For Members: Getting Started with Timesheets for Teams
Welcome to Timesheets for Teams.
Your organization uses Timesheets to track project time automatically. RescueTime tracks your work activity, suggests which project to assign time to, and lets you review and confirm those suggestions at the end of the day. This guide covers everything you need to get up and running.
Accept your invitation and install the app
You'll receive an email invitation from your organization. Accept it and create your RescueTime account, then download and install the desktop app. RescueTime must be installed and running to track your activity. Logging in on the website alone won't record any data.
See also Getting Started with Focus for Teams.
You can only log time to projects assigned to you. Your admin sets up team projects and assigns them to members. If you don't see a project on your timeline, it either hasn't been created yet or hasn't been assigned to you.
Configure your preferences
Go to Timesheets → Preferences to set up how RescueTime suggests your timesheet entries. These settings are personal to you and won't affect anyone else on your team.
The key settings to configure:
- Project Autocompletion Method: choose History & AI, History to use only your past patterns, or Off to log all time manually.
- Scheduled Autocompletion Delivery: choose End of my work day to be prompted to review at day's end, or The next morning if you prefer to review yesterday's time when you start work. Set to Off to review manually whenever you like. Note: scheduled delivery must be enabled for AI suggestions to work.
- Suggestion block size minimum: the shortest activity block RescueTime will suggest a project for. The default of 15 minutes works well for most people.
- Default billing rate: your personal hourly rate used in report billing columns. Only relevant if your team tracks billable time.
- Default rounding: how your time totals are rounded in reports. Leave at the default (0.01 hrs) unless your team has a specific invoicing convention.
💡 RescueTime learns from your history. The more consistently you add time to projects, the smarter the suggestions become over time. RescueTime learns your project patterns from the choices you make.
Understand your timeline
Go to Timesheets → My Timeline to open your personal timesheet. The screen is split into two areas: a projects panel on the left and a timeline on the right.
The projects panel lists all team projects assigned to you, grouped by client. Each project shows how much time you've logged to it today. You can filter the list by typing in the search box, and use the color-coded bars to quickly identify each project on the timeline.
The timeline shows your activity for the selected day, laid out chronologically. Colored blocks with a project label have been assigned to a project, either by you or suggested by RescueTime. Unassigned activity appears as individual activity items waiting to be reviewed.
At the top of the page, the toolbar shows your total logged time and how much remains unreviewed:
| ✓ Accept all | Accepts all of the day's autocompletion suggestions at once
|
| 🗑 Delete | Clears unreviewed autocompletions from the timeline |
| 🔓 Finalize | Finalize the timeline, and no new autocompletions will be made for that day. |
| ☰ Checklist | Edit activities, review past autocompletions, or add offline activity. |
Review your autocompletions
When RescueTime generates suggestions (called autocompletions), time blocks on your timeline show a suggested project assignment. Reviewing these is the most important daily habit for keeping your timesheets accurate.
For each suggestion, you can:
- Accept: confirm the suggestion as-is. The block is marked as reviewed and will be included in team reports and available for approval.
- Edit: change the project, task, or time range before accepting. Click the block to open its details and adjust.
- Delete: remove the suggestion if it's not relevant. The time will not be logged to any project.
If everything looks right, click the Accept all checkmark in the toolbar to confirm all suggestions at once instead of going one by one.
Unreviewed time cannot be approved. Your admin or manager can finalize timesheets in bulk, but they can only approve time you've already reviewed. If you leave autocompletions unreviewed, that time won't be included in approvals until you confirm it. Make reviewing your suggestions a daily habit.
Manually log time
When you first begin using Timesheets, or if a suggestion didn't get generated for a block of time, log project time manually by dragging a project from the panel directly onto the timeline. Manually logging time will make your autocompletions more accurate over time.
Click and drag any project from the left panel and drop it onto the time slot where the work happened. A new time block will be created at that position. You can then resize the block by dragging its edges, or click it to adjust the project, task, or exact times.
💡 You can also create personal projects. If you have work that doesn't belong to a team project, such as freelance work, you can create a personal project by clicking + New Project and selecting Personal for the project type. Personal projects appear on your own timeline but are never included in team reports.
Personal reports
Your personal reports give you a detailed view of the personal projects you have created. They provide the same kind of reporting your admin sees at the team level, but filtered to just your projects, clients, and tasks. Go to Timesheets → Personal Reports to access them.
Personal reports include the same views as team reports:
- View & Export: a filterable table of your logged time, exportable as CSV or Excel. Filter by client, project, or task, and toggle between total time, billable time, and billing totals.
- Calendar: a weekly view of your time by project, useful for spotting gaps or reviewing how a particular week broke down.
Personal reports only show your personal projects, clients, and tasks, and are entirely private to you. They are not visible to your manager or admin.
Target Summary
If your admin has set an hourly target on a project you're assigned to, you can track progress toward that goal under Timesheets → Target Summary. The table shows each project with a target, how many hours have been logged, the percentage complete, and how many days remain.
You'll only see targets for projects assigned to you. This is a read-only view; targets are set by your admin when they create a project.
What your team can see
Timesheets for Teams is built so your organization gets the project-level data it needs without exposing your personal activity. Here's exactly what is and isn't visible to your manager or admin:
| What your team can see | What stays private to you |
|---|---|
| Team-wide time logged to projects | Non-work activities categorized as personal or distracting |
| The amount of time you individually logged to your team projects | Every app, website, and document you opened during the day |
| Your timesheet submission and approval status | Your personal projects, clients, and tasks |
| Progress toward project targets (if targets are set) | Personal reports and Focus features like goals and alerts |