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Understanding Employee Timesheets
Understanding Employee Timesheets

Insightful provides detailed Employee Timesheets with breakdowns of different time categories like Work, Idle and Break time.

Tamara Filipovic Djordjevic avatar
Written by Tamara Filipovic Djordjevic
Updated over a week ago

Understanding employee Timesheets in Insightful is essential for properly tracking employee productivity and time management. Timesheets provide a breakdown of work, idle, and break time, enabling managers to monitor activities accurately.

With customizable views and export options, timesheets offer valuable insights for evaluating productivity trends and optimizing work processes. By leveraging this data effectively, organizations can improve efficiency and make informed decisions to achieve their business objectives.

Your employee time sheets will look like this:

Let's break down each column:

Work Time

Work time is the total time recorded between employee clock-in and clock-out. See below for more specifics on how this works based on your Insightful installation type (e.g. Stealth Mode) and settings.
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Computer Activity

Computer Activity is the total time spent actively working at a computer during their Work time. (Idle time is not included here).

Manual Time

Used to log and track any work-related activities that happen offline, or are not computer-based. Manual Time Entries, once processed, will be displayed here and in other Dashboard tables.

Productive

Based on your productivity label settings, Productive time will include the total time spent on productive activities during Work time.
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Unproductive

Based on your productivity label settings, Unproductive time will include the total time spent on unproductive activities during Work time.
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Neutral

Based on your productivity label settings, Neutral time will include the total time spent on neutral activities during Work time. Activities that are not reviewed will be considered neutral as well.
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Idle Time

Idle Time represents the total amount of time where a user was not actively working on the computer during their Work Time. Learn More here.

Break Time

Break Time represents the amount of time that was taken as a break by your employees during their Work time.
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Export Timesheets

When you request a report download, the system processes your request, and once the file is ready, you will receive a notification which you can check by clicking the bell icon in the upper-right corner. The report may take some time to generate, depending on the file size, but as soon as it's complete, you can click on the notification to download the file.

You can customize your column view or export the sheets for offline analysis.

In case you customize the column view on your Dashboard, please bear in mind that this will be reflected in the exported CSV, i.e. if you hide one column, the data from that column won't be present in the export.

Here is another way to look at some of the key column calculations:

​Work time = Computer Activity + Idle Time + Manual Time + Break Time

​Computer Activity time = Productive Time + Unproductive Time + Neutral Time

Permissions for Exporting Timesheets

Managers need to have the "Manager can review Time and Attendance" permission enabled to access Time and Attendance → Timesheets and Employee Timesheets, which also grants them access to the notification bell icon for export notifications. If a manager has access to timesheets, they will also be able to download the export. Additionally, employees can export their own timesheets as well.


How Computer Activity Time is Calculated in Stealth Mode

In Stealth Mode with Unlimited Tracking Scenario, Computer Activity Time is determined by tracking the duration between the first and last computer activities recorded for the day.

For example, if a user's computer is inactive for a period during the day and goes into sleep mode the Clock Out time will represent the last time of recorded activity.

If a computer goes inactive for more than 4 hours Insightful will automatically close work time and when the computer is active again it will be the start of a new clock time.

Sync delay

Insightful delivers most of its data in real-time. Minor discrepancies caused by sync delay can be experienced though, most commonly with network/internet difficulties on the user's side. This usually doesn't last long and the data is correctly recalculated immediately after the delay.

Prevent time tampering

Ensure a synchronized time check between the local device and the server thus preventing any time tampering with the Strict time feature.

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