Make an export by asking

Who: the Owner, Super Admins and Admins (never Employees: their own hours are in Reports). Go to: the Ask Vaultime chat bubble.

Say what you want in your own words. Ask Vaultime builds the file with you, a step at a time, and a card under its answer shows what the file will be.

Two kinds of file:

What you can say:

• Who: everyone · the Green team · Maya and Leo · everyone except contractors · leave Sam out · Contract is Casual · contracted hours 20 or more (custom fields: all must match, or say any of them).
• Which hours: the dates (last week, last fortnight, 1 to 15 October) · sites, projects, clients, work types · only weekends · night shifts from 7 pm · include ones not approved yet · just overtime.
• Rows: a row per shift, or per person per day, week or pay period. In a payroll file, kinds as rows, a column per kind, or code-and-hours pairs.
• Columns, in your order and with your headers: name, first or last name, email, date, day, start, finish, start and end date, hours, kind and pay code, one kind's hours, project, client, site, work type, leave type, notes, tags, role, approver, status, approved by and on, break, clocked hours, any custom field (on people, projects, sites or work types), fixed text, or a blank column. For start date and end date it asks whether you mean each shift's date or the pay period's.
• The file: CSV, Excel or tab separated; the date style (21/10/2026); hours as decimals, hh:mm or minutes; decimal places; the file's name; or one file per value of a field (one file per Employer).

The card shows the name, the dates, the people, hours and rows, the columns, the file, anything the check found (hours not sorted into a kind, someone with no Employee ID) and the first few rows. Keep changing it: add the cost centre, remove email, rename Hours to Units, make it Excel, leave Sam out. Nothing is made until you tap Generate.

Generate makes the file on your device and opens Share or Save. For a payroll file it first asks Is this the file you'll import into payroll? Yes keeps it in Payroll → Exports → History and its days show Exported; No gives you just the file. Something missing? Say so, and Generate again. With Set up payroll access (or as the Owner), Save as an export keeps a payroll file in Payroll → Exports for every pay day.

Questions it uses: an export costs at most 3 questions, however many changes you make (up to 12). Generating again is free.

The same export again costs nothing:

• An empty chat lists Your recent exports (the last 30 days): tap Again for the same file with its dates as they are now (last week means the week just gone, as of today).
• Or ask: same as last week's export for this week · run Green weekly for this pay period (a saved export, with payroll access).
• Asking the very same words again reuses that export.
• If a new export comes out the same as one you made, it says so, and the card shows what changed since (Maya Lee · Tue 21 Oct · 8.5 h (approved)). If that was a payroll file kept in History, Download that file gives it to you exactly as it was.

What Ask Vaultime sees: what you ask for (the columns and filters) and counts of people, entries and hours. Never the file, the names or values in it, or email addresses. Fields kept from Ask Vaultime can't be asked for by name: tap Fields kept from Ask Vaultime on the card and tick them. It never works out pay rates, wages or tax. The question that starts an export is kept for 30 days so you can make it again.

Example: Priya asks export payroll for last fortnight for the Green team, Excel, with name, Employee ID, date, start date, end date and hours. It asks what start and end date mean; she says the pay period's. The card shows 6 people, 212 h, and a check: Sam has no Employee ID. She adds it in People, says add overtime in its own column, taps Generate, answers Yes, and saves it as Green fortnightly. Next fortnight she opens the chat and taps Again.