First Setup

Before tracking time, you need to create at least one category and one topic. This guide walks you through the initial setup process, whether you're a freelancer working solo or setting up for a team. When you sign up, a short welcome wizard sorts the essentials — timezone, week start and currency — in about a minute; this guide covers the same setup in more depth whenever you want to add categories, topics or clients.

Categories are high-level groupings for your work. Most users create categories like "Client Work", "Internal", or by client name.

1. 1
   Navigate to Settings → Tracking → Topics
2. 2
   Click Add Category
3. 3
   Enter a name (e.g., "Client Work" or "Acme Corp")
4. 4
   Choose a color — this will appear on calendar entries and charts
5. 5
   Click Save

Topics are the specific projects or tasks you track time against. Each topic belongs to a category and can have its own hourly rate.

1. 1
   In Settings → Tracking (Topics), find your category and click the + button next to it
2. 2
   Enter a topic name (e.g., "Website Redesign" or "API Development")
3. 3
   Set an hourly rate if this work is billable (e.g., $85/hour)
4. 4
   Toggle Billable on if you want this time to appear in invoices
5. 5
   Click Save

If you're billing clients, add their information to generate professional invoices.

1. 1
   Open Settings → Invoicing and select Clients
2. 2
   Click Add Client
3. 3
   Enter the client's name and contact details
4. 4
   Link topics to this client by editing each topic

Tags help you categorize time entries across topics. Use them for cross-cutting concerns like "bug fix", "meeting", or "research".

1. 1
   Open Settings → Tracking and select Tags
2. 2
   Click Add Tag and enter a name
3. 3
   Choose a color for visual distinction

You can add tags to time entries while the timer is running or when editing past entries. Tags are useful for filtering reports (e.g., "show me all bug fixes this month").

Here's how a typical freelance developer might set up their billing entity: