Are you an admin in a Toggl Track Organization on the Starter plan? This onboarding guide takes you through all the steps and information you need to get your team started with using Toggl Track!
We recommend that you click on all of the links to learn more about each topic and complete the checklist at the end of each section to maximize the value you can get from your Toggl Track Starter subscription.
Topics Covered In This Guide
👋 Logging In
You have several options for logging into your Toggl Track account.
✍️ Logging In Checklist 📝
Decide which type of logging-in method you wish for your team to use and communicate this to them.
Try logging into your own Toggl Track account using your preferred method.
⚙️ Workspace Settings
As a regular user, the only settings your team will have access to are their Profile Settings.
As an admin, there are far more settings to explore and set up across the workspace.
Access and Visibility Levels
You can decide who (either admin or everyone in your workspace) is able to see team activity, create projects and clients, create tags, and see billable rates. You can also set if new projects are private or public by default.
You can restrict these options to only admin for more control over the above items.
You can also choose to hide start and end time fields in manual mode, if all you want users to enter is a duration.
Default billing set-up
We will dive into billable rates shortly. For now, if you already know you are not going to be using billable rates, select “non-billable” so that new projects will default to being set up as non-billable.
Alerts
You can set up alerts to notify different team members when certain projects with a time estimate reach a certain percentage of that estimate.
This is perfect for keeping track of your progress!
Billable Rates
There are five different levels of billable rates you can set for the hourly rate of your work in time tracking data. You can start by setting up the billable rate for the entire workspace, which will be the default setting.
✍️ Workspace Settings Checklist 📝
Decide who can view team activity, create projects and clients, create tags and see billable rates on the Settings > General page.
Decide whether projects should default to billable or non-billable and set up accordingly.
If billable, decide on the default workspace rate and add this rate.
🌟(Optional) Recommended Checklist 🌟
Set up an alert to stay up-to-date on project completion.
📚 Extra Resources and Ideas 💡
If you do not have a dedicated use case for tags, we recommend to make the “create tags” setting available to everyone. This will allow your users to have the freedom to categorise their own work and it could be very interesting to see what types of tags they come up with!
Learn more about the team activity page (where you can review the Most Active users and Team Activity by User
👪 Members
Head on over to the Members page by clicking on Organization in the left sidebar > Members.
From here, you are able to manage all of the team members in your organization.
Inviting New Users
You can easily invite new team members on this page, including adding multiple team members in bulk by copy and pasting their email addresses all at once.
To see users who are invited, switch from “show active” to “show invited” in the top left dropdown.
Access Rights
You can choose to invite new users as admin** or members.
To understand the differences between the two, first start by understanding what a regular user can do.
Then, learn about what a workspace administrator can do.
Additional Roles
Beyond this page, you also have the option to make a user an organization administrator, who has enhanced access rights beyond a workspace admin.
Additionally, if you are looking for a role in-between a regular member and an admin, there is another role called project manager which we will take a look at further in the Projects section.
User Groups
A great way to save time and easily manage your team is by using user groups.
To set up and edit a user group, follow these steps.
You can set up multiple groups that make sense for your team. For example, you might have one user group for ‘all staff’ and another for your accounting team.
When adding a new team member to the workspace, consider adding them to a user group(s) instead of adding them to all the projects or workspaces.
You can save a lot of time by adding user groups to projects and report filters, as opposed to individually selecting users for these purposes.
Workspace member rate
By heading over to Organization > Workspace > Select Workspace > Members page, you can also set an individual billable rate for each workspace member.
✍️ Members Checklist 📝
Invite new users and assign their applicable role.
Determine whether adding a workspace member billable rate and/or labor cost would fit your use case. Add these if so.
🌟(Optional) Recommended Checklist 🌟
Create user groups that align with your company structure and how you intend to use Toggl Track.
Assign members to applicable user group(s).
Consider whether anyone in the workspace should also be an organization admin.
📚 Extra Resources 📚
Learn about the difference between deactivating and deleting a user.
