float_time

Databases like decimal hours; humans like clock time. This widget is the translation layer: the field stores a plain float of hours, and the widget formats it as hh:mm on the way out and parses hh:mm back into a float on the way in. 8.5 becomes 08:30, 26.25 becomes 26:15, and a negative adjustment renders with its minus sign.

Because the stored value never changes shape, everything numeric keeps working: list-view sums, grouped totals, pivot aggregations and reports all operate on the float. This is the widget's real advantage over storing text like "8:30", which can be displayed but never summed.

Typing is forgiving, verified in the parser: users can enter 8:30 or 8.5 and both store the same value.

Anywhere people track effort, hours read better as time. A timesheet line saying 07:45 is instantly checkable against a workday; 7.75 makes people reach for a calculator. Attendance overtime of 02:30 is unambiguous; 2.5 gets misread as two and a half days by someone skimming.

The subtle win is trust in totals. Because the widget only formats, weekly attendance sums and project hour rollups stay exact floats underneath, and payroll exports get numbers, not parsed text. Teams that store durations as text learn this the expensive way at the first payroll integration.

Our rule on implementations: any float that means hours gets this widget in every view where humans read it, and stays a bare float in exports where systems read it.

Studio applies this widget without code.

1. Open the form or list in Studio and select the float field that holds hours.

2. In Properties, set Widget to Time.

Two limits worth knowing.

Seconds display is nominally a Studio-visible option, but in Odoo 19 the option key Studio writes does not reach the component (see the option table below); enabling seconds reliably means setting the camelCase key in XML.

Duration semantics beyond hours, showing a float of days, or minutes, as time, are not this widget's job in Odoo 19; that arrives with the unit option in Odoo 20.

Hours as time in a list

<field name="worked_hours" widget="float_time"/>

The stored 8.5 renders as 08:30; the column sum stays a correct float total.

Seconds included (the key that works in 19)

<field name="average_duration"
       widget="float_time"
       options="{'displaySeconds': True}"/>

Renders hh:mm:ss. Note the camelCase key; the snake_case display_seconds is declared in the source but never read in Odoo 19.

The model side

worked_hours = fields.Float(string="Worked Hours")

# stored: 8.5   displayed: 08:30
# stored: 26.25 displayed: 26:15 (hours pass 24 without wrapping)

No special field type needed; it is a plain float, which is exactly why aggregation keeps working.

Three parsing and formatting details from the source explain most surprises.

Hours do not wrap at 24. This is duration formatting, not time-of-day: 26.25 renders as 26:15, which is what a weekly total wants. If you need calendar times, you want a datetime field, not this widget.

Minutes are base 60 on both directions. Typing 8:30 stores 8.5, and typing 8.3 stores 8.3, which displays as 08:18. Users who type decimals expecting minutes create the classic "my 8.30 became 8:18" confusion; one line in training prevents it.

The float's precision still rules. A stored 8.333333 displays as 08:20, and re-saving through the widget normalizes the stored value to the displayed minutes. Mixed sources (imports, computed fields) can therefore shift by a minute on the first round-trip.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The changes below are read from the public development branch and are not final until release. For this widget they are substantial.

The seconds option is renamed and fixed. show_seconds replaces the declared-but-unread display_seconds, and the component reads exactly that key. The Odoo 19 workaround key displaySeconds stops working.

Two new options appear. numeric switches the display to plain numeric formatting, and unit declares what the float means, hours, minutes or seconds, with hours the default, so a float of minutes can finally render honestly as time.

Typing gets a live preview. The field opens a small popover that shows the parsed duration as you type, so entering 1.5 immediately shows 01:30 before you leave the field. This should retire the decimals-versus-minutes confusion described above.

If timesheets or attendance customizations matter to you, this is a widget to re-test early in an Odoo 20 migration.