1time

FAQs

GETTING STARTED

To add employees, click on the “Employees” option in the navigation bar at the top of your screen. Then click “Add” to enter the employee’s information. Required fields are marked with an asterisk. Once added, your employee will be sent an email with a User ID and a temporary password.

An Activity Type is what your employees will use to specify how they spent their time when entering a timesheet.

Go to Settings –> Activity Types to add, remove or edit Activity Types. An Activity Type can only be removed if no timesheets have been added against it.

If you want to allow unbillable Activity Types to be logged against projects, go to Settings –> Working Time / Reminders and answer Yes to the question “Allow unbillable activity type in projects?“.

You can add Clients by clicking on “Clients” in the navigation bar at the top of your screen. Then click “Add” to enter your client’s information. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.

Once you have added a client, you can add a new project by selecting the client from your client list, and clicking “Add New Project”. A project cannot be added without a Client.

How to Add a Client in 1time

How to Add a Project in 1time

You can add as many Clients and Projects as you need, there is no limit to this on any of our subscriptions.

When you first log in to your 1time account, there will be a standard working week set by default.

If your company’s working week does not match this, you can change the working days and hours expected each day by navigating to Settings –> Working Time/Reminders.

You can simply set a new working day length, or you can click “Enable Weekly Hours Pattern” to specify the length required for each day.

This depends on your current subscription level. For information on the different subscriptions, please click here (link to pricing page). To find out which subscription you are currently on, go to Settings (the gear icon at the right of the navigation bar) and Account Settings. You can also change your subscription here.

To import your data into the system, go to Settings –> Data Upload. Here you will find templates for the data upload. Once you have your file ready, click on the relevant button (i.e “Upload Employees” or “Upload Clients”. If you have any questions about the data upload, you can contact us at support@1timetracking.com, or through the the message bubble in the bottom right of your 1time screen.

Your employees will only have access to add, edit or delete their own timesheets. Standard employees do not have access to account settings, Client/Project information, or Reports. You can opt to give an employee Administrator access, and they will have full access, or you can make them a Team Leader if you need them to be able to oversee Team members’ timesheets. For more information on Teams please click here (link to section on Teams).

ADDING, EDITING OR REMOVING EMPLOYEES

Employees cannot be deleted once they have logged time in the system. This is in order to preserve historical data. Employees who are no longer with the company should be marked as “Inactive”. To do this, highlight the employee in your employee list, and click “Change Status” at the top of the screen. Inactive employees do not count towards your subscription’s employee limit.

If you would like to give an employee administrator rights, just tick the box “Allow Employee to Have Admin Rights”. Any employee with Admin Rights will have full access to the system, including Account-wide settings and visibility of other employees’ information and timesheets

Yes, you can. First, you need to go to Settings –>Working Time/Reminders, and check the box “Enable Weekly Hours Pattern”. You will notice a new table appears where you can specify a number of hours per day. You can leave this set at the standard working week for the company. Click “Save”, and then return to your employee details page. You will now see an option “Set Employee Specific Weekly Hours Pattern”. Select this, and you will be able to define the number of hours this employee is expected to work for each day.

If you have Active employees who are no longer using the system, you can mark these as Inactive, and they will no longer count towards your employee limit. To do this, highlight the employee in your employee list, and click “Change Status” at the top of the screen. You should now be able to add a new Active employee.

 

However, if you have reached your employee limit, and all of your employees are still Active, you will need to upgrade your account. You can do this by going to Settings –> Account Settings, and selecting the most suitable plan from the “Change to Plan” drop down menu.

You can allow an employee to be a “Team Leader”. If an employee is a team leader, they will be able to access, edit and approve team members’ timesheets, but they will not have access to account settings, or any other employee information. You can allow an employee to be a Team Leader by selecting the box “Allow Employee to be Team Leader”. Then to set them up as a Team Leader, click “Teams” on your navigation bar, and select “Edit” on the Team you would like them to lead. You will be able to select them from the drop down menu next to “Team Leader”. For more information on setting up Teams, see our Teams section.

You can send an employee a new password from your Employees list. Just single click the employee, and then click the button “Email New Password” at the top of the page. Alternatively, your employee can navigate to your 1time domain and click the “Forgot Password” link under the login button.

