SAAS Case study: Clockify

Clockify is the only time monitoring app on the market that is free. It’s so easy to use that you and your team can keep track of work time with just a single click. Clockify revolves entirely around time entries. You keep track of the time you spend working on things and use reports to review workweeks. You may also invite others to Clockify so that you can monitor and discuss time together. Many businesses, independent entrepreneurs, and freelancers already use time monitoring tools.

Let’s show you first how the Clockify timer works

When you begin working on something, press “start” then the timer will start counting. You’ll notice that the tab’s icon will turn blue, letting you know that the timer is running even though you’re in another tab. You can write what you’re working on and then stop the timer. You will see how much time you’ve spent tracking today. When you’re ready to continue working on the activity.

Next to the time entry, press the “play” button. This will start a new timer for that task, which is helpful when taking a break if you started working before the timer started. Enter your real start time by clicking on the time. When you stop the timer for the second time for this activity, press “x” to cancel the timer. 

Each entry is shown separately. You can also manually enter time for previous tasks. Switch to manual mode first. If you don’t think about the start and end times, type the duration instead. If the action didn’t occur today, you can use the calendar to select a date and add time to it retroactively. Another easy way to lock time is to repeat an existing entry and locate the entry you want to record again.

To change the date, click on duplicate choices. When you want to make an entry but can’t use the manual mode because the timer is already running, Duplicate comes in handy. You can delete an entry if you want to. 

You can also mass edit entries by: 

• Enabling bulk edit mode
• Then selecting entries, selecting bulk edit
• Checking what you want to change
• entering the new value, and saving

You can edit your team’s entries in the comprehensive report if you’re an admin. If you want to disable editing or manually add time, do the same thing. You can allow force timer in workspace “settings”, but users will no longer be able to move to manual mode or edit the start and end times of their current time entries.

How do you use a timesheet to record hours?

First, check your account to see if you have a timesheet. It can be activated in the workspace settings. When you allow it, it will appear in the sidebar for your whole team to see. Pick a project from the list and enter hours in the corresponding day column once you’ve entered the timesheet.

You can choose a task from the project’s list of tasks and enter the time for it. When you log time and hover over a cell, three dots will appear. You can click on them to bring up a window where you can fill in more information about the time you’ve logged in. You may, for example, make a list of what they worked on and save it.

You will note the three dots do not vanish. It means the time has more detail so you can see if you’ve added notes or not to record time for extra tasks at a glance. If you make a mistake, you can erase the whole row, as well as the times you’ve entered. When a new week begins, you’ll be given a new timesheet, and you can still go back and look at past or even future timesheets.

In a Calendar view, you can see all of your monitored time so you can:

• Observe job habits to see how your day looks at a glance.
• Check to see if there are any holes in your day that you failed to record time.
• Check to see if you’ve booked time twice and have conflicting entries.

Clockify will view all of your Google Calendar or Outlook events, allowing you to:

• Compare and contrast how you scheduled your day versus how it turned out (i.e. what you tracked)
• Create time entries based on events on the calendar.

Each consumer must bind their calendar on their own. Events from your linked calendar are only visible to you (admins and administrators are unable to see events from your connected calendar).

To disconnect the calendar, click the link button, then the three dots, and select Disconnect from the drop-down menu.

How does Clockify analyze track time?

When you or your team makes a time entry, it will appear in the dashboard and reports right away. The dashboard gives you a summary of your entire activity history. Based on project color, you can see how much time you spent checking each day and where the time went.

The team dashboard now has more hours, as well as a new table below that lists all of your team members and displays their activity. You can see, for example, that this person is currently working on this and that this person previously worked on this.

Hovering the mouse over the start time will reveal it. The total column, which displays total track time for the duration as well as a visual breakdown of where the time went, is the most recent task.

Since a table shows all of your users, you can see more information, which can be very helpful. When you look at the total column to see which users haven’t submitted any time in a certain timeframe, for example, we can pick today to see anyone who hasn’t logged in today.

