0:00 · The screen you live on
— I have kept my hours in a spreadsheet since the day I started. What does this do that my spreadsheet does not?
— It puts them in front of the person who signs them off without you doing anything else. Here, this is the screen you will spend all your time on. Time Entry, first thing in the sidebar.
— And everything else down there?
— Reports about your own hours, and your own settings. The whole job happens on this one page. What you are looking at is your week. Seven columns, one per day, and every block on it is something you wrote down, sitting on the day you did it.
— So this is the week I am in right now.
— It is, and those two arrows walk you back and forward a week at a time. Today drops you straight back to this one. Day, Week and Month are the same information at three zoom levels, and you will use all three for different reasons.
— What are the numbers along the top telling me?
— Tracked is how much you have written down. Target is what your company expects over that period, so the bar is simply how close you are to it.
— And billable against non-billable?
— Billable is the part a client is actually paying for. Non-billable is real work nobody invoices, like your own team meeting. You do not choose which is which, so do not lose any sleep over it. It comes from the work you picked.
— There is a strip up here with the month on it.
— That is the state of your whole month, and the most important thing on this page. This one says submitted and locked. It has gone to your manager.
— And before I send it?
— It says draft, and while it does you can change anything. The whole month goes at once, one button. Last thing, and then we will use it. Three buttons, and they are the three ways time gets onto this screen.
— Add entry, timer, copy last week.
— Add entry is for writing up something you have already done. The timer is for when you are about to start. Copy last week is for when this week looks like the last one, which is far more often than anybody admits.
— And that is the whole screen.
— That is the whole screen. Now let us put something on it.
2:13 · Your first entry
— Let’s log something real — that migration work you still haven’t written down.
— Three hours, give or take. Where does that go?
— Add entry. Top right. That one button is most of the job. Start typing the client. You do not have to hunt through a list, just tell it who the work was for.
— Acme. It found it, and it has already filled the project in.
— Because Acme only has the one. Anywhere there is a single option it chooses for you, so you only ever pick where there is a real choice.
— Which leaves the task and the activity.
— And the activity is the one that matters. That is the level your hours actually land on. Now when, and how long. Three hours.
— And this box?
— Description. Write what you’d want to read in six months when somebody asks. API migration is fine. Work is not.
— There’s no billable box.
— Because it follows the activity — that was decided when someone set the work up. You never have to think about it.
— So I just log it.
— Log hours. That’s it — everything else I show you is only making that faster.
3:32 · The four levels
— Can I ask about the row of names on top of every entry?
— That row is the whole system, and it reads left to right. GlobalBank is the client — the people paying. Core Banking is the project, the thing you’re building for them.
— Then Security Layer, then Authentication Service.
— The task and the activity. A task is a chunk of the project. The activity is the actual piece of work you sat down and did.
— And the hours are attached to the last one.
— Always the last one. Every hour in this company hangs off an activity — which is why it wouldn’t let you stop at the project.
— So why can’t I just say Acme, three hours, done?
— Open the form and look at it. Only the client is awake. Project’s greyed out, task’s greyed out, activity’s greyed out.
— They come alive one at a time.
— Each answer decides what the next one is allowed to be. You’re not filling in four boxes. You’re walking down one path, and the form won’t let you skip a step.
— It’s still four picks though.
— Watch. Acme. — and there’s the project, already filled in. There was only one it could have been, so it didn’t waste your time asking.
— And when there’s more than one?
— Then it asks. Internal Operations runs two — Team Training, and Admin and HR — so that one’s a real choice. Most days you’ll make one pick, maybe two.
— There are only four clients in that list. I thought the company had a dozen.
— It does. You’re seeing the ones you’re assigned to. It’s a short list on purpose — you’re not meant to go hunting through other people’s work to find your own.
— And if something I’m working on isn’t in there?
— Then nobody’s put you on it yet. That’s a message to your manager, not a bug.
5:17 · Never type it twice
— So you can log an entry. Now let’s make sure you never do it the slow way again. Open Add entry, and this time look at the top of the form. Quick access.
— Those little chips. I’ve been scrolling straight past them.
— Everything you logged recently is sitting there. Click one.
— …and all four are filled in.
— Client, project, task, activity. One click instead of four. That’s most of your week, right there. Now, if that’s something you do every single week, don’t go looking for it again. There’s a star down beside the save button.
— That one? — and now switch the tab up top.
— Favourites. It’ll sit there until you take it off, and unlike a recent one it brings your description along with it.
— So the whole entry, ready to go. What if I’d rather not do the arithmetic at the end of the day?
— Then don’t. Timer, top right, next to Add entry. It asks what you’re on before it starts — the same four levels, because a timer ends up as a real entry like any other.
— And now it’s just counting. What if I shut the laptop?
— It’s running on the server, not in your browser. Close it, go to a meeting, open it on your phone — it’s still going.
— And when I’m done?
— Stop it. It writes the entry, and it opens it for you, so you can say what you actually did before you walk away. Last one, and it’s the big one. If this week looks a lot like last week —
— Copy last week.
— It checks with you first, because it’s about to write real entries. Say yes, and the shape of last week lands in this one as drafts.
— And then I fix the bits that are different.
— That’s the whole job. That’s the minute a day I promised you.
6:57 · Three views, three questions
— There are three views along the top. Do I actually need all of them?
— They answer three different questions. Day is: where did my hours go today, and is anything missing? It’s the only one with a real clock down the side. Your working day starts here and ends here, and anything you haven’t accounted for shows up as a gap you can click straight into.
