Getting started - how to set up Timetastic

Welcome to Timetastic, let's do this!

This quick start guide walks you through the initial setup. By the end you'll have a good understanding of the ins and outs and be ready to start tracking time off.

• By the end of step 3: you'll have your team added ✅
• By the end of step 7: you'll have gone through all the settings and be ready to book some time off 🏖

1. Add users
2. Set their work schedule
3. Public holidays
4. Create your departments
5. Customise leave types
6. Privacy and access
7. Reporting

1. Add Users

The first step is getting your team onto Timetastic, you can add them one by one or in bulk. 

One by one

This is your regular, day-to-day way to add people to Timetastic.

Select 'Users' from the top menu, and you'll see the '+ Add someone'.

Bulk upload

If you've got a dozen or more on your team, you'll find it quicker import them from Excel. We cover this in more detail here: Bulk upload users

2. Setting work schedules

Next we need to set their working hours. It's important we set each user's work hours correctly - so that deductions from their annual allowance will be accurate.

The standard plan gives you a basic fixed weekly working schedule.

Select USERS > [Click users name] > Schedule.

• Check the boxes for morning / afternoon shifts
• Edit the start and end times

If your employees have more complex schedules, perhaps two weekly patterns, regularly changing days off, flexible working. You’ll need the Pro plan with advanced scheduling.

3. Public holidays

Does your team get Public holidays off work? If they do then we can drop all those days straight into their calendar.

In a user's profile, we need to select the 'Allowance' tab, then check the 'Public holidays' box, and select the relevant country and region.

Or you can use the Multi select/ bulk update if you need to alter the public holiday settings for a group of users.

We've also got a more detailed guide to Public holidays in Timetastic.

4. Create your departments

You'll want to create departments that align with your company structure. And give each department a manager to approve all the bookings.

We do all this in SETTINGS > Departments.

Once you're in Departments you'll see it's self explanatory; add new departments or click on existing ones to edit the manager and set a maximum absent to make sure you don't have too many people off at the same time.

Struggling in the Departments screen? We have a dedicated article with screenshots: Managing departments

5. Customise leave types

Next we're going to head over to SETTINGS > Leave types.

Timetastic is already setup with the common types of time off (holidays, sick leave, maternity and so on), but you can create as many custom types as you need, there's no limit.

Click '+ Add a new leave type'.

Enter the leave type name and select from the drop down whether it should show as busy or available in your calendar integrations. 

There's also options for whether the leave should deduct from an employee's annual allowance, need approval or should be included in a department's maximum absent. 

You can customise the icon and colour shown for the leave type, making it easier to understand your Wallchart and Calendar at a glance.

6. Privacy and access

This step is all about understanding who can see what. As the administrator and account owner, you get to see everything, but the rest of your team will have more restricted views and information.

Here's a summary of the different permissions:

Admin Users

• Setup the account
• Adding and amending billing details
• Seeing all employee's annual leave
• Booking and cancelling annual leave for all employees (including historic leave)
• Approve leave requests for anyone
• Set / edit annual entitlement

Account Owners

Admin users can also be given account ownership status. Account owners are the main contacts for billing and general account communications. For security, they're also the only ones who can cancel the company account.

Companies on the standard plan have one account owner and Pro accounts can have up to three.

Department managers / approvers

Department managers and approvers don't get to see the company 'Settings' options, but they do get to see how many days their employees have left and can view their Calendar and summary information.

Department managers can also see 'Users' from the main menu but their access is restricted to only those in their department. This means they can add new employees to their department as well as edit and manage information within their employee's profile.

Directors

Directors have a read-only permission to view all of the departments and bookings on the Wallchart as well as being able to view all user's Calendars. They can see all employee's remaining annual leave and Directors on the Pro plan will also have access to the 'Insights' page.

Users

• They will not see the 'Settings' or 'Users' menu items
• Can't change their annual leave entitlement
• Can't cancel any bookings that are in the past - they can cancel their future bookings
• Can't see other employees annual allowances or summarised calendar information
• Can't edit their working schedule, job title or payroll ID.

Privacy Modes

You've also got some privacy options if you want to lock things down further.

7. Reporting

Reports can be found at SETTINGS > Reporting & back up.

You can download data to Excel anytime you need, and from there you can filter, sort, pivot, and lookup as much as you want.

You can download a specific year, take a full backup of all your data, or grab an audit trail.

You'll also spot a table of recent bookings, you can download that data too. The choice is yours. 

But wait ... there’s more!

Once you’ve sailed through these steps you'll have all the basics setup and ready to make some bookings.

But seeing as you're down here, if you have a few more minutes spare:

• Input past holidays and time off
• Set your annual carry forward
• Integrate with Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Google Workspace