1time (1timetracking.com) helps Employees and their Managers to keep track of Flexitime.

You can define which Employees have Flexitime arrangements, and 1time will then automatically maintain a balance of hours due by (-) or to (+) the Employee.  For any given day, the Flexitime balance adjustment is calculated as being: (Number of hours worked) – (Number of hours expected).

The Flexitime panel is shown on the “My Timesheets” or “Timesheets” page, it looks like this:

To start using it, go to Edit Employee view for each relevant Employee and complete these fields:

On a day that an Employee takes time off under the Flexitime scheme, no special timesheet entry or holiday indicator is required; the Employee simply enters a timesheet entry for any hours that he/she has worked (if any) that day, and the shortfall hours will simply be deducted from the Flexitime balance.

Teams are an optional feature of 1time. If you do not need to assign your employees to a Team with a designated Team Leader, you can just leave the selection as “None”. If you do wish to assign your employees to Teams, you need to set up your Teams before you can allocate employees to them. For details on how to do this, see our Teams section (link).

You can set a target utilisation for each employee. Utilisation is a measure of the Percentage of an Employee’s working hours that has been spent on billable activities. This target may differ for each employee, as some employees may have a more administrative role, and some may be more project-based. By setting a target utilisation, you can more accurately keep track of employee performance. If target utilisation is set, you will see both the target and the actual achievement in your dashboard utilisation summary. If this field is left blank, no utilisation target will be set.

Your employee will receive email reminders if they have not filled in their required timesheets. You can select the time of day and frequency of the reminder emails from Settings –> Working Time/Reminders. Reminders can be sent on a daily or weekly basis.

The only required information is a full name and email address. If you wish you can also enter contact details and payment rates for each employee.

The Internal Hourly Rate refers to the amount your employee is paid per hour, Charge Out Hourly Rate is the amount you charge your clients for one hour of the employee’s work, and the Total Hourly Cost is the total cost of employment to you (Internal Hourly Rate + any overheads). These rates are used to calculate the financial status of projects, as well as in various reports. Learn more here. 

Yes, your employee will be sent an email containing their User ID and a temporary password.

EDITING OR REMOVING CLIENTS AND PROJECTS

No, projects must be added under a Client. If you wish to add Projects without assigning them to different Clients, we would suggest creating one umbrella Client that all of your projects can be added to.

New projects are added under Clients. Once you have added a client, you will be able to open a project by selecting the relevant client from your Client List, and clicking “Add Project” at the top of the screen.

Expenses must be added by administrators from the project details screen. Select the relevant project and click “View Details”. Click the button at the bottom of the screen, “Add Expense”.

If you need to add different tasks or stages to a project, you can use our “Project Tasks” feature. Head to Settings–>Project Tasks and select the box “Use Project Tasks”, and click “Save”. You will now be able to choose when adding a project if you would like to use tasks. If used, the tasks add another level of detail when employees enter timesheets, as they will need to define a Client, Project, Project Task, and Activity Type.

If you have tasks that are common amongst many of your projects, you can add standard tasks from the Settings–>Project Tasks screen. However, if your tasks tend to differ from project to project you can add them on an individual project basis from the Project Details screen.

If you need to add different tasks or stages to a project, you can use our “Project Tasks” feature. Head to Settings–>Project Tasks and select the box “Use Project Tasks”, and click “Save”. You will now be able to choose when adding a project if you would like to use tasks. If used, the tasks add another level of detail when employees enter timesheets, as they will need to define a Client, Project, Project Task, and Activity Type.

If you have tasks that are common amongst many of your projects, you can add standard tasks from the Settings–>Project Tasks screen. However, if your tasks tend to differ from project to project you can add them on an individual project basis from the Project Details screen.

Clients and Projects cannot be deleted once timesheets have been added against them, this is in order to preserve historic data for reporting purposes. If you are finished working with a Client, you should make them Inactive by selecting them from your Client list and clicking “Change Status” at the top of the page. Once Inactive, Clients will no longer be available for employees to log time against.

