Getting Started

Welcome to eHour! We're glad to have you and quite proud to serve your time-tracking needs. First, we'd like to explain how eHour is organized and how you should set up things so you can get the most out of your eHour account.

This guide should take only about 10 minutes to get through from front to back. It will show you the basics for everything you need to get up and running for tracking time from creating the client to approving the timesheets.

How eHour works

All hours in eHour are tracked to a client, project, or project task.

1

Client -- is a company you are doing work for. Client is an arbitrary term as it can be anything, an external company or an internal department.

2

Project -- is all planned work you will do for that client.  All projects are organized under clients.

3

Tasks -- are specific types of work you will do for your project. They are optional, and you can skip them if you do not need such great detail on tracked time.

To track time, you invite your co-workers to eHour and assign them to a project or project task.
You can also assemble project teams and assign the teams to a project or task. When someone new joins the team, that person can automatically track time on all the projects the team is assigned to.

Timesheets can be approved on a weekly or monthly basis. When a User requests approval for a timesheet, the timesheet is locked from modification and can be accepted or rejected by the managers you chose.

Step 1. Let's get started by creating a Client

With Admin or Manager permissions, you can add clients.

1. Navigate to Manage, then Clients.
2. Click Add Client or use the plus button on the bottom left.
3. Enter a client name.
4. eHour will generate a Client Code for you. You can use the client code to reference your client in your financial administration.
5. Optionally add a description that serves as a quick internal description of the client.
6. Click Save Client to store the client. You can now add projects to the client.

Step 2. Create a project

1. To create a project - on the dashboard page of the client, you just created - click Add Project.
2. Choose a name for the project.
3. Use the generated Project Code or use your own to identify this project internally.
4. Click Save, and that's it!

Additionally, you can set options such as the project manager and budget. Read more about these options in this article

Once your project is created, a project summary and the option to "assign users" are shown. Your next task is to assign users so they can track time on your newly created project.

Optional: Create a project task

Project tasks give greater detail of how time is spent on a project. Use Project Tasks to divide a project into subsections. You then can assign them to specific users or teams.

To add a task to the project you just created,

1. Click on the "Add task" button

   

2. Enter a descriptive name for the Task.
3. In the next screen, add the Users or Teams you want to assign to this Task.

Step 3. Invite users

You can build your company’s team by adding coworkers to your account. Here’s how you can invite users to join your account:

To create a user and invite them to eHour:

1. Click on Manage, and select the Users tab. Use the Add user button or the plus sign in the lower left of the page.
2. Enter the user's first name, last name, and email in the popup. Users log in with their unique email addresses.
3. Select the role(s) this User has. With a role, you define what the user can do in eHour. Read more about the roles in this article, for now, select Time Tracker.

To allow a user to track hours on a project or task, you first need to assign the user to a project or task. You can either assign a single user, multiple users, or whole teams at once.

Step 4. Assign Users to Projects

To allow a user to track hours on a project or task, you first need to assign the user to a project or task. You can either assign a single user, multiple users, or whole teams at once.

1. Select the users and teams you want to assign.
2. Select a start and end date. Between these dates, the assignment is active, and the user can track hours on the project or task.
3. When you added tasks to the project, select the task(s) to which you want to assign users and teams.
4. Optionally enter a role the user has on the project.
5. Add an hourly rate for turnover calculation.
   When no hourly rate is set, but the user has an hourly rate at the user level (for a default hourly rate, go to Manage Users) the user level hourly rate is used.
6. Limit the number of hours each user can track on this project by setting a budget. More information about the budget is in this article.
7. Click the "Assign" button to assign and save the selected users to the project.

Step 5. Start tracking time!

Now that projects are created and users invited and assigned to those projects, it's time to track time!
When enough timesheets are filled, it's time to report and approve!