Tracking Guidelines
Follow these rules whenever you track time with Insightful. They keep your hours accurate and your payments correct.
Follow these rules whenever you track time with Insightful. They keep your hours accurate and your payments correct.
The core rules
Only toggle the timer, nothing elseTurn the timer on when you start and off when you stop. Leave everything else alone. In particular, don't change task statuses in Insightful, which is a common mistake. Toggling the timer is all the tool needs from you.
Beyond that, two habits keep your records clean:
- Start the timer only when you're actively working on your assigned project.
- Work from a single device. Running the timer on two devices at once produces inaccurate records.
When not to track
Switch the timer off:
- During breaks
- While doing unrelated work
- When you're away from your computer
What Insightful records
While the timer is on, Insightful may record:
- The applications you're using
- The websites you visit
- Screenshots
- Screen recordings
- How your time is split across tasks
Recording only happens while the timer runsTurn the timer off and Insightful records nothing.
Platform setup
macOS needs two permissions before Insightful can capture your work correctly. Both are mandatory:
- Enable screen recording. Follow Insightful's macOS screen-recording guide.
- Grant the required macOS permissions.
Skip these and your tracked time won't capture properly.
No extra permissions to grant. Install the app, sign in, and start tracking.
Active time and idle time
When you turn the tracker on it starts recording, and this shows in your Insightful account as Active Time. If it detects no keyboard or mouse activity for more than 2 minutes, tracking switches to Idle Time, which isn't payable. See Time categories for the full breakdown.
Forgot to start the timer?
Missed time has to be added back by an administrator. Contact support with:
- The project name
- The date
- The approximate hours you worked
- Why the time is missing
What happens next
See Time categories to understand how your tracked time is classified, and Payable time calculation for which categories you're paid for.
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Updated 6 days ago