You've just created your account and the trial is already running, with every feature unlocked and no credit card. The date it ends is visible in the side menu. This guide shows the shortest path to your first tracked hour — it takes a few minutes.
Your first workspace was created along with the account, using the name you gave at sign-up. It's where customers, projects, hours and team will live.
Step 1: Check time zone, week and currency
Go to Workspace and check three fields before anything else:
Time zone — it decides what day an hour tracked at 11 pm belongs to. With the wrong zone, evening work lands on the next day.
The week starts on — sets the boundaries of the timesheet and of the weekly charts.
Currency — set it now. As soon as the first rate or the first hour with an amount exists, the currency locks and can no longer be changed: 150 in one currency and 150 in another are the same stored number with different meanings, and switching wouldn't convert anything.
Step 2: Create a customer and a project
Under Customers, click New customer. Only the name is required — document, phone, email and colour can wait. Create Soap Factory, which will follow us to the end of this guide.
Then, under Projects › New project, create Rebranding and pick Soap Factory as the customer. Two fields deserve attention right away:
Billing model and Contract amount — Fixed fee, Hourly or Retainer. It's what the Profitability screen later compares against the time spent. Without it, there's nothing to compare to.
Budgeted hours — the project's hour budget, and the basis for the overrun alerts.
A project with no customer is fine too: it's flagged as an internal project, and that's where team meetings and new business go.
Step 3: Start the timer
The timer sits in the header and follows you on every screen. Pick the project and click Start — or use Alt+S, which starts and stops without leaving the keyboard. It comes pre-filled with the last project you used, so the everyday gesture is a single click.
If the hour has already passed and you forgot to start it, go to My time › Today and enter it manually. The duration field accepts 1:30, 1h30, 90m or 1.5 — write it however it comes to mind.
Step 4: Say what an hour is worth
Without an amount, the product counts time but doesn't tell the story. Start with the simplest: under Workspace, set the Default rate — the value that applies to every hour without a more specific rate.
Then, when it makes sense, you refine: each customer, each project and each person can have their own hourly rate, in the rate column of the respective screens. If Soap Factory pays more than your house rate, that's where you say so.
Remember that the amount is frozen the moment the hour is recorded. That's why it's worth setting the rate before the team starts tracking — hours entered before the rate exists are born with no amount.
Step 5: Invite the team
Under Team › Invite person, fill in name, email and role. The name is required: it's how you recognise who's in the pending invitations queue, and it pre-fills the sign-up for whoever accepts.
Choose the role carefully — Member tracks hours and creates tasks, Admin manages customers, projects and team. A pending invitation doesn't take a seat: billing only starts when the person accepts.
Step 6: Read the result
With a few hours tracked, Reports shows where the time went — by customer, project, person or tag — and lets you export to CSV, Excel or PDF. And Profitability compares what was agreed against the time it cost, project by project.
Where to go next
How WiseData Time works — the logic behind the screens.
Tracking hours — timer, manual entry and timesheet.
Hourly rate — the order in which the system looks for the rate.
Your team — roles, invitations and seats.
Plans and billing — what changes when the trial ends.
In short: check time zone, week and currency in Workspace; create a customer and a project with billing model and budgeted hours; start the timer; set the default rate; invite the team. Once that's done, Reports and Profitability already have something to show.