Plans 💳 : Premium, Unlimited
User Permissions 👥: Admins, Managers
For legacy plans, please refer to the article here.
Custom reporting templates in Timely are a must-have, especially if you use recurring reports that are sent out daily, weekly or monthly. In this article, we'll show you how to create a report from scratch to save for future use or export and share with your team or clients.
In this article we'll discuss:
The Reports Dashboard
Creating a new report
The Reports Dashboard
The Reports Dashboard in Timely has some handy organizational features to help view and access your reports and templates in just a few clicks.
By using the buttons along the top, you can view all the reporting templates you have access to or narrow the focus to just those templates you've pinned or worked on recently.
Pinning a favorite or frequently used template is simple! Just click the three horizontal dots to access the context menu and then "Pin template".
From that same context menu, you can also Duplicate, Share, or Delete that report all in one place.
Admins, team leads, and manager level users are able to see all the reporting template created within a workspace in addition to their own. To make navigating these templates easier, we've added a handy drop down letting you view reports created by a specific user or users.
Towards the bottom, you'll see any reports - either Live or Snapshot - that have been shared externally. You can filter by the month they were created, by Live or Snapshot type, and can view reports shared by specific team members.
Creating a new reporting template 👶
To create a new report from scratch, click the “New template” button in the top-right corner.
Getting started
The very first thing you’ll do when creating a new reporting template is give it a name – you won’t be able to save until you’ve done so. Adding a description is optional, and helps you quickly identify or differentiate your reports.
Customizing your data set with filters
Filters allow you to select the exact data set you're looking to review. You’ll find the five main inputs for filters right under the title of the report.
1) Click the calendar option to select a timeframe for your template. You have the ability to select a specific date range by selecting the "Date range" option or can drill down to any specific day, week, or month when the option is unchecked.
2) Select which users you want to report on, which can include both active and deleted users. By default, “Anyone” is selected, meaning that all users that fit the other filters are brought into the report. Click to select individual users who are active or deleted to add them individually. If you need to start over, click the “X” that appears over the filter to clear it.
3) Select which clients and projects you want to report on. Much like users, “Any project” is selected by default, meaning all projects are pulled in as a part of the filters. You can select from active or archived projects to drill down to a specific project.
*Tip: Use the search field to quickly find the client or project you want to report on. Keep in mind that in order to report on individual projects, you’ll also need to have the client selected as well. For instance, if you search for a project and unselect the client, all projects linked to that client will be unselected. Specifically select or deselect the project to just remove it from your filter.
4) Select different tags to see where you've been spending your time. Follow the same principles for adding tags to a report as you would with users, clients and projects. Read more on how to create tags.
Pro Tip: Once you've selected your desired Tags, you can make your selection at the bottom if you'd like the report to include hours that contain any of those tags or select "Match all tags" if you'd like to just display those hours that contain all of those selected tags.
5) Choose to include billed or unbilled hours only, or both together. Read more about marking hours “Billed”.
Selecting your widgets ☝️
Bar Chart 📊
- Ideal for visualizing logged hours over time
- Available for the Hours widget
- Click the Settings gear to adjust the scale of the chart by day, week, month, year or default (the optimal view for displaying your data, based on the time range selected)
- Add a median line to visualize the median value
Donut Chart 🍩
- Ideal for visualizing money or hours by client or project
- Available for the Hours, Clients, Projects, Tags, and Team widgets
- The chart colors are based on your project colors- Displays a percentage of total for an easy breakdown of resources
Table Chart ⌗
- Provides the most robust view of your data
- Available for the Clients, Projects, Tags, People, and Team widgets
- Use the Settings* option in the upper right-hand corner of the widget to add or remove date, timestamp, tags and notes from individual entries
*Note: the Settings option is not available for the Clients widget.
Reporting on employee Capacity
We've heard from folks that they'd like an easier way of staying on top of their team's workload, handily audit where needed, and ensure that the right resources are being allocated across the board. With that in mind we've revamped our Custom Reporting feature with a new content option - Capacity!
To get started, simply make sure you have the "People" or "Teams" data modules within your report and then click the ⚙️ icon to the top right-hand side. You'll see the "Capacity", "Overtime", and "Undertime" view options and can include or exclude those data points in your report as needed.
You will also see these data points as an option to include or exclude when selecting the columns for report exports.
Note: Any changes in Weekly user capacity on the Workspace settings will take effect immediately - it isn't possible to compare or contrast previous settings unless you'd export your report data prior to any changes. Alternatively, changes in Weekly Individual capacity in the User settings take effect since the 1st day of the week according to the workspace settings
NEW! Analyzing Cost, Profitability, & Profit in Timely
Introducing our new Cost, Profitability, & Profit Analysis feature: seamlessly track payroll expenses and associated revenues, providing you with real-time insights into your profitability. Empower your business decisions with detailed financial analytics, all within Timely!
To get started, you'll want to make sure you have configured both a billable rate (the amount you would charge your customers or clients) and an internal cost rate (your labor cost per employee) for your team.
To deep dive into this analysis you'll want to ensure you have added either a People, Project, or Tags widget to your custom report. Then, configure the displayed columns in that widget by clicking the ⚙️ icon to the top right-hand side. You'll want to include Logged Cost, Profit, and/or Profitability columns in that widget to calculate those figures.
Profit is calculated by taking the logged money of hours and subtracting the logged cost.
Profitability is calculated by taking the profit and dividing it by logged money, displaying that figure as a percentage
This Profit data is now also available when exporting your report to Excel format as well, if you'd like to perform even more advance analysis using a spreadsheet app. Profitability data will be available as an export option soon as well!
Note: If a time entry has been marked as "non-billable" there is no external rate, so would see the "logged money" as marked out and a loss (negative) amount in the profit column.
Sharing and exporting your report 📦
Once you’ve customized your reporting template, click “Create Template” in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Now you’re ready to share your report or export it to PDF, Excel or CSV.
When you're ready to report or review this data set again, just select the name of the report from the Dashboard tab in Reports to jump right in where you left off.