monthly stats, invoicing exports. Everything that used to be scattered across two or three project names now adds up under the one you actually care about.

You don't lose the IDE breakdown

Merging project names doesn't mean losing the detail behind them. Every record still keeps track of which IDE it came from, so even after everything lands in one project "bucket" by name, you can still filter that project's reports by IDE - to see, for example, how much of the total was backend work in one editor versus mobile work in another. Aliasing collapses the name; it doesn't flatten the data.

Haven't tried JustClock yet?

If you're still tracking time by hand, or not tracking it at all, this is a good time to change that. JustClock runs in the background across JetBrains IDEs, VS Code and its forks, and Visual Studio, and logs the hours actually spent on each project - without recording your keystrokes or reading your source code. Start your 60-day free trial - no credit card required.