RescueTime Timesheets Overview
RescueTime timesheets overview
What is RescueTime timesheets?
RescueTime Timesheets is a project-based time tracking tool designed to make filling out timesheets fast and accurate.
Instead of manually logging hours, Timesheets uses your RescueTime activity data to suggest where your time went. As you review and confirm those suggestions, your timesheet builds itself with minimal effort.
Timesheets timeline
When you open Timesheets, you’ll land on the timeline. This is a visual view of your day, showing what you worked on and when.
The timeline is built from:
- App and website activity
- Calendar events (meetings and Focus Sessions)
- Integrations (like task updates)
- Timer tasks you’ve set
RescueTime uses this data to suggest project time blocks throughout your day. You can accept, edit, or remove these suggestions at any time.
You can also manually add or adjust time using drag and drop.
To keep things focused, only Focus Work, Other Work, and Neutral activities appear on the timeline. Personal and distracting activities are filtered out.
Over time, RescueTime learns from your edits and improves future suggestions.
Creating projects
Before tracking time, you’ll need to create at least one project.
Select New Project and fill in the details:
- Client and tasks
Assign the project to a client or create a new one. You can also link or create tasks. - Hints for automatic suggestions
Add identifiers like file names, apps, or websites that are unique to this project. These help improve suggestion accuracy, but they’re optional. - Billable settings
Mark the project as billable and set a rate and currency, or leave it non-billable. - Targets (optional)
Set a time goal with a date range. - Color
Choose a color to make projects easier to spot on your timeline.
Clients and tasks
Clients and tasks each have their own management pages where you can create, edit, and organize entries.
From the Clients or Tasks pages, you can:
- Create new entries
- Import entries in bulk
- Clone existing entries
- Archive items you no longer need
Archived items can be restored at any time.
Clients are optional, but they help organize projects and group them on your timeline.
Project suggestions
RescueTime automatically generates suggested time blocks based on your activity and past behavior.
These appear on your timeline marked as Review.
From there, you can:
- Accept suggestions as-is
- Adjust them before accepting
- Ignore or delete them
To speed things up:
- Use the checkmark at the top of the page to approve all suggestions for the day
- Hover over the checklist icon to see all days you haven’t reviewed yet
Timesheets reports
Timesheet reports let you analyze and export your data in a format that works for you.
Under the Timesheets menu, you’ll find Personal Reports, with two options:
View and export
Filter your data by:
- Date range
- Client
- Project
- Task
You can also:
- Choose how billable time is rounded
- Include all tracked time or only reviewed time
Export your report as an Excel or CSV file.
Need everything without filters? Use Raw export.
Calendar
The calendar view shows your week at a glance.
Each day is broken into time blocks by project, giving you a quick, high-level view of how your time was spent.
Archiving projects
When a project is complete, you can archive it to remove it from your active list.
To archive:
- Click the three dots next to the project
- Select Archive project
To view archived projects:
- Go to the Projects page
- Select Project Archive
From there, you can restore, edit, or manage archived projects.
Note: Projects, tasks, or clients can only be permanently deleted if they don’t have any time associated with them.