Maximizing Productivity: An In-Depth Guide to Time Reports in TimeCatchApp

n today’s fast-paced world, efficient time management is crucial for success. Managing time effectively is crucial for productivity and achieving your goals, whether you’re a freelancer, entrepreneur, or part of a larger organization. One tool that has been gaining attention in the productivity arena is the TimeCatchApp, which offers insightful time reports to help users understand and optimize their time usage. Whether you’re an individual looking to enhance personal productivity or a team striving for better project tracking, these reports provide valuable insights.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how to make the most of these time reports, customize them to your needs, and leverage them to boost your efficiency.

Understanding Time Reports in TimeCatchApp

Time reports in the TimeCatchApp are designed to not only give users clear insights into their current time usage patterns but also to help you to identify areas where you can improve and optimize your efforts and improve productivity. By tailoring these reports to meet your specific needs TimeCatchApp offers flexibility in how you receive and interpret your data. Here’s how you can set up and utilize your time reports effectively.

Setting Up Your Project Time Reports

To begin, navigate to your project settings in TimeCatchpp by clicking on Edit Project in the action menu of your project. At the bottom of the setup page users have the option to choose between manual or automatic reporting cycle. If you opt for manual, you’ll need to access the app to view your reports by clicking on the Project Time Report in the action menu of your project and then apply advanced options to customize your reports manually. In this case, the advanced options are accessed by clicking on the gear icon at the top right of the Project Time Reports page, Selecting the automatic option provides users with a more hands-off approach that lets you configure your customization during setup allowing you to receive your customized reports via email on the schedule selected.

Edit project menu — Edit the project to get automatic report options

Time report option on project dialog — Select whether you want manual or automatic reporting. If you select automatic, additional options are now available.

Automatic report options — Report will be emailed to you if you select the email option. You can then select the frequency and timing. The report is then emailed to you automatically.

Project menu: Project time report — You can generate a manual project time report by going to the project action menu and selecting Time Report.

Project time report with time for each task displayed — The project time report will show the time spent on each task and the overall sum. For more options of what to display, click on the gear icon in the upper right.

Dialog for filtering what time types to display — You then have options of what to include in the report. The overall sum is based on what is shown in the report. Some people use the memo line to indicate specific parts of the task. This allows you to summarize based on the memo. Click OK to update the report.

Reporting Options for Project Reports

Advanced Options

TimeCatchApp’s advanced options for project time reports allows users to to focus on the most pertinent information while viewing Time Reports. For advanced options you can choose to:

Email Your Report: Have your time report sent directly to you or other recipients (for automatic reports only, the other options show up when you click here).

Group by Memos: Organize your report based on different memos within tasks.

Summary by memo when memo is used to categorize work — When summarize by memo is selected, each distinct value of the memo is used to summarize the time. This provides better insight into where the time is being spent. Note that the proportion of hours used is displayed by task, and is visible to all project participants.

Hide rows with no time: Shows only tasks you have worked on with clocked in time.

Include Non-billable Time: Decide whether to show non-billable hours in your report.

Schedule Delivery: Choose the frequency and specific day of the week you want to receive the report (for automatic reports only).

Finally for automatic reports enter the email addresses of all recipients. This ensures everyone on your team stays informed according to your defined schedule.

These advanced settings allow you to tailor the reports according to your preferences and get a comprehensive view of your time allocation.

You can explore various scenarios by toggling these options to see how they affect the final report. For example, by choosing to exclude nonbillable time, you’ll get a clear picture of tasks that aren’t generating income. Hiding rows with no recorded time helps you focus on analyzing the tasks on which you are actually working. Grouping tasks by memos is very powerful as it categorizes your time spent within each task including a category for unspecified time.

Filtered Summary for Project Time Reports

Beyond the settable customizations described above for Project Summary Reports, accessing the Project Time Report menu item offers an additional option of creating and downloading filtered summary reports. When you click on the Filtered Summary Tab in Project Time Reports you will get the option of filtering the report by:

Tasks: You can keep the default of all tasks or select one or more tasks. Select Clear to clear or change choices.

Owners: Similarly, within your chosen tasks you can filter by all owners (the default) or choose owners. Use the clear option to clear or change your choices.

Date Range: Analyze your information for the choices above for the default of all date ranges in your report or a custom choice of date ranges spanning from trailing 12 months to the present day or the additional option of a custom date range that you select from a drop-down calendar.

Select Filtered Summary for custom views, then filter based on your needs. — Filtered Summary tab allows for summarization of hours by task or for a specific set of tasks, by owner or for a specific set of owner, and by date range. This allows you analyze your spend to any depth you need. Most big organizations do not have easy access to this time of analysis, but you do!

