Exhaust fan with neutral versus no neutral

Quon, by "neutral" I presume you mean ground, usu green, (supposedly connected to the fan metallic frame) so I suppose the fan will work okay, provided only that the timer meets its power requirement. However, I'd still ground the fan

Eng, help

As long as the fan is grounded you should be fine.

Thanks to Eng for confirming the fan (that is, it's frame) should be grounded. However there's some confusion about the terms "load," "ground," and "neutral." For instance Quon uses the term "load" to mean return or neutral but then claims his timer has no neutral wire, which is very unlikely and so I am wondering if he means ground wire

The timer is simply acting like a switch. It opens and closes the circuit. For 110 v circuits in the US opening one leg will turn the circuit off.

Like all switches you want to wire it so that when the switch is off there is no power to the equipment. The switch should be between the breaker and the fan.