— And the four boxes across the top?
— What you’ve tracked against your target, how much of it a client is paying for, how many entries it took, and what’s left.
— So the gap is what I still owe.
— The gap is what you haven’t written down. Not always the same thing. Week answers a different question — which of my days is short. Seven cards, seven target bars. You don’t really have to read it. The short ones are obvious.
— There’s a warning triangle on Thursday.
— That’s a gap inside the day — you were here, but two hours in the middle aren’t accounted for. And the chart underneath splits every day into billable and not.
— That Friday’s empty.
— Is it, though. And if you’d rather do the whole week in one go, there’s a grid: your work down the side, seven columns across, and you type the hours straight in. And month is the one you send in.
— Every day has a colour.
— Green is done, amber is under your target, grey is a day with nothing on it at all. Weekends come up as rest days, so an empty Saturday isn’t held against you.
— Active days. Consistency.
— How many days you logged anything, and how evenly you spread it. Nobody is marking you on that — it’s there so you spot a bad pattern before your manager asks about it.
— So this is the one that matters.
— They all matter. This is the one that leaves the building.
8:45 · Fixing what you wrote
— I’ve put those hours on the wrong day.
— Then move them. While the month is a draft it’s yours — click the entry, and you get back the same form you filled it in with.
— Same four levels, same description.
— And the same date field — which is how an entry moves between days. There’s nothing to drag around in here. You retype the date, save, and it’s on the other day.
— I don’t need anyone’s permission?
— Not while it says draft. That changes the moment you send it in. Now — when it’s more than one. Say you put a whole day against the wrong project. Switch the day over to Table. Every row gets a tick box.
— And a bar turns up at the top.
— Tick the ones you want and change them together — the project or the description.
— It only changed the description.
— Because that’s the only one I switched on. Everything in there is off until you say otherwise, so you can’t quietly rewrite a field you never meant to touch.
— And when it won’t let me change something?
— Then one of three things is true. You’ve already submitted that month. Your finance team has closed it for billing. Or the times you just typed overlap something you already logged.
— How am I supposed to know which?
— It’ll tell you. Every one of those comes back with the reason written on it, and that’s deliberate — you should never be sitting in front of a button that just doesn’t work.
10:06 · Sending it in
— End of the month. This strip along the top is the whole approval story, and it’s the most important thing on this page.
— It says draft.
— Which means nobody has seen it yet. It’s telling you how many entries are in the month and how many hours they add up to — and while it says draft, you can still change any of them.
— The little badge on each entry says draft as well.
— Same thing, seen closer up. Those follow the month. So — submit for approval. One button, and the whole month goes at once. You don’t send entries one at a time, and you can’t send half a month.
— It’s asking if I’m sure.
— Because this is where the month locks — nothing can be added or changed while your manager has it. Submit, and watch the strip.
— Submitted. Awaiting approval. Locked.
— Your manager has it now. And every entry underneath just turned from draft to submitted along with it.
— And now I’m stuck with it.
— You’re not. Recall — same strip, right where submit was.
— …and it says draft again.
— It’s yours again, right up until your manager approves it. After that you have to ask them to reopen it — and that’s the point. Once it’s approved it’s a record, not a draft.
— And if it comes back rejected?
— Then this strip turns red and their reason is written on it. Fix what they asked for, and that same button says resubmit.
11:34 · The other side of the button
— Now — the other side of that button. This is your manager’s screen, and everything anybody submitted is sitting on it.
— That’s my name. Twice.
— June and July. The month is the unit, so each row is one person and one whole month: the hours, how many entries add up to them, and when it landed.
— There’s no status column.
— Everything in this list is submitted — that’s what the list is. The moment one is dealt with it drops off.
— Can they see what’s actually inside it?
— View. It opens up underneath, without leaving the page. Day by day, with the hours against each one, and every entry underneath — the project, the task, and whatever you typed in the description.
— So the description actually matters.
— It’s the only sentence about your work that anybody else reads. Ninety seconds of your day — and it’s the difference between your manager approving this, and walking over to ask you what it was. And then they approve it. It asks once, because this is the point where those hours stop being yours.
— And it’s gone from the list.
— It’s counted. Those hours can be invoiced now.
— What if it’s wrong?
— Then they reject it instead — and they have to say why. That box won’t let them send an empty reason. It comes back to you with their words on it, you fix what they asked for, and you send it again.
— And that’s the last time anybody has to ask me what I did in March.
— That’s the whole idea.
13:03 · The lazy way
— Alright. Last question. Is there a lazy way to do all of this?
— There is, and I’ve been saving it. That panel on the right.
— I assumed that was the help menu.
— It’s an assistant, and it can read your data. Ask it anything about your own hours and the answer comes out of your actual entries, not out of a manual.
— In plain English?
— In plain English. But this is the part worth knowing. It doesn’t only read. Tell it what you did.
— …that’s just a sentence.
— And it’s the same four levels underneath. It works out which client, which project, which task, which activity — and then it stops and asks, before it writes anything.
— It’s actually doing it.
— Two trips: one to understand you, one to write it down. It’s the slowest thing in this whole product, and it’s slow because it’s being careful.
— …it just did it.
— It filled in the same four levels you filled in by hand. Read the card before you confirm — it’s your timesheet, not its.
— So why did you make me do it the long way?
— Because now you know what it’s filling in. The day it gets one wrong — and one day it will — you’ll spot it in about a second.
— And when it’s right?
— Then it’s a sentence instead of a form, and you’ve got that minute a day back.