Quickstart for managers and project managers
This quickstart is for managers and project managers: the people who plan work for others, check team capacity and approve timesheets or time off. It covers six steps in order: tracking your own time, planning tasks and projects, reading the Timeline, reviewing reports, approving timesheets and handling time off. It assumes an admin has already set up the workspace.
A quickstart for managers and project managers: the people who plan work for others, read capacity, and approve timesheets or time off — not the admin who sets up the workspace. If you’re the admin setting things up, see Quickstart for admins on the Starter plan or Quickstart for admins on the Premium plan instead. If you’re an individual contributor, see Quickstart for team members.
The Manager role can create, edit and delete tasks, time blocks, time entries and projects, and view workspace users. Project Managers (members assigned to lead a specific project) have project-level management rights on their projects. See User roles in Toggl for the full breakdown.
This guide assumes your admin has already created the workspace, invited you, and set up projects. If those steps aren’t done, ask your admin — or point them at the admin quickstart above.
1. Track your own time
You plan other people’s work, but you track your own. Open the Timer in the sidebar, under Track — it’s the running-time display at the top of the section.
- Type a description, click Project or task to pick a task (its project is filled in for you) or just a project, and click Play.
- Switch to Log time mode (the switch beside the play button, or press M) to add time after the fact.
- Connect your Google or Outlook calendar so meetings show alongside your tracked and planned time: Connect your Google or Outlook calendar.
Full detail: Overview of the Timer page and Tracking time in Toggl.
2. Plan work with tasks and projects
Tasks are the building blocks of your plan — each can have an assignee, dates, a time estimate, priority and status. Projects hold related tasks, with dates, estimates, billable rates and fixed fees.
- Open Tasks in the sidebar, under Plan, to see everything in list or board view. Use presets like Today, Upcoming and Unplanned to focus.
- Create a task, set its dates and estimate, and assign it. Estimates feed directly into capacity on the Timeline.
- Open Projects to create or configure a project — its Dashboard, Tasks, Timeline and Members tabs bring everything about one project together.
Full detail: Overview of the Tasks page, Overview of the Projects page, and Working with tasks.
3. Read the Timeline and check capacity
Open Timeline in the sidebar, under Plan. This is your central space for seeing who’s doing what, when, and whether there’s room for more.
- Group by People to see each team member’s lane and capacity percentage — how much of their available time is taken.
- Group by Project or Tags to see work organized differently.
- Tasks only appear if they have start and end dates. If a task is missing, open it and add dates.
- Drag unplanned tasks from the Unplanned sidebar onto the Timeline to schedule them.
- Each person’s capacity is calculated from their working hours, minus task estimates, time off and holidays, and minus calendar events if they’ve connected a calendar.
Full detail: Overview of the Timeline page and How capacity is calculated.
4. Review reports
Open Reports in the sidebar, under Analyze. As a manager you can read workspace reports to see where time is going.
- Summary and Time logs are available on all paid plans.
- Workload and Utilization reports (Premium and above) show how your team’s time is being used.
- Profitability (Premium and above) shows revenue, cost, profit and margin across projects.
- Use filters, grouping and saved views to focus a report, and share it with your team. Publishing a link that anyone can open is limited to workspace admins on Premium and Enterprise.
Full detail: Overview of the Reports page.
5. Approve timesheets
If your admin has turned on Timesheet Approvals (Premium and above), you’ll see Approvals in the sidebar, under Manage.
- Team members submit a timesheet period for approval. Each setup runs weekly or monthly, and the approvals list labels every row Weekly or Monthly.
- As an approver, you review the submitted time, approve it, or request changes.
- Once approved, the period locks and the team member can’t edit it themselves.
Full detail: Overview of the Approvals page and Setting up timesheet approvals.
6. Manage time off
If your organization has Time Off Pro, you can approve time off requests from the Time off page, under Manage.
- Team members request time off; you approve or decline.
- Approved time off appears on the Timeline as a hashed band on the person’s lane, and feeds into capacity.
Full detail: Overview of the Time Off page and Approving time off requests.
Checklist
- [ ] Track at least one time entry from the Timer page.
- [ ] Create or assign a task with dates and an estimate.
- [ ] Open the Timeline and check your team’s capacity.
- [ ] Run a Summary or Time logs report for the current week.
- [ ] (If approvals are on) review a submitted timesheet.
- [ ] (If Time Off Pro is on) approve or decline a time-off request.
Next step: Overview of the Timeline page — capacity planning is where a manager’s day-to-day lives.