🔈Spoiler alert: We highly recommend deactivating instead of deleting.
More info on inviting users to the workspace, including if they already have a Toggl Track account.
⏰ How to Track Time
When team members track their time, they will see the project-client-task lists you have set for them to track their time against.
Communicate Goals
As an admin, the most important elements to communicate to your team about tracking their time are:
Your tracking target (e.g. 30 hours per week)
Your reasons for tracking time (i.e. your purpose, goals, etc.)
Preferred platforms for tracking time
Options include:
Web app
Any preference on using timer mode (live time-tracking) vs. manual mode (adding time entries after they have occurred).
✍️ Tracking Time Checklist 📝
Communicate to team members your tracking target and explain the goal of time tracking for your company.
Communicate to team members if there are any required fields (e.g. project, task, tag, description) which they must input for each time entry.
Communicate to team members if there are any preferred platforms for time tracking.
Communicate to team members if you have any preference for timer mode vs. manual mode.
📚 Extra Resources 📚
Toggl Blog Article “How to Get Your Team to Track Time and Succeed”
Short video tour of Toggl Track web app
If your team members are forgetting to start time entries, they can set up their own tracking reminders in both the Toggl Track desktop and our browser extension for Chrome.
If your team are editing entries that have been left running for too long, suggest they turn on the Idle tracker feature. It's available in the browser extension and desktop apps.
🏷️ Data Structure
You have the flexibility to organize your data into different categories, such as projects, clients, tags, and so on.
It's important to note that these labels are entirely up to you. You can define what constitutes a 'Client' or a 'Project' based on your needs.
Data Elements
When keeping track of your time, the following elements can be added:
The main organizational structure in Toggl Track. Only one client can be added to a single project. One project may contain multiple time entries. Billable rates, estimates and other features are defined on the project level.
Can be associated with multiple projects. Clients can't be directly associated with time entries.
A single task can't be associated with multiple projects.
By using unified Tasks, as opposed to free form Time Entry Descriptions, your team is easily able to sort, group and categorize your tracking data later on. Tasks can also have a billable rate assigned to them.
The object that contains the time information. Time entries can be directly associated with tasks and project, but not clients (that connection is made through projects).
These exist on the same "level" as time entries. Tags are essentially a way to provide extra information about an individual time entry. Most often used to mark time as invoiced or billed.
Here’s a visual breakdown of the different data elements in Toggl Track and their relationship to one another:
✍️ Data Elements Checklist 📝
Decide which data elements you will be using and how.
Determine the naming convention logic you will use for each attribute so that it makes sense to everyone in your workspace. For example, you might refer to a Toggl Track project as a “case” for your business or some other specific term.
📚 Extra Resources 📚
Data Categorization Guide (including visuals and tips).
A Client can have many Projects, but each Project can only have one Client. So, if you don’t typically work on an assignment/project basis, but want to keep track of the services that you provide, consider entering your clients’ names as Projects.
📔 Projects
Public vs. Private
When creating projects, you have the option to make each one public or private.
There are several important differences between the two, which we highly recommend reading about.
Here are a few important takeaways:
Public Projects = anyone can add time to the project and run a report to see everyone’s time entries in that project.
Private Projects = users have to be added first to add time entries; when users run a report, they can only see their time entries within that project. By default, all projects are private.
Viewing and Editing
You can see a list of all of your projects by clicking on Projects along the left sidebar. This will provide you with an at-a-glance look at all projects and their corresponding clients, time status, timeframe, billable status and assigned team.
Furthermore, you can click on an individual project to view the project dashboard and visualize project performance and identify trends.
Learn more about managing projects, including how to edit them.
Adding Individuals and User Groups to Project Teams
User groups make it super easy to quickly add multiple people to a private project.
After you’ve created a new project, click on the Team tab > add member. You will see a pop up allowing you to select individual team members or entire user groups to the project, thereby saving ample time.
Filters
You can swiftly find specific projects by using the filters at the top of the Projects Page.