To close a project, select it from your project list and click “Change Status”. This will render the project Inactive and it will no longer be available for employees to add timesheets against. You can always reactivate the project by selecting it and clicking “Change Status” again.

Required fields are marked with an asterisk *. The only required information is a Client Name and a Client Contact Name. You can optionally add contact information for the Client and the Client Contact.

The Project Code can be used in some custom reports, and is intended for companies that use a particular numbering system for their projects. It is not necessary to add a Project Code if it is not relevant to your company.

The Financial Summary is calculated using the Budgeted Revenue, Budgeted Cost and Percent Complete fields (available when entering or editing Project Details), and the Total Hourly Cost of each of your employees. The system calculates the cost to date by adding up the cost of the hours already spent on the project, and then uses this information and the percent complete to calculate the projected cost of the project. Please note the percent complete must be updated manually by an administrator as the project progresses in order to ensure an accurate projection.

By entering the Budgeted Revenue, Budgeted Cost and Percent Complete, you are giving the system the information required to provide financial projections for your project. This will help you to keep on track and avoid over-spending on the project. The financial projection will appear on the right hand side of the project details page, and is also available in some reports.

If you have also assigned a Total Hourly Rate to each of your employees, the system will use this information to calculate a cost to date, and a projected cost of the project, so you can easily see if you are in danger of exceeding the budget for your project.

ACTIVITY TYPES

Activity Types can be deleted if no timesheets have been entered under them. If you would like to remove an Activity Type that has timesheets entered under it, you can select it and click “Change Status”. This will make the Activity inactive, which means employees will no longer be able to select it as an option when entering a timesheet.

You can add or edit Activity Types by going to Settings–>Activity Types. Here you will see a list of your current Activity Types, and you can click “Add” at the top of the screen, or highlight an Activity and click “Edit” to edit the details.

Activity Types are the activities that your employees undertake when working on a project (e.g. Design, Coding, Meetings, Writing Proposals, etc.). When adding a timesheet, an employee will be required to select an Activity Type.

The Status refers to whether the Activity Type is Active or Inactive. Active means that the Activity is available for employees to select when adding a timesheet. Inactive Activity Types cannot be selected when entering a timesheet.

TIMESHEET SETTINGS FOR ADMINISTRATORS

Yes, go to Settings–>Working Time/Reminders. Under “Timesheet Interval”, select the minimum number of minutes you would like employees to be able to enter to their timesheets.

Yes, this can be useful for employees who tend to work on the same few projects for weeks at a time. Go to Settings–>Working Time/Reminders, and you will find an option “Allow Full Week’s Timesheet Entry At Once”. Select this box, and click “Save”. Employees will now have a new option in their navigation bar, “Full Week’s Timesheets”. Here they can enter the Client, Project and Activity they’ve been working on, and add the time for each day using a convenient drop down format. They can also pre-populate the form using last week’s Projects if they wish. This makes things a little easier for employees who work on the same projects for weeks at a time, as they can simply log their time to each day rather than entering each Client, Project, and Activity all over again.

Go to Settings–> Approvals/Time Off. Check the box “Employees’ Time Entries Require Approval”. Administrators will now need to approve employee’s timesheets once they are entered. You can also enable approvals for time off by checking the box “Selected Time Off Types May Require Approval”. For more information on Approvals, see the Approvals and Time Off section.

REPORTS

Standard Employees cannot access the report generator, only administrators can. However, all of our reports can be exported, so if you need to share a report with your employees, you can export it and share it as you wish. Team Leaders can run a weekly or monthly report on their team members, but do not have administrator access. For more information on Teams, take a look at the Teams section of the FAQ.

Go to the “Reports” section from your navigation bar. Here you will find a few options. On the left there are some pre-defined reports that will give you some specific information on the selected Client, Project or Employee. Click on the play icon to run the report, and you will be prompted to select the required Client, Project or Employee.

To the right, you will see some drop down menus. This tool will give you an overview of whichever combination of Client, Project, and Employee you select. You can also check the “Enable date selector” box to choose a date range for the report.

Once you have run any of the reports, you will be able to export them to an XLS file, or print them to a PDF.

Just run the report, and then click the “Export” button at the top left of the screen.

