Insights (Beta)

Plans: Everyone · Permissions: Employees, Managers, Team Leads, Admins

ReportingHandbookSee where your time went, how busy your teams are, and which clients make money, all on one page.

Reports are great when you know which question to ask. Insights is for the questions you ask every month anyway: is this team overloaded, is that client profitable, and are we drifting? It turns the time already logged in Timely into a handful of views you can read at a glance, with no spreadsheet in sight.

Insights invents no new numbers. Time totals use the same calculation as Reports, and capacity comes from the same place as the rest of Timely, so a figure in Insights matches the same figure in a report.

Turning on Insights

To get Insights for your workspace, email [email protected] and ask for it to be turned on. There’s nothing to install and no setup to wait for. The page reads the time that’s already in Timely and works straight away.

Once it’s on, everyone in the workspace sees Insights at the end of the main navigation. Insights is built for larger screens, so open it on a desktop or tablet.

Two things make the page useful:

• Logged time — a month with no time logged shows an empty page, not an error.
• Rates — the profitability table needs billable rates and internal cost rates. See the FAQs.

Who sees what

Insights has up to three views. The view switcher at the top of the page shows the ones you have access to, and is hidden when you only have one.

View	Who gets it	What it shows
Mine	Everyone	Your own time and your own figures
My Team	Anyone who leads a team	The team or teams you lead
Organization	Admins, Managers, and anyone who leads projects	The whole workspace rolled up, limited to the people you’re allowed to see

My Team depends on leading a team, not on your access level. An Admin who leads no team won’t see My Team, but sees every team under Organization.

Organization doesn’t mean “sees everyone”. A Manager who opens Organization sees only the people on the projects they manage, the same people they can see in Reports. So two people can open the same view on the same day and both see correct, different totals.

How individuals are protected

Team figures should never read like one person’s timesheet, so Insights has two safeguards:

• Small teams are hidden. A team with fewer people than the minimum team size (5 by default) doesn’t get its own row. The figures above the table still include everyone, and Insights tells you that some teams were left out. Team Leads always see their own team, whatever its size.
• Names can be turned off. With Show people’s names off, the per-person table doesn’t list anyone. It shows an average and how many people are at or above target, below target, or have no capacity set.

What’s on the page

Insights shows one calendar month at a time, starting with the current month. Use the arrows next to the month to step back and forward, or click the month to pick another one.

Where did the time go?

The top of the page shows the time logged in the month and how much of it was billable or non-billable. Below that, Time logged by tag, Time logged by project, and Time logged by client (Organization only) break the same time down.

Are we busy, or are we full?

The utilization figure compares logged time with capacity and shows it against a target. Insights uses one of two metrics:

• Billable utilization — billable time against capacity. How much of the time you could sell did you sell?
• Logged against capacity — all logged time against capacity. How much of people’s time are you capturing at all?

You don’t need to choose. If any billable time was logged in the month, Insights uses Billable utilization. If time was logged but none of it was billable, it uses Logged against capacity. That way, a team that bills nobody doesn’t see 0% every month.

The default target is 75% for Billable utilization and 95% for Logged against capacity. An Admin can pin the metric or change the target.

On Organization, the team table has a Trend column that compares each team with the month before. It’s in percentage points: going from 70% to 73% is +3pp, not +4%. When a team has nothing to compare against, like a brand-new team or one that logged no time last month, the trend is left blank instead of showing a misleading jump.

Utilization needs capacity. If nobody in the view has capacity set, the figure shows ”—” and the time totals still show.

Which clients and projects make money?

The Profitability table, on Organization, lists each client’s projects with:

• Revenue — time logged × billable rate. For a project invoiced by budget, the budget is used instead, and the row has an info icon saying so. A recurring budget is split across the days of the month in view; a one-off budget counts as its full value.
• Cost — all logged time × the internal cost rate. Non-billable work still costs you something, so it counts here too.
• Profit — revenue minus cost.
• Margin — profit as a percentage of revenue.

The table also shows Budget spent, Budget remaining, and a status: On track, At risk (more than 85% of the budget used), or Over budget.

Are we on track against budgets?

For projects with recurring budgets, Insights measures spend against each budget period, so a monthly retainer reads as one answer per month, not one figure for the whole engagement.

How does this month compare?

Click Compare in the header to put this month next to another one. It starts with the month before, and you can pick any month. Each figure then shows how it changed. Click the ✕ next to the compared month to stop comparing.

