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Activities module · User guide

Projects, tasks and time tracking in one place

The Activities module maps the daily work: projects with a budget, tasks with a state and a priority, and personal time tracking against tickets, tasks or projects.

The point sits at the end of the chain: captured time can be passed on as an invoice without being copied out anywhere. What somebody worked on is captured in the same place where it came about.

Three areas projects, tasks and time
Four reports overview, week, month, year
Own categories freely named, with a colour
Approval weeks can be signed off

Projects

Under Projects in the navigation. Every project has a customer, a budget, a team and a state — active, paused or completed.

TeamWhoever is assigned sees the project afterwards under their own «Mine» filter.
Lines and expensesLinked articles, kept apart as services and outlays.
FilesQuotes, plans or minutes sit directly on the project.
ActivitiesAll tasks belonging to the project at a glance.

Keeping lines and expenses apart is not a formality: services are what you sell, outlays what you pass on. On an invoice they appear separately, and in an analysis they should not be mixed.

Tasks

Under Tasks there is a dense overview with state, priority, due date and the person responsible. Three states: open, in progress, done.

A task can be assigned to a project and to a freely named category with its own colour. Comments and a history record the progress directly on the task — not in an email nobody can find again.

Timeline

Each project has a Timeline: every task a bar, every milestone a diamond. Bars can be moved and stretched at either end, milestones as well — whatever you drag is in the task straight away.

MilestonesFixed points in the plan, with their own status and date. They can depend on each other too.
DependenciesDrag the dot at the edge of a bar onto another one and you get an arrow. Circular links are refused.
WorkloadBelow the plan, each person's share of already planned working time — by week or by day.
PrintingThe printer icon opens a preview that lays the plan out across sheets.

The workload counts a person's own working days, not five days for everyone. Someone who works Mondays and Tuesdays is fully booked at sixteen hours a week, not at forty per cent. Appointments from the Calendar module count as well, if it is installed: not all time goes into projects.

What goes on the sheet

Before printing you pick the section — a date range, everything from a milestone onwards, or a range of the name column. Plus the scale (days, weeks, months), the paper (A4 or A3, portrait or landscape) and what the bars are coloured by: status, assignee, category or label.

For a black and white printer there are patterns instead of fills. Five of them can be told apart; with more colours, read the name column instead.

Capturing time

You capture time against a ticket, a task or a project: with a start and end time, as a plain number of hours, or with a running timer directly on the ticket.

Timer on the ticketTrack time in the ticket sidebar starts it; stopping turns it into an entry.
Internal hoursA simple daily field for non-billable work, with no reference to a single ticket.
AttendanceFor staff who record their presence instead of booking against individual tickets.
RoundingThe administration can have the duration rounded automatically to a multiple of, say, 5 or 15 minutes.

The timer on the ticket is the path used in everyday work. Everything else is added later, and what is added later is estimated.

Files and attachments

Files live on the project under Files and on every single task. Both places show the same thing: a bar at the top with the list or tiles switch, and next to it the area to drop files into.

In the tile view every file gets a preview — photos and images, and for a PDF the first page. Anything that cannot be pictured shows its abbreviation instead: STL says more than a sheet of paper that looks the same for every type.

The choice between list and tiles is yours, not everyone's: it stays in your browser and applies on the project as well as on the task.

Overview and reports

The personal weekly overview shows the time captured per day, alongside the target working time and the running balance of over- or under-time.

Week, month and year reports summarise the same data in printable form — for HR, for the customer, or for a period close.

What a report shows

Above the table sits a summary: over-/undertime, working time, working days, absence days per type and public holidays. On the week and month sheets the year-to-date balance appears beneath the period balance — "how did this week go" is rarely the last question.

With the HR module installed, holiday balance and weekly hours join them. Without it those tiles are missing and nothing else is.

Every figure carries its unit: in the table in the column header, on the tiles next to the value. 08:12 is eight hours and twelve minutes, not 8.12 hours.

Each report fits on one A4 page, signature lines included — the month with its thirty-one rows as well.

Setting up the letterhead

Under Manage → Activities → Reports you set the logo, company name, address and accent colour. With a logo in place it takes over from the company name, and the name moves above the address.

Without any entries the report falls back to the company name FreeScout already knows. Nothing needs to be configured for a usable sheet.