If you cannot find the report you need, we do offer a custom report building service. Depending on the required report, the build may incur a one off cost, but then the report will be yours to use as frequently as you like long as you maintain your 1time account. If you would like to enquire about a custom report, with no obligation to proceed, contact us using the “Order Custom Report” button, or using the message box at the bottom right of your screen. Once we know your requirements, we can advise whether it will incur a cost, and provide a quote.

If you have any questions about our reports, you can contact us using the message box at the bottom right of your screen. We will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.

1time creates a Client Report with a specific URL for each client. You can share this URL with your client if you wish, and it will allow them to see what time has been spent on their projects without giving them access to your 1time account. To find this URL, go to the Client Details page, and to the right you will see a box “Client Area” with a unique URL.

WORKING TIME/REMINDERS SCREEN

Yes, once you have enabled employee reminders, you will be able to choose from the Employee Details page whether each individual employee receives reminders. Click on the relevant name in your employee list, and then click “Edit”. Find the check box labelled “Send Reminders to This Employee”. If this box is checked, the employee will receive reminders, if it is unchecked they will not.

Yes, to specify any particular day as a company wide holiday, go to the “Working Day Calendar” in your Settings menu. You can specify any day as a holiday simply by clicking on the date. To change it back to a standard working day, just click again. The calendar is automatically populated with the national holidays of the country that you chose during account setup. If your company does not observe these holidays, you can just click on the date to change it to a standard working day.

Check the box “Enable Weekly Hours Pattern”, and a table will appear where you can choose the amount of hours required for each day.

Once you have checked the “Enable Weekly Hours Pattern” box on the Working Time/Reminders screen, you can go to the Employee details page, and you will now have the option “Set Employee-Specific Weekly Hours Pattern”. Select this, and you can then set the required hours for each day.

If enabled, your employees will receive an email each week with a summary of their utilisation and billable/unbillable hours for the previous week, for example:

Week: Monday 14 June 2021 – Sunday 20 June 2021
Employee name: Jane Smith
Total hours billed to projects: 37 hrs, 35 mins
Total unbillable hours: 1 hrs, 45 mins
Total hours: 39 hrs, 20 mins
Utilization: 95.55%

Utilisation is a measure of the Percentage of an Employee’s working hours that has been spent on billable activities. You can see your employees’ utilisation achievement from the dashboard. These emails can serve as a motivational tool for your employees.

If this is selected, employees will have access to an additional tab in their navigation bar “Full Week’s Timesheets”. This allows employees to enter the hours worked on Clients and Projects across the week from one convenient chart, which can be useful for employee’s who work on the same few Clients and Projects over the week, or for weeks at a time.

If you select this box, employees will be able to enter the time of day that they start and finish for each day, as well as entering their usual timesheets. It is a legal requirement in some countries to keep a record of the start and finish time of an employee’s day.

Once Employee Reminders are enabled, employees for whom Reminders are turned on but have not yet completed their timesheets, or who have not accounted for all of their standard hours, will receive email reminders. Reminders can be sent on a daily or weekly basis. You can schedule the email reminders and specify the text of the emails from your Working Time/Reminders screen.

The Manager Reminder Email is sent out once a week (Tuesday at 12 Noon) and contains a report detailing employees who have not yet completed their timesheet entries for the previous week. This should be sent to the person in charge of ensuring timesheets are recorded within your company. If you do not need this report, you can leave the recipient field set to “None”.

APPROVALS AND TIME OFF

Yes, just select the box “Track and Display Time Off” at the top of the page. You can then allocate the required number of leave days to each employee from their employee details page. When they book a holiday on the system, it will be deducted from their available leave days. Administrators will be able to view the current status of any employee’s annual leave from a new tab, “Time Off Summary”.

To add a time off option, fill in the fields at the bottom of the page (Title, Half Days Permitted, Monitor Employee Allowances), and click “Add Time Off Option”. To remove a time off option, click the red X icon to the right of the option. Only Time Off options that have not yet been recorded against an employee can be deleted.

