Getting Started with Timesheets
This guide walks you through setting up and using Timesheets for the first time.
When you first start using Timesheets, you'll review your activity and manually assign it to projects. As RescueTime learns your patterns, it starts doing more of that work for you by automatically adding time to projects. Over time, what takes 15 minutes on day one takes just a minute or two.
Create your first project
Start by installing RescueTime, so it can begin tracking your computer activity automatically.
Before you can generate a timesheet, you need at least one project. Projects are what time blocks are assigned to, and without one, there's nowhere for your time to go.
Go to Timesheets → My Timeline and click + New Project. Fill in the details:
- Name and color: give it a recognizable name; the color appears on your timeline to make projects easy to tell apart at a glance
- Client and tasks: assign the project to a client (optional) and add task types like Design or Development for reporting granularity
- Keywords & phrases: add keywords like app names, domains, or file names that are unique to this project (these were previously called "hints"). Use an app name if you only use that app for one project; use a domain or filename if the same app spans multiple projects. Good keywords speed up how quickly RescueTime learns your patterns.
- Billable settings: mark the project billable and set an optional hourly rate if you track billing
- Optional target: set a target number of hours with start and end dates if you want to track progress toward a goal
Projects, clients, and tasks: You can also create projects, clients, and tasks from their dedicated pages under the Timesheets dropdown menu. These pages allow you to add in bulk, clone, and archive entries.
Set up your automations
Go to Timesheets → Settings → Automations to configure how autocompletions are generated and delivered.
Autocomplete signals
Click Manage signals to choose what RescueTime uses to guess which project a block of time belongs to. Five signals run in order, top to bottom, and the first one that finds a project wins:
- Calendar events: link a meeting to a project, so every occurrence adds time to it
- Document & activity links: links a specific app, site, or document to a project
- Keywords & phrases: matches activity titles against the keywords on each project
- Past entries: reuses the project you picked for similar activities before
- AI fallback: makes a best guess from your project list and the activity title. Off by default.
Each signal has a toggle to turn it on or off and a gear icon that opens its detail pane, where you can see what it has matched and change how it behaves. Starting out, leave the defaults alone; the first three are worth revisiting once you know which projects need help. See the full guide to Automations settings.
Scheduled Autocompletion Delivery
Sets when RescueTime generates suggestions and reminds you to review them:
- End of my work day: suggestions are generated 1 hour before your work day ends
- The next morning: suggestions are generated 1 hour before your next work day starts
- Off: no reminder and no scheduled autocompletion
Use Run the suggestion job now to generate suggestions immediately instead of waiting for the schedule. You get a limited number of manual runs per day.
AI fallback requires scheduled delivery to be on. If delivery is set to Off, AI assistance will not run even when the AI fallback signal is enabled. When AI is enabled, the names of apps and websites you use may be sent to OpenAI's API.
Open your timesheet automatically
Creates an alert that opens your timesheet after an amount of work you choose. Useful if you would rather review time as you go than at the end of the day.
Suggestion block size minimum
The smallest block of project time RescueTime will suggest: 5, 10, or 15 minutes. The default is 15 minutes, which is the right starting point for most people.
When you're new to Timesheets, your daily routine will require manually assigning time to projects. This is how RescueTime learns. Every assignment you make teaches it which activities belong to which projects. After a week or two of consistent use, autocompletions will fill in most of your timesheet automatically, and your daily review becomes much faster.
View the timeline to see your activities
Go to Timesheets → My Timeline. This is your home base, a visual record of everything RescueTime tracked that day, laid out chronologically.
The right panel shows your raw activity: Apps, websites, and integration events that were captured during the day. The left panel shows your projects and how much time has been logged to each so far. At first, the timeline will be full of activity but have little or no project time assigned. That's normal, and it's what the next steps are for.
Add time to projects manually
Look at your activity on the timeline and start assigning it to projects. Each assignment you make is a data point that RescueTime uses to improve future suggestions — the more consistently you do this, the faster autocompletions become accurate.
There are two ways to add a project time block:
Drag and drop
Drag any project from the left panel and drop it onto the timeline. Drop it onto the activities linked to the project. Once placed, drag the edges of the block to adjust the start and end time. You can also click a time block to edit it.
Click to add
Click anywhere on an empty area of the timeline to open a block creation dialog. Select the project, set the time range, and optionally choose a task and add notes.
💡 Manual blocks add time immediately. Time blocks you create by dragging or clicking are added to your timesheet right away. There is no separate step to review and accept them.
Review autocompletions
As RescueTime builds up a history of your project assignments, it starts generating autocompletions, the suggested project time blocks that appear on your timeline automatically. At first, these will be more sparse or occasionally wrong. Over time, they become more accurate and cover more of your day.
Autocompletions need you to act on them. For each one you can:
- Accept: confirms the suggestion and logs that time to the project
- Edit: adjust the project, task, duration, or notes before confirming
- Delete: removes the suggestion without logging any time
When you want to approve everything at once, use the checkmark icon in the toolbar to accept all of that day's autocompletions in one click.
💡 Corrections teach the system. When a suggestion is wrong, don't just delete it; edit it to the correct project. That correction is recorded and helps prevent the same mistake in future suggestions. For a recurring wrong guess, open the matching signal under Automations and fix or block it there.
Add offline time
RescueTime only tracks what happens on your computer. If you had an in-person meeting, a phone call, or any other work that didn't involve your screen, you'll need to log it as offline time so it appears on your timesheet.
How to add offline time
From the timeline, click the checklist icon in the toolbar and select Add offline activity.
This opens a view showing the gaps in your tracked time (the empty grey areas between your computer activity). To log time in a gap:
- Click on a grey area to select that time slot
- Use the handles to adjust the time span
- Enter what you were doing and click Save
When you click a gap, the What were you doing? panel opens. Choose a preset activity type or click + new activity to add a custom one. Add optional notes and click Save.
💡 Enable automatic offline prompts. RescueTime can automatically prompt you to log offline time when it detects you've been away from your computer. Go to Settings → Offline Activity to turn this on.
Finalize your day
Once you've assigned your project time, reviewed any autocompletions, and added offline time, finalize the day. Click the lock icon in the timeline toolbar to lock it in. No further autocompletions will be added, and the timesheet for that day is treated as complete.
You can still edit a finalized day if you need to make a correction, but you will need to click the lock again to make the day editable.
💡 Finalizing is optional but recommended. It prevents late-arriving autocompletions from being added to days you've already reviewed and closed out.
Generate reports or check your targets
Once you've reviewed and logged time on your timeline, it's available in reports. Go to Timesheets → Personal Reports → View & Export to filter by date range, client, project, or task, and export to CSV or Excel. Visit our detailed guide on Timesheets reports.
Reports only show logged time. Raw activity does not appear in reports. Only time blocks assigned to projects can be added to reports. If your report looks empty, check whether you've completed your daily review on the timeline.
Checking project targets
If you set a target when creating a project, track progress at Timesheets → Target Summary. This shows your target hours, how much you've logged so far, and how many days remain.