On Organization, teams are compared using the people who were on them in each month, not today’s members. For older months where that history isn’t available, Insights uses today’s members and says so under the comparison.

How much of my day did I capture? (Mine only)

On Mine, Captured vs logged compares the time Memory captured with the time you logged, and Time captured by tool breaks the captured time down by app. It includes the Memory App on your computer and connected sources with a real duration, such as your calendar, Office 365, and Zoom. Sources without a duration, like email and GitHub, aren’t included.

Good to know: the tools can add up to more than the captured total. A meeting that’s both a calendar event and a Zoom call counts once in the total, but each tool keeps its own time in its row.

These figures are only on Mine, and only you see your own capture data.

Checking your data health

Insights is only as good as the timesheets and settings behind it. If half the team has no capacity set, utilization will still show a number. It just won’t mean much.

Click Data health (the heartbeat icon) in the page header to see anything about your workspace setup that could make the figures misleading. A count on the button tells you how many things to check, and each one links to the place where you can fix it. When there’s nothing to report, it says so.

Check	What it means	Where it links
No capacity set for these people	Utilization can’t be worked out at all.	People
Some people have no capacity set	Their time counts but their capacity doesn’t, so utilization reads higher than it should.	People
Some people logged no time in this period	Their capacity still counts, so utilization reads lower.	People
Almost all logged time is billable	99% or more of at least 40 hours is billable. Usually that means no project was ever marked non-billable.	Projects
Most non-billable time carries no tag	The tag table is mostly “Untagged”, so it can’t say what the time was spent on.	Tags
One tag holds most non-billable time	More than half of it sits under a single tag or project.	Tags or Projects
Non-billable time falls into only a few tags, or is spread over very many	Fewer than 3 or more than 30, so the breakdown is either one bucket or too long to read.	Tags or Projects
Some teams are too small to show	The minimum team size left them out of the team table.	Teams on People

These checks describe your setup, not anyone’s performance. “Some people logged no time” isn’t an accusation. It’s a heads up that someone you may not have meant to include is pulling a figure down.

Filtering and arranging the page

• Filters — use All tags, All projects, and All clients to show only some of them, or everything except some of them. Tag filters reach every figure on the page, utilization included. Project and client filters change the time figures but not utilization, because capacity belongs to a person, not a project. The Profitability table ignores the tag filter. Click Show all time to clear your filters.
• Capacity for time not shown — when a tag filter hides time, choose Keep full capacity (the default) or Take it out of capacity too.
• All time / Billable / Non-billable — each of the tag, project, and client tables has its own switch, so narrowing one doesn’t change the others.
• By team / By person — group the utilization table by team or by person, where you’re allowed to see both.
• Add widget — hide, show, and drag the cards on each view. Hiding a card deletes nothing, and you can bring it back from Add widget at any time.

Admin settings

Admins see a cog (Insights settings) in the page header. These settings apply to everyone in the workspace, not just your own view:

• Metric — pin Billable utilization or Logged against capacity instead of letting Insights choose.
• Target — the utilization target, from 1% to 100%. A target you set applies whichever metric is in use.
• Show people’s names — on by default. Turn it off to hide names in the per-person table. Team figures aren’t affected.
• Minimum team size — from 2 to 50, 5 by default.

FAQs

A team is missing from the table. Where did it go? It’s almost certainly smaller than the minimum team size. Its time still counts in the totals above the table, and Data health lists how many teams were hidden. An Admin can lower the minimum in Insights settings.

Why do a colleague and I see different numbers on the same view? That’s expected when you have different access. Each view shows what the person reading it is allowed to see, so a Manager and an Admin can both be right.

Why can’t I see profitability? The table tells you which of these applies: your access level hides rates, your workspace doesn’t have internal cost rates turned on, or the projects bill in more than one currency, so there’s no single total.

The page says “This is taking too long to calculate”. Is my data OK? Yes! Nothing is wrong with the time that was logged. Very large workspaces can take too long to total up on the spot, especially for older months. Your own figures on Mine still load.

Billable and non-billable time don’t add up to the total. Why? That’s rare. It happens when older or imported time entries were never marked billable or non-billable, so they count toward the total but neither split. If you see it, contact [email protected] and we’ll take a look.

The numbers look too high, or too low. Open Data health. It lists what in your setup could skew the figures, like missing capacity, people not logging time, or every project marked billable, and links to where you can fix each one.

Insights has disappeared from my navigation. Contact [email protected] and we’ll check that it’s still turned on for your workspace.