You can approve requested leave days from the “Timesheets” tab, or from the “Time-off Summary”. On the “Timesheets” tab, select the relevant employee from the drop down menu. Navigate to the day for which leave is requested, and click on the check button beside the time off drop down. To approve leave days from the “Time Off Summary”, select the relevant employee from the drop down menu, and then use the calendar to navigate to the day for which leave is requested. Leave days awaiting approval are indicated by an orange circle around the date. To Approve, just click on the circle and it will turn green to indicate an approved leave day.

To approve timesheets, go to the “Timesheets” tab in the navigation bar, and select the employee you would like to view from the drop down menu. You can approve all the week’s timesheets by clicking “Approve All”, or each day’s timesheets by clicking the check button beside each day. Clicking the “Approve All” button will also approve any leave days requested for that week. If there is a problem with a timesheet, you can either edit it yourself by clicking on it, or advise the employee to do so.

The “Rollover Year” button should be clicked at the beginning of the year (whatever date your annual leave allowances begin). This will rollover the remaining holidays from the previous year to the current year, and renew the annual leave allowance allocation of each employee. Before clicking this button, you should ensure all employees have entered all of their holidays taken into the system.

A new column will appear in your list of time off options “Approval Required”. You can check this box beside whichever leave types will require approval. If an employee selects this time-off option, it will need to be approved by an administrator or team leader.

When an employee enters a timesheet, it will appear on their timesheet view as needing approval. An administrator or Team Leader will need to approve these timesheets before they are considered completed.

If this option is enabled, employees will be able to select a time off option for each day. This is useful as it means employees can use the system to book holidays, and assists managers in keeping track of any sick days taken. If used in conjunction with our Approvals mechanism, and time off selected will also require approval.

Administrators can approve any employee’s timesheets, and Team Leaders can approve the timesheets of their team members.

Yes, employees will be able to easily keep track of the leave they have taken and days remaining, as they will now have access to a new tab on their navigation bar for their own individual Time Off Summary.

TEAMS

Select the Team Leader from the drop down menu when adding or editing a Team. If the person you are trying to assign does not appear on your list, you may need to give them the appropriate permissions. Go to your Employees list, select the person you want to be Team Leader, and click “Edit”. Then find the box labelled “Allow Employee to be Team Leader” and check the box. Click “Save”. Now if you go back to your “Teams” tab, you should be able to assign this employee as a Team Leader.

To create a Team, go to the “Teams” tab from your navigation bar, and click “Add”. Choose a name for the Team, and select a Team Leader from the drop down.

Team Leaders can view and approve Team Member’s timesheets and Time Off, and they can also add or edit timesheets on a Team Member’s behalf. Team Leaders can also run a weekly or monthly report on their team members’ activity. Team Leaders do not have full Administrator privileges.

The concept of a “Team” in 1time is simply a group of employees whose timesheets will be monitored or overseen by a “Team Leader”. Team Leaders can add or edit timesheets on a Team Member’s behalf, and can also approve their Team’s timesheets.

PROJECT TASKS

Yes, when setting up a project, if you do not add any tasks, then tasks will not be available for employees entering timesheets.

There are 2 ways to add new Project Tasks. First, standard tasks should be added from your “Project Tasks” screen. Click “Add”, and simply fill in a name for your Project Task. Click “Save” and the Project Task will now appear in your list of standard tasks. It is best to enter Tasks here that will be common to many projects, as you can easily add them to a project by clicking “Add All Standard Tasks” when setting up the project.

Secondly, you can add specific tasks to individual projects. Go to the Project details page of the required project (navigate to Clients, then click into the Client, and then the Project you are looking for), and click “Add Task”. Fill in the information requested and click “Save”. This Project Task will only apply to this project and will not be saved in your list of standard tasks. It is best to enter a task this way if it is not something that would usually apply to other projects.

Go to Settings–>Project Tasks and check the box “Use Project Tasks”. Click “Save”.

To use Project Tasks on a Project, you must add them to that project. So, once you have set up your Project Tasks, go to the Project Details page of the relevant project, and click “Add All Standard Tasks” to add the tasks from your list, or “Add Task” to create a unique task for this project.

