Understanding this one page will explain most of the surprises people have with their hours.
There are exactly two sources of time
- The desktop app. You start a timer, it counts, you stop it. This is the normal way and the only way to capture activity, screenshots and app usage.
- A manual entry. You type a start and end time into your timesheet afterwards. It carries no activity data, and it is marked as manual everywhere it appears.
There is no timer in the browser. If you have not installed the desktop app, the only hours you can record are manual ones, and your administrator may have switched those off.
What one entry contains
Every entry stores a start time, an end time, the project, optionally the task, and who recorded it. Time tracked through the desktop app also carries a per-minute activity record and, if your organization has them enabled, screenshots and the applications and websites you were in.
Whether you must pick a project and task before starting is an organization setting. It can require both, require a project only, or require neither.
Days belong to the organization, not to you
Your hours are grouped into days using the organization's timezone, not your computer's. If the organization runs on London time and you are in Karachi, work you do at one in the morning your time is counted against the previous London day.
Everyone's timesheet has to line up on the same calendar for reports and invoices to mean anything. This is also the most common reason someone's daily total looks off by a few hours.
Overlapping time is merged, not added
If two entries cover the same minutes, that minute is counted once. You cannot inflate a total by recording the same period twice, and a session that runs past midnight is split across the two days instead of counted in both.
Nothing is lost if you go offline
The desktop app writes every minute to your own machine first and sends it to the server afterwards. Losing your connection does not lose your hours. They arrive when you reconnect.