By clicking on the column name, you can sort the table alphabetically or by total time. The date is automatically refreshed every minute, but you can also refresh the page manually. If you frequently use the activity table, you can pin it to the top of the page so that it is always visible.

Clockify Reports

There are three different types of report that Clockify offers that is:

• Summary Reports  

The key report in which you will review the data is the summary report. It displays the entire track time and can be broken down into any dimension you require. You can see the total amount of track time this week, for example. The total amount of time spent checking per day, as well as a summary table, is broken down by project.

A breakdown by other parameters is also available. You may, for example, group the report by user, and the table will display who spent how much time tracking.

You can further break down data by using a subgroup like data. If you want to see data for the whole month or another time frame, you can extend a consumer to see how much time they’ve monitored by day. Filters are available to help you see just what you need. For example, if you just want to see time for one client, you can pick that client and press the filter. 

After the report has shown what you require, you can either download it as a nicely formatted pdf or as raw excel data, or you can share a link to the live report by 

• Clicking the share icon
• Creating a link
• Copying a public link that you can send to others
• Detailed Reports

The detailed report is used to provide a detailed overview of all the track time. It contains a list of all of your and your team’s entries.

If you’re an administrator, the comprehensive report is extremely useful. You can edit entries by clicking on the one you want to alter. You can, for example, filter entries that don’t have a project and properly categorize them before exporting the results.

The detailed reports export feature is also very useful because it includes all of the data. You can use it for personal backups or pivot tables in Excel, and there is also a weekly update.

• Weekly Reports  

The weekly report shows you the data in a weekly timesheet format, allowing you to see a breakdown by project and user for each day of the week. You can choose the primary classification and whether or not you want to see it. Keep track of your time or billable amounts.

Projects are helpful for categorizing and grouping time entries that are related to the same type of job. Projects help you analyze data, create more insightful reports, and track where and how you spend your time.

Each project is usually associated with a client, but you may build a project without one (e.g. internal company stuff). A client may have several projects, but each project can only be associated with one client.

Only admins can build projects by default, but if you set who can create projects and clients to anyone in your Workspace settings, you can allow regular users to do so.

When monitoring time, you can pick a project that you’ve made. Only people who are on the project will be able to pick it while monitoring time if the project is set to private (visible only to a specific group).

How do you invite the team to use Clockify to monitor their time and control their permissions?

Go to the team page and press “add new member” to invite someone.

Fill in your email address and press “add.” You may also invite multiple users at once by using a comma to separate the addresses. When you invite a new user, the system will give them an email inviting them to join. You can copy and give them the connection yourself if they didn’t receive an email. When a teammate clicks on the invite link, they can enter their name and choose a password to log in with. When the user accepts the invitation, they become a member of your workspace and can begin monitoring time.

 If a user already has an account, they must log in via their browser and accept the invitation from the notification to accept the invite. After that, they’ll be assigned to your workstation.

When you make a time entry or start a project, it will only appear in your workspace. So, if you switch to a different workspace. You’ll find that the time entries, users, and projects are all different. If your coworkers don’t need several workspaces, they can uninstall the one they aren’t using by selecting “manage” and then “leave.”

Multiple workspaces may be useful if you want to keep your data organized, but keep in mind that you won’t be able to run a single report for all of them. You may set someone as inactive to prevent them from accessing your workspace, and they won’t be able to access it again until you reactivate them.

If you want to delete someone absolutely, you must first deactivate them, after which you will see the remove option. After that, all of their track time will be saved in your workspace, and they will be unable to log in until you invite them again.

You can track your time for free and update later if you need more features. Fill timesheets and calendars for your staff by adding time for one or more users at once. To hide monitored time so that only administrators, projects, reports, and Team pages can see it from daily users.

You can try out all of the extra features for one week for free (except Sso, Custom Subdomain, Control Accounts, and Import Timesheets), with no credit card necessary. To extend your trial or order a demo via contact with the sales team.

Read: 4 Emerging SaaS Security Risks to Consider in 2021