11.07.2012

guest

In Tips & Advice

Tracking Time With Toggl 

Pete recently wrote an article on the top productivity apps around at the moment but what would you use to keep track of the time you spend on multiple projects, assignments, jobs etc.

I'm going to introduce to you the basics of a very simple yet powerful application I use on a daily basis called Toggl.

Toggl is a web, mobile and desktop based application which means it can be used wherever you are providing you have access to a computer, the web, or a smartphone. Toggl is great for keeping an eye on how long you've spent working on a particular project or even one part of a project. It's useful for accurate billing for clients and meeting SLA's.

In this article, I'm going to show you the basic features of Toggl Desktop.

First you'll need to download the latest version of Toggl from their website - https://www.toggl.com/public/widgets

Once downloaded and installed you can login to Toggl. If you've not already created an account, you can do so from the login screen.

Once you've logged in you'll you can create your first time entry.

To create a time entry you can either click on Start, New Time Entry, Create your first time entry or Add.

If you click Start the timer will start running with a blank description for the time entry.

You can then fill out the description whilst the timer is running. I particularly find this useful when taking new phone calls as I can start the timer before I know what the call is regarding.

From this screen you can also manually edit the duration using the format x sec, x min or 01:30:00.

You can set start and end times and the dates manually, set tags and mark as billable.

To stop timing click the red button that's displaying the current time of the task. This will stop the timer and take you back to your list of tasks.

If you click Back whilst timing, this will take you back to the list of tasks whilst still timing the current task.

Again, just click the red button to stop timing.

To continue timing on an entry, select the entry in the list and click continue. This will create a new entry with the same name. These will be separate as the image below:

As you can see, I now have two entries for New Task. This has continued these but has created a separate entry. To change this setting so that it continues from the previous time on the same task you need to log into the web version of Toggl (www.toggl.com).

Once logged in, click on My Profile and uncheck the box Store start and stop time. Click save and log out and back into Toggl Desktop. Now when you continue timing an entry it will start timing from where you left off.

I hope this gives you an insight into the basics of Toggl and what it's capable of.

Toggl also features a Pro version which gives you access to integration with applications such as Basecamp, Quickbooks and many others. The ability to share project reports with clients and priority support.