Thus the filtering option works on a hierarchy of analyzing time information for date ranges chosen from within your choice of owners of tasks chosen from your choice of tasks from all tasks in the project.

All tasks –> choose tasks –> choose owners of chosen tasks –> choose date range for choices made

With TimeCatchApp’s filtering feature not only do you get an overall picture of how time on the project is being utilized but you can also narrow down your analysis to the task level and within those chosen tasks you can assess time utilization by different owners within your selected date ranges.

Access Task Time Reports

There are multiple ways to access Task time reports in the TimeCatchApp.

Project level access: You can view them directly from the project time report screen by clicking on the eye icon next to each task or by clicking on the “View Detailed Time Report” for each task within the project. Alternatively, reports are accessible via the dashboard under the action menu for each task within the project.

Task level access: You can also access the task time report for each task from the action menu item “Time Report” for each task in a project.

Task time report icon — Click on the eye icon to view the task time report. Alternatively, you can click on the action menu to select the time report.

Time report menu from dashboard — If you are on the dashboard, the action menu for each task has a menu item that takes you to the time report. This gives you 3 ways to get the information you need and to make it convenient to access.

Exploring In-depth Filters in Task Time Reports

Time Catch App offers multiple robust filtering options at the task level as well. There are two filtering options at the task level.

Filtering on the Timesheet Data tab in Task Time Reports

Show only billable unbilled clocks: When you check this box only billable time that has not yet been billed will be displayed

Users: Select users of tasks whose time information you would like to see. The default is all users.

Roles: Once again the default is all or you can narrow down further by selecting roles for the users. You will only see their time information for those roles.

Time Slices: Finally you can choose to further restrict your time information for the chosen users and roles to the default of all date ranges in your report or a custom choice of date ranges spanning from trailing 12 months to the present day or the additional option of a custom date range that you select from a drop-down calendar.

Thus again the filtering option works on a heirarchy, this time of analyzing time information for date ranges chosen from within your choice of roles chosen from your choice of users from all users in the task.

All users –> choose users–> choose roles of chosen users –> choose date range for choices made.

Filtering options for task timesheet data — The task timesheet can be filtered in many ways to get you the information you need. To get the raw data, click on the Timesheet tab. The checkbox “Show only billable unfilled clocks” allows you to see what entries are yet to be billed. The User dropdown allows you to select a few, or one, users. The roles selection again allows you to select specific roles. Note that one user may be involved in one or more roles on any given task. And the Time dialog allows you to select a date range. Future times are not in the system as this is a look at historical data, not projections.

Filtering on the Summary by time tab in Task Time Reports

Thisoption enables you to filter the time your team has spent on the task by custom time slices within a chosen time period.

So the filtering is done:

For: Your chosen date range ranging from a default of all or trailing twelve months to today or a custom date range chosen from the drop-down calendar.

By: Again, a default of all or by day, week, month, year or a default of custom slices of days chosen by you.

In this case the filtering works on a hierarchy of time sorting for time by day, week, month, year or by custom slices for a specified time ranges chosen from today to trailing 12 months to a custom date range chosen from the calendar

All time –> choose FOR time range–> choose BY time slice

Below is an example of a summary for trailing twelve months by 5 day custom slicing.

Summary by time for task time report — Summary by time allows for summation of hours spent. Click on the “Summary by time” tab to see this report. To select a time frame to view and a time slice, select the appropriate dropdown values.

Custom slicing dropdown — You can use the prebuilt time slicing, but you can also create your own custom time slicing so that you get exactly the information you need. If you want to break up the slices into 2 month periods, enter the number into the textbox and select the timeframe.

Time summary with custom time slicing — The time report with custom time slicing.

These filters ensure you get a precise and valuable analysis tailored to your needs.

Gaining Insights and Enhancing Productivity

TimeCatchApp time reports provide a comprehensive overview of how your time is spent, allowing for a deep dive into individual components. By setting up automated delivery, you ensure continuous insight into your work patterns without having to manually access the reports. We have walked in your shoes and have included thoughtful features to help you keep on top of your work. We even have a clock-in button on your Task Time Reports page so that your time spent analyzing reports is recorded and not forgotten! And all our reports are easily downloadable and can be easily shared with all interested parties.

Conclusion: Make Your Time Count

TimeCatchApp’s time reports offer powerful tools to enhance productivity by providing clear and actionable insights into time usage. By customizing these reports, you can optimize your work processes, focus on what truly matters, and make your time pay. Happy time catching!