Time Tracking Settings

Flowtly Editorial Team3 min

Flowtly lets you decide, for each employee, whether time tracking applies to them. Employees who do not track time get a cleaner home page without time-related widgets, and no new time can be logged against them, while everyone else keeps the project timer and work-time log.

Turning time tracking on or off for an employee

Time tracking is enabled for employees by default. To change it, open an employee's profile and adjust the time tracking setting.

  • When time tracking is on, the employee sees the work-time log and the project timer on their home page and can record time against projects.
  • When time tracking is off, those two widgets are hidden for that employee, keeping their home page focused on the tasks that apply to their role.
  • Turning it off also stops new time being logged against that person. If someone tries, Flowtly declines the entry and explains why, rather than recording hours for a person who is not meant to have any.

What happens to time already logged

Switching the setting off never touches hours that are already recorded.

  • Existing entries stay. Nothing is deleted or hidden, and no report, summary or export changes. A month that balanced before you switched the setting off still balances after.
  • Existing entries stay editable. You can still correct a mistake in an entry recorded earlier — a wrong duration, a typo in the description. Only new entries are declined.

This matters because logged hours can feed payroll. Freezing the record outright would leave an error permanently uncorrectable, so the setting closes the door on new time without locking the past.

Setting a default project

You can assign a default project to an employee so that their time entries start against the right project without having to pick it each time. The default project can be changed at any time from the employee's profile.

Excluding an employee from project assignment

Some people on the payroll are never assigned to project work — an office manager, an advisor kept on record. You can mark such an employee as excluded from project assignment from their profile. This is off by default: unless you turn it on, everyone is available to assign.

  • The person drops out of Resourcing — they are not spare capacity to plan against, so they no longer get a row on the People view or appear in the project pickers.
  • They can no longer be picked when assigning people to a project for time logging.
  • Work already booked or logged against them stays exactly as it was. Exclusion narrows only future assignment; it never rewrites the past.

Example use cases

  • An office manager who does not bill time has time tracking switched off, removing the timer and work-time log from their home page — and if a project manager later tries to log hours against them by mistake, Flowtly declines it instead of quietly recording them.
  • A consultant who works mostly on one client has that client's project set as their default, so starting the timer requires no extra selection.
  • A finance controller who is never staffed on client work is excluded from project assignment, so they stop cluttering the Resourcing roster and the assignment pickers while keeping their profile and history intact.
  • A team lead reviews who tracks time across the team and adjusts the setting as roles change.

Connection map

Refers toPart of
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
audit-log records person. person works under agreement. work-schedule assigned to person. benefit-assignment held by person. employee-profile describes person. employee-document filed against person. responsibility assigned to person. performance-target set for person. meeting held with person. holiday-request submitted by person. leave-entitlement held by person. project staffed by person. project-rate rates person. booking books person.recordsworks underassigned toheld bydescribesfiled againstassigned toset forheld withsubmitted byheld bystaffed byratesbooksAAudit trail — The record of who did what and when. It is how a user action is investigated after the fact, and what compliance is demonstrated from.Audit trailPPerson — An employee. The central record the rest of the workforce data hangs off — profile, documents, leave, benefits, rates.PersonAAgreement — The document formalizing the terms between the organisation and one employee or contractor. It is the foundation of the employees module: whether someone has an active agreement decides whether they appear in the other modules at all.AgreementWWork schedule — The working days, hours and breaks assigned to an employee, from the week the assignment starts. It is what the Work Time calendar draws.Work scheduleEEmployee benefit — One benefit granted to one person for a date range. A person can hold several at once.Employee benefitEEmployee profile — The detailed record for one person: contact details, job role, department, employment history.Employee profileEEmployee document — A file attached to a person — a contract, a review, anything filed against them.Employee documentRResponsibility — An area of ownership assigned to a person.ResponsibilityPPerformance target — An objective set for a person and measured against.Performance targetMMeeting — A recorded one-to-one or review between people.MeetingHHoliday request — An employee's request for time off, submitted for approval. Approving it is what turns it into leave the rest of the system counts.Holiday requestEEntitlement — How much leave a person has for the leave year. A request draws it down; the balance is what remains.EntitlementPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectMMember rate — A team member's billing or cost rate on a project. Rates are per member, so the same person can cost differently on two projects.Member rateBBooking — One person committed to one role for a stretch of weeks, at a percentage of their time. A booking is a plan, not a record of work done.Booking