Skip to main content
Project based Attendance Tracking

How to start tracking Time on Tasks, Attendance, and Productivity; Difference between Manual and Project Based Attendance tracking

Uros Maksimovic avatar
Written by Uros Maksimovic
Updated over 6 months ago

Project-based Attendance Tracking offers a more detailed insight into productivity of Employees using Personal computers by directly linking time to specific projects and tasks.

With Project-based tracking, time is recorded based on the tasks employees work on, providing a clearer picture of their productivity and contributions to different projects.

This method is particularly beneficial for organizations looking to monitor project progress and efficiently allocate resources.

Setup and Utilization

If you decided to use Project based Attendance tracking, here are some steps to get you started and to get real-time employee data displayed on Admin dashboards.

Admin step

Admins can enable Project-based tracking, they can add tasks independently and they can allow Employees to start and stop task timers.

To enable the Project-based tracking scenario please follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings.

  2. Select the Project based tracking scenario.

Next, you will need to create a project:

  1. Go to the Projects dashboard.

  2. Click the Add New Project button in the upper right corner and assign employees.

This way, the first project and Add new Task button will appear on the employee widget. You can optionally create tasks for an employee and assign them yourself.

Make sure that the Allow Employees to Add new Tasks option is checked if you wish to enable employees to add Tasks themselves. This can be found under the Settings page, by clicking on the 3 dots on the right side of Personal Computers Settings.

User/Employee step

Instead of Clock-In and Clock-Out, attendance data will be based on the time frame employees spend on Tasks during the day. In order for Insightful to get the attendance data, employees need to manually Start/Stop the Task timer whenever they are working on any. Employees can also add new Tasks if the desired task is not currently listed.

Learn more about Time Tracking for Projects in the video below:

Project-based vs. Manual attendance tracking

Both Project-based and Manual attendance tracking options require user input to start. Unlike the Manual tracking option, where employees clock in and out to track total active time, Project-based tracking allows for a more granular view of how employees allocate their work hours.

Here's how it works:

  • Manual Attendance: Clock-In when you start work and Clock-Out when you finish. This tracks your total active time in Insightful.

  • Project-based Attendance: Start the time on a task in the widget, when you start working on a project, to automatically trigger activity tracking. This links your time directly to specific projects.

When Manual Attendance is in effect, Insightful will record time and track Productivity between Clock-In and Clock-Out. Every app and website visited, every Idle time moment, screenshots, and all other features will be analyzed or not analyzed, depending on the fact if the employee is Clocked-In or Clocked-Out.

Project Based Attendance tracking will, on the other hand, grant you the option to create and track work on Projects and Tasks but also to track employee Attendance via the Projects and Tasks feature. Meaning, that only for the time when a certain Task Timer is active, computer activities will be analyzed and recorded by Insightful along with time spent on tasks.

You can easily switch between Manual and Project-based tracking methods any time after onboarding via Shared Settings.

Did this answer your question?