Project Tasks are tasks or stages to be completed within a project. This is an optional feature that may benefit users if they need a further level of distinction within their projects. When enabled, Employees will need to enter a Client, Project, Project Task and Activity Type when entering a timesheet.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

At Project and Project Task Level you can focus on Project Profitability for example:

Project Profitability Panel

 

You can track Profitability and Projected Costs at the Project or Task level.  There are various online reports containing related content

There is a variety of standard Reports available including:

  • All Employees projects/activities for selected week
  • Employee Time Summary (all employees, selected clients/projects)
  • Time Summary by Month
  • Employee breakdown by Projects and activities
  • Client/Project breakdown by employees and activities
  • Project List with Totals
  • Project report (single project) summary and by week
  • Annual Utilization by employee by month
  • Financial summary of projects in date range
  • Client By Activity
  • Financial summary of projects
  • Staff by Activity
  • Start & Finish Time by Employee
  • Unbillable by Employee

All of these reports are right up to the minute.  Many of these are available both on-screen or as Excel downloads.  In addition the user can define his or her own report/downloadL

Timesheet reports can be produced on a weekly, monthly, or all-time basis for selected Clients and Projects, suitably designed to accompany invoices.  The Client Portal gives your client access to all timesheets relating to his projects only: on-screen, via Excel file, or in PDF format.

Utilisation is a measure of the Percentage of an Employee’s working hours that has been spent on billable activities.   It is shown on the main dashboard as a table of Employees ranked according to their utilisation All time/This Year/Last Month.   There is also a standard report (available on request) called “Annual Utilization by employee by month”.

Optionally you can specify that each Employee will receive a weekly email advising of their Utilisation.

Employee Billable Hours
——————————   x 100 =   Employee Utilization %
Standard Working Hours

Example for one week.

A given Employee works 9am-5pm with an hour for breaks (total 28 hours) except on Fridays where he/she finishes at 4pm (total 6 hours) amounting to a standard 34 working hours. The company effectively pays this employee for 34 hours.

In our example, the employee spent 38 hours in the office or working from home that week divided as follows:

  • Unbillable Administration : 10 hours
  • All Billable Client Work : 28 hours

The Utilisation percentage for this Employee for this week is 82.35% (28/35*100)

BILLING AND PAYMENT SETTINGS

Billing emails are sent to the account holder. If you require the account holder to be changed, the current account holder should contact us via the message box at the bottom right of your 1time screen, or at support@1timetracking.com.

Go to Settings–>Billing Information. Here you will be able to update your payment details.

Please try again and ensure you have entered all details correctly. If you still encounter an error,  contact us at support@1timetracking.com and we will look into it. Error messages when updating payment details are often due to an issue with the credit/debit card, or the card issuing bank, but we will do our best to identify the problem.

If you are able to access your 1time account as normal, you do not need to do anything, the payment will be processed automatically within a couple of days. If you are unable to access your account even though you have updated your information, please contact us at support@1timetracking.com

If your account has been suspended, you should go to your unique 1time domain (where you usually log in, i.e. yourcompany.1time.net) and you will be prompted to update your payment details. Once payment has been processed, you will be able to access your account. Please note it can sometimes take a day or two for payment to be processed once you have updated your details. If you need access to your account in the meantime, please contact us at support@1timetracking.com

BILLING AND PAYMENT SETTINGS

You can change your subscription at any time from Settings–>Account Settings. Here you will find a handy chart with details of all of our price plans, and a drop down where you can select the plan you require. We also offer Monthly or Yearly billing, you can choose whichever is more convenient for you. Once you have selected the price plan you want, click “Change to This Plan”.

You can change your subscription at any time from Settings–>Account Settings. Here you will find a handy chart with details of all of our price plans, and a drop down where you can select the plan you require. We also offer Monthly or Yearly billing, you can choose whichever is more convenient for you. Once you have selected the price plan you want, click “Change to This Plan”.

The different price plans allow a different number of active users. You should choose your price plan based on the number of people who will be using the system in your company. So for example, if you require 7 people to have access to the system, you would need our Plus subscription, which allows up to 10 active users on the account. However, if you have 7 people in your company, but only require 5 of them to have access to 1time, then you would sign up to our Basic plan, which allows up to 5 active users on the account.