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A Guide to Manual Time Entry

Learn everything you need to know about how Manual Time Entry feature works in Insightful platform

Maja Rajic Milivojevic avatar
Written by Maja Rajic Milivojevic
Updated over a week ago

Manual Time Entry in Insightful facilitates accurate logging of non-computer-based work activities (like office meetings, phone calls etc.), which enables a complete view of Employee productivity.

Pending entries are then reviewed and approved/rejected by relevant personnel, ensuring data integrity. Once approved, entries cannot be edited, which maintains accuracy.

Adding and Approving Manual Time

Admins can manually submit time, and so can Employees and Managers if Admins grant them permissions to do so.

Manual time entry can be performed from various Insightful Dashboard sections like Time and Attendance or Employee Timesheets.

For Manual Time Entries submitted by Employees, the status will be pending until they are either approved or rejected by a relevant Manager or Admin. They can edit and delete their entries as long as they are pending review.

After approval (or rejection), Manual Time Entries cannot be changed. However, after the review is done, users will be able to preview a Manual Time Report with all the Manual Time Entry information (including rejection reason, if applicable).

Manual Time Entries added by Admins or Managers are automatically approved. Employees can preview Manual Time entries added by their Managers through Time and Attendance → Manual Time.

Each Manual time entry will inherit Productivity and Billable flags from the associated Manual time entry type.

For example, if you mark Phone calls as always productive and non-billable, all phone calls will contain the same flags, but you will be able to override them per each entry when reviewing them.

By default, there are five Manual time entry types:

  • Phone call,

  • Internal meeting,

  • Meeting with clients,

  • Training,

  • Fieldwork.

The time added manually needs to be in minimum 1-minute increments.

Manual Time vs Tracked time

Manual Time Entries, once processed, will be displayed in multiple tables within your Dashboard such as the Employee page, Timesheets, Projects, Productivity, etc. On the Timeline's graphical representation of tracked time, manually entered time will be displayed in yellow for easier distinction.

Both the approved and the unreviewed Manual Time Entries will be shown in the Timeline and you can review them directly from that screen as well.

Additionally, when choosing the productivity calculation that suits you best, keep in mind that Productive Manual Time and Neutral Manual Time are both included into the productivity calculation when calculating Productivity against:

  • Work Time

  • Fixed Hours of Any Day

Manual Time Adding and Shifts

No overlaps

When Manual Time is added that don’t overlap with an existing Shift - it will generate a new one.

Overlap with one Shift

Adding a Manual Time Entry that overlaps with an existing Shift will prolong that Shift. It will also cause the tracked data within the overlap to be overridden and replaced by Manual Time. Keep in mind that the screenshots taken during the Shift will remain in the Dashboard for future reference.

Overlap with two Shifts

If a Manual Time Entry overlaps with two shifts, that Entry will be attached to the last shift, and that shift will inherit the start of the Manual time Entry as its Clock In time.

For example:

  • Shift 1: 11:37 - 11:56

  • Shift 2: 11:58 - 12:17

Add manual time:

  • 11:45 - 12:00

Result:

  • Shift 1 clock in and clock out remain the same.

  • Shift 2 clock-in is changed to 11:45.

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