Clockify

Your assistant can pull your own time entries for a date range and generate the weekly and summary reports Clockify already builds, then describe them back to you in plain terms. The useful version is not the total. It is which project quietly took a day and a half, and how much of the week has no entry against it at all. Nothing is written by asking.

What you end up with. A written account of your week by project and client, including the hours with no entry against them.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Never read untracked hours as unproductive hours. Clockify only knows what someone started a timer for, and the gaps are usually the work that interrupted the tracking.

Built on: Get Currently Logged In User Info / Get Time Entries / Generate Weekly Report / Generate Summary Report

It can generate the detailed and summary reports with filters applied, and read the project records including budget estimates and billable status. That lets you ask the question directly, such as which projects are past their estimate, or which entries this month are marked non-billable and should not be. This is reporting work, so it reads and changes nothing.

What you end up with. A named list of projects running over their estimate or logging non-billable time, with the hours and the people attached.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Never take this to a client conversation without checking the entries behind the number. A project reads as over budget when someone logged a week to the wrong project, and the report cannot tell the difference.

Built on: Get Clients / Get Projects / Get Project / Generate Summary Report / Generate Detailed Report

It can list every timer currently running across the workspace, tell you who owns each one and how long it has been going, and stop a specific one with an end time you give it. The forgotten overnight timer is the most common way a timesheet goes wrong, and it is cheap to catch.

What you end up with. A list of running timers with owner and elapsed time, and the stale ones stopped at a sensible end time.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Never stop someone else's timer without telling them, and never guess the end time on their behalf. A stopped timer becomes their billable record, and they are the only person who knows when they actually finished.

Built on: Get In Progress Time Entries / Filter Workspace Users / Stop User Timer

One pass covers both halves of the repair. It can create the entries that were never logged, with start and end timestamps, project, task, tags and billable status, and copy an existing entry where the day repeats. It can also read the entries that are already there and move them onto the right project, one at a time or in bulk. Managers with the right permission can do either on another person's behalf, which is a separate action and worth treating as one.

What you end up with. A corrected period, with the missing days logged and the misfiled entries moved, plus a written list of every entry added or changed.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Never let it log or move time on another person's behalf without their agreement on the hours, and never run either half against a period that has already been invoiced. Their timesheet is a statement they are accountable for, and changing billable status or project on a billed entry breaks the tie between what the client paid for and what your records say they paid for.

Built on: Get Projects / Get Tasks / Get Time Entries / Get Time Entry / Create Time Entry / Duplicate Time Entry / Create User Time Entry / Update Time Entry / Update Time Entries

Get Project returns the project's budget estimate and its rates alongside its memberships, and the time entries and reports return what has actually been logged against it. Put together, that is hours booked against hours sold, with the people and tasks that consumed them named. The detailed report is the version you take into the conversation, because it says where the overrun happened rather than only that it did.

What you end up with. Hours and value logged against a named project set beside its estimate, with the tasks and people that account for the difference.

Start with it bringing you the information and you deciding.

Never without. Check that the estimate on the project is the one you actually sold. A project set up with no estimate, or with an old one nobody updated after the scope changed, produces a confident overrun figure against a number that means nothing.

Built on: Get Projects / Get Project / Get Time Entries / Generate Summary Report / Generate Detailed Report

It can, and Clockify's own wording is worth taking at face value: deleting is for cleanup of bad imports, duplicates, and canceled entries, and it does not come back. There is a single-entry delete and a bulk delete for one user. Run it in two moves. Have it list the entries matching the rule, read that list, then approve deletion of exactly that set.

What you end up with. The duplicate entries gone, and a saved list of every entry removed with its date, project, and duration.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Never approve a deletion described only as a rule, and never run one against a period that has been billed or approved. Have it list every matching entry first, keep that list, and approve that exact set, because a deleted time entry cannot be restored through the connection.

Built on: Get Time Entries / Delete Time Entry / Delete User Time Entries

It can create the client, create the project with its billable status and color and link it to that client, and add the tasks with estimates and assignees. If your setup repeats, it can read and create workspace templates so the next one is a single instruction. This is the setup people do by hand every time and get slightly wrong every time.

What you end up with. A client, a project linked to it, and the standard task list in place, ready to track against on day one.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Never let it create in a workspace it picked for you. Confirm the workspace by name first, because Clockify's own guidance is that a wrong workspace ID misroutes everything that follows it.

Built on: Get All My Workspaces / Create Client / Create New Project / Create Task / Get Templates On Workspace / Create Templates On Workspace

It can read a project's current memberships and rates, add people to a project, and set an hourly billable rate at the project, user, or workspace level. Rates are the least visible setting in Clockify and the one that quietly changes what every future report says, so this is worth doing deliberately rather than in passing.

What you end up with. A project whose members and hourly rates match the signed agreement, confirmed by reading the project back afterward.

Start with it doing the work and checking with you.

Never without. Never let it set a workspace-level rate when you meant a project-level one. The workspace rate is the default behind every project that has not overridden it, and changing it moves numbers on engagements you were not thinking about.

Built on: Get Project / Update Project Memberships / Update Project User Hourly Rate / Update User Hourly Rate / Update Workspace Hourly Rate