For instance, if you are looking for all projects that are assigned to a certain client, or projects that a certain team is working on, or even all non-billable projects, then you can use filters to quickly find these.
Project Managers
Additionally, there is a special role called Project Manager that you can assign to team members in order to give them more access to a specific project.
This is particularly useful if you do not want a team member to be an admin, yet you do want them to be more heavily involved in a specific project.
Tasks
If you would like an extra level of hierarchy to your projects, then tasks are a great feature to utilize.
It is helpful to think of them as sub-projects and a way to break down your projects further.
Billable Rates on Project Level
You can set billable rates both on the project level, and, even more granularly, on the project member or task level for each project.
Otherwise, your default billable rate (or non-billable status) will be automatically applied to the project settings.
Time Estimates
You can set a goal for how long your Projects should take to complete and track their progress. This allows you to monitor actual hours vs the estimate. When paired with "Alerts", you can trigger emails to relevant users based on hours tracked.
Recurring Projects
If you have any projects that repeat at a set interval, you can set up repeating estimates with our recurring projects feature.
Archiving
In order to ensure optimal performance with using Toggl Track, we highly recommend archiving projects as soon as you no longer need them.
Project Templates
Project templates allow you to create many similar projects quickly.
Projects created using an existing Template have settings such as Billable Rates, Estimates, Tasks and Members already applied. Another time saving win!
✍️ Projects Checklist 📝
Determine whether you want to use private projects, public projects or a combination of both in your workspace.
Decide if tasks would be a useful way to add a sub-layer to your projects. If so, add these to your projects.
Set up project-level billable rates, project workspace member billable rates and task level billable rates, if applicable.
Set up a cadence for reviewing your active Projects and archiving any relevant ones to ensure optimal performance.
🌟(Optional) Recommended Checklist 🌟
Practice filtering through your projects on the Projects page.
Set up a project template.
Assign project manager roles, as needed.
Implement recurring projects and/or project estimates, as needed.
📚 Extra Resources & Tips 📚
Toggl Blog article highlighting how to track billable hours.
If you need to track time for a certain client, you can create and add specific user groups to projects for this purpose.
If you are only using private projects, then you will always need to either individually add users (or user groups) to the project in order for team members to track their time.
If you are using private projects with tasks, you can also add specific individual team members to track time for that task.
You cannot remove one person individually if you are bulk adding team members via user groups to a project; in this case, you would need to add team members individually.
If you remove an individual user from a private project, their (historical) data will still appear in reports.
Analytics
From the left sidebar, click on Analytics at the top. You can also pin important Charts and Dashboards to the sidebar for easier access.
You can use Analytics to provide real-time insights to monitor the overall progress of your teams, projects, and resources, including:
Understanding how much time is spent per project/client and bill for your time, or use the data internally to optimize your processes,
Uncovering deeper insights into project dynamics, team efficiency, and productivity so you can improve profitability.
Check out this short video to learn how to get started with Analytics:
Charts
Navigate to the Charts tab to create/customize Charts based on your requirements.
You can select charts from templates (such as a summary table and weekly pivot table) or even create a new chart based on your selected filters.
Data in charts can be displayed in the following graph formats:
table
pivot table
bar chart
donut chart
line chart
Dashboards
Once you've created your charts, use Dashboards to create custom views with your preferred Charts.
The preset Dashboards available mirror our existing Report formats. On the Dashboards tab, you can view all existing Dashboards, as well as create new ones.
Totals Widget
The Totals Widget added to the top of each Dashboard shows you:
Total hours
Billable hours + %
Amount
Average daily hours
Date selector where you can adjust this date range independently of the remaining charts on the Dashboard
Enable rounding or hide from 3-dot control
Sharing Options for Charts and Dashboards
If you are an organization admin, you can share your organization's charts and dashboards in three different ways:
Internally, with view access
Internally, with edit access
Externally via a public link, with view access
✍️ Analytics Checklist
Create a chart using one of our existing templates.