Time approval

If the feature is switched on, you submit a week for approval with one click. After that the entries of that week are locked until a superior approves or rejects them.

The lock is the point: a submitted week that can still be changed is not a submitted week.

Linking products

Articles from the Bexio module can be attached to tickets, tasks and projects as service lines. They later appear directly as lines when invoicing under Finance — you do not have to collect them a second time there.

Worth knowing

Billed time is fixed

A time entry that is already part of an invoice cannot be changed any more. To correct it, it has to be removed from the invoice first. That is deliberate: a number on an invoice that has gone out must not move retroactively.

One project, one customer assignment

All tasks of a project take on its customer. If the project's customer changes, that does not apply retroactively to time already captured — that stays with the customer of the day, which is right for analysis.

Not getting anywhere with this? Support

Good to know

Frequent questions

Everything you should know about our modules, licences, updates and support before you buy.

Why does my purchased FreeScout module show an expiry date?

With your purchase you get the module plus twelve months of support, security updates and new features. The expiry date shown refers to those included services — not to your right to use the module at all.

What happens when my licence expires?

The module you have installed keeps working. Once the licence has expired, though, no new security or feature updates arrive and the included support can no longer be used.

You decide for yourself whether to renew the licence or to keep using the installed module without further updates, at your own responsibility.

Others promise lifetime updates. Why don’t you?

Technologies, security requirements and dependencies keep changing. What works reliably today can be outdated or unsupported tomorrow. Good software therefore needs continuous care, testing and development.

Rather than tie you to a permanent subscription, we leave you the choice: renew your licence, or keep using the installed module without further updates, at your own responsibility.

Do I need your LaStore module?

No, but the LaStore module connects your FreeScout instance with the modules you bought, and it brings several advantages:

  • installation with one click
  • automatic detection of available updates
  • easy updating right inside FreeScout
  • verification of the package signature
  • protection against module packages altered or tampered with unnoticed

Our modules do not use the normal update process, because it is not secure. The LaStore module verifies each of our modules before updating. An attacker therefore cannot deliver forged, dangerous updates. Without this module the verification is up to you, and it is a manual process.

without LaStorewith LaStore, autopilot offwith LaStore, autopilot on
learns about new versionsnoyes, dailyyes, daily
installsby hand from the portalat the press of a buttonovernight, without you
verifiedby you, via shasum -a 256yesyes
Do I really get the complete source code?

Yes. Our modules are provided under the AGPL-3.0 licence. The module as delivered contains the complete source code, which you can inspect and adapt within the terms of that licence.

On how many FreeScout instances may I use the module?

One licence covers one active FreeScout instance. Two free server moves are included on top of that.

If an old server is no longer in use, the system releases its activation automatically after 90 days. An instance that is unreachable or already deleted is therefore not counted against your licence for good.

Can I return a module I bought?

You have a 14-day right of return. It ends as soon as you activate the module — not already when the licence key is delivered to you.

So activate the module only once you have finally decided to use it. For consumers in the EEA, the statutory provisions on the right of withdrawal for digital content apply in addition.

Who issues my invoice?

Payment is handled by Paddle. Paddle acts as Merchant of Record and therefore as the seller. That is why Paddle appears as the issuer of the invoice, and possibly also as the payee on your card or bank statement.

Does a module need other FreeScout modules?

That depends on the product. Some modules work entirely on their own and offer additional features when other modules are present. Others have hard dependencies.

The slot finder, for example, strictly needs the Calendar module, because the available appointments are worked out from the calendars kept there.

Required and optional dependencies are stated on each product page.

What can I do if something doesn’t work?

We test our modules carefully. Even so, a feature may not behave as expected in a particular environment.

Every module comes with a detailed guide. If that does not get you any further, you can open a support ticket. Describe the problem briefly and the steps you have already taken — we are glad to help.

Pay securely, worldwideYour payment is handled securely by Paddle. You can pay from anywhere in the world, comfortably in your own currency — proper invoicing included.
Open, auditable, adaptableThanks to AGPL-3.0 you get the complete source code. You can audit the software, adapt it yourself and keep running it independently.
Two server moves includedYour FreeScout instance is moving? You can transfer your licence to a new server up to twice, free of charge, and keep using the module there.
Install once, stay current by itselfWith our LaStore module for FreeScout you install what you bought with a single click. Available updates are checked and installed automatically.

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