General Settings - Time Tracking, Resource Planning & Project Management Documentation

General Settings control app-wide preferences that affect all modules - Time Tracking, Capacity Planner, Backlog Prioritization, and Portfolio.

Accessing General Settings

Global sidebar → Settings → General tab

Setting	Options	Default	Effect
Time Display Unit	Jira default · Hours/Minutes · Hours · Days	Jira default	How time values appear across all modules
First Day of Week	Sunday – Saturday	Monday	Sets the start of the week in calendar and week-mode views
Working Days	Checkboxes: Mon–Sun	Mon–Fri	Days counted as working days in capacity calculations
Hours Per Day	Number (e.g., 8)	8	Working hours per day - used for available capacity calculations
Timezone Mode	Jira timezone · User's timezone · My timezone	Jira timezone	How timestamps are interpreted across all views
Date Format	DD/MM/YYYY · MM/DD/YYYY · YYYY-MM-DD	Jira default	Display format for dates across the app

Option	Example
Jira default	Follows the Jira instance format
Hours/Minutes	2h 30m
Hours	2.5h
Days	0.3d (based on Hours Per Day setting)

These two settings determine the Available column in the Capacity Report and all capacity calculations:

Available hours per week = Working Days count × Hours Per Day

Example: 5 working days × 7.5 hours/day = 37.5 available hours/week

Set these accurately - misconfigured values skew all capacity and allocation percentages.

Mode	Best For
Jira timezone	Co-located teams; single timezone
User's timezone	Distributed teams; each user sees their local time
My timezone	Individual override based on browser timezone

Changes apply globally and immediately - no restart or page reload required. All users on the Jira instance share the same settings.

Review General Settings after initial installation before any team members start logging time
Set Hours Per Day to your organisation's contracted work hours, not a generic 8
Choose User's timezone for distributed or remote teams to avoid timestamp confusion