Create at least two new charts by customizing the following elements:
Date Range
Groupings
Chart Type
Filter data by: Members, Client, Project, Task, Billable Status, Tag and Description
Click on one of the preset dashboards.
🌟(Optional) Recommended Checklist 🌟
Create a new dashboard by adding charts you have created to the dashboard.
Share a chart or dashboard internally, with view status.
Experiment with all of the different types of available chart formats:
table
pivot table
bar chart
donut chart
line chart
📚 Extra Resources & Tips 📚
Check out our past webinar: "Workshop: Discover Analytics, the new way to slice and present your data" to learn more.
With Analytics, there are endless options to display and understand your data.
Possibilities include creating charts for:
Time allocation by project/client
Time spent on different tasks/activities
Billable vs. non-billable hours
Billable Time and Amounts by employee or department
Historical trends and comparisons
Estimated vs. Actuals
Timesheet reports
Hours/amounts per Client and Project/Task or Day/Month/quarter
How much money we make per day: Visual Representation of Hours and Earnings for the period
What brings more money (clients, projects, tasks), ranking
📊 Reports
Types
You can explore the summary, detailed and weekly reports in the web app.
Highlights of each include:
Summary Report = A very visual option that aggregates data together so you can see the total time tracked broken down in different ways.
Detailed Report = A way to view line-by-line activity of every single time entry in your workspace.
Weekly Report = As the name suggests, this report is perfect for a weekly recap to see the total time spent on projects or by user.
Each type of report offers different ways of understanding the data in your workspace.
We will offer ways to interact with reports below.
Filters
The easiest way to ensure you are seeing what you want in reports is by utilizing filters.
Along the top bar you will see options to filter by User, Client, Project, Task, Tag, Billable flag and Description.
For example, if you would like to only see the time added by a specific team, click on the Members filter and select the appropriate user group.
Data Grouping
Both the Summary Report and the Weekly Report have options to group the data.
Using these data grouping options allows you to break down the data further.
For example, in the Summary Report, you could choose to group by project (primary grouping) and task (secondary grouping).
This would display all of the projects with time entries in the given timeframe, with the option to click on the number next to each project to see the breakdown of all the tasks with time entries for that project as well.
Editing Team’s Data
From the Detailed report, you also have the ability to edit the data directly.
You can change a time entry’s assigned user, project or client, billable status, tag(s), duration, date and modify the description, as needed.
Bulk Edit
A handy way to edit multiple time entries at once is to bulk edit these, again from the Detailed Report.
You can also use this to bulk delete time entries or even merge projects.
Saved Reports
You can save any report for quick access in the future and even share them with your clients.
Exporting Data
In the top right corner of the Report page, you will see the option to export your data.
You can export any type of report and different file types are available depending on the report type.
Exporting time entries is best achieved by exporting from the Detailed Report.
You can also download a report to share with a specific client.
Creating and Managing Invoices
You can create and manage PDF invoices based on your tracked hours from the Summary Report page.
Learn how to customize and manage invoices, including custom charges, and access rights. Additionally, you have the option to remove the Toggl logo and add your own.
✍️ Reports Checklist 📝
Try generating a summary report, detailed report and weekly report over the first two weeks of using Toggl Track.
Play around with report filters and groupings to see relevant data.
Save one report you think you will need to check often. Adjust (edit) this report as needed. Or add more!
🌟(Optional) Recommended Checklist 🌟
Export a Detailed Report to .csv and open the file. Try exporting a different report in a different report type (e.g. summary report in PDF).
📚 Extra Resources 📚
You can also export workspace data and insights data. Check out the full overview of how to export data.
Learn how to Create Custom Reports with Excel and Google Sheets.
Find out the answer to: What does "Other" mean in Summary Reports?
Learn how you can turn on rounding of your time entries to the nearest chosen time increment.
💬 Help
Our Support Team are excellent for responding to urgent requests.
Everyone in your team—no matter if they are admins or regular users—can always contact Toggl Track Support.
For that we have several options:
in the web app, click on the chat bubble icon in the bottom right shown below.