Admin quick start

This guide is for the account owner and company admins. Plan about half an hour for the first five steps.

1. Create the account and verify your e-mail

Sign up on the pricing page. A new organization starts with a 14-day trial with all Premium features and does not need a credit card. When the trial ends, an organization with at most 3 active users continues on the Free plan; larger teams choose Pro or Premium (plans and billing).

Sign-up takes two short steps:

1. The sign-up form (“Sign up to continue”) asks for your name, your e-mail address and a password, and for your acceptance of the terms. Where the page shows Google, Microsoft or Apple buttons below the form, you can sign up with one of those accounts instead.
2. On the next page (“Add your company”) enter your company’s name. The organization’s time zone is taken from your browser; you can change it later under Settings → Company (step 2 below).

Sign-up does not ask for a phone number. You can add a mobile number later on your Profile page, under your personal information. It is stored in international format and is not verified by SMS. Only you, the account owner and the company admins can see it (employee quick start).

You can use the dashboard right after signing up, but you must verify your e-mail address within 24 hours of creating the account: open the verification link we e-mail you.

• Until then, a banner in the dashboard shows the time left and has a button to resend the e-mail.
• After 24 hours, the dashboard stops with email_verification_required and shows only a page that asks you to verify, and the desktop app’s requests are refused too. Open the link, or resend it from that page; everything works again as soon as the address is verified (common error messages).
• If the address is still not verified 72 hours after sign-up, the account is deleted, together with the organization it created if nobody else has joined it. You can then sign up again with the same address.

People you invite verify their address by accepting the invitation link, so they do not need a separate verification.

2. Check the company settings

Open Settings → Company. Everything here is a company-wide default that teams and single people can override later (company settings).

• Default time zone: days are split at midnight in this time zone for everyone without a time zone of their own.
• Working hours: working days, start and end, minimum hours per day and late tolerance. Lateness, absence, overtime and Effectiveness % are calculated from them.
• Tracking hours: when the desktop app sends activity. Leave it off to track all day.
• Privacy: whether window titles are recorded, whether website addresses are recorded (they come from Chrome, Brave and Safari on macOS, and from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Chromium, Arc and Firefox on Windows; with the setting off, desktop app 2.0.7 and later do not read them at all), and how long titles are kept (privacy settings).

3. Create teams and invite people

1. Create teams under Settings → Teams (teams).
2. Invite people under Settings → Users → Invite user. Choose the role and the team for each person (users, roles and invitations).

Each invited person gets an e-mail with a link to set their password. The link is valid for 7 days.

4. Tell your team what is recorded

Before anyone installs the app, explain what Focus records, why, who can see it and how private time works. You can share What Focus records about me with your team.

5. Roll out the desktop app

Everyone who should be tracked installs the desktop app from Downloads in the dashboard and signs in with their own account (install the desktop app). The first activity appears in the dashboard a minute or two after the app starts sending.

6. Classify apps and websites

Every app and website starts as neutral. Open Settings → Productivity rules, check the Suggestions tab and mark the apps and websites your company uses as productive or unproductive (productivity rules). Rules apply to past days right away.

7. Use the reports

• The dashboard shows today’s attendance and productivity.
• The reports compare periods, people and teams.
• Exports and e-mail reports send the numbers to the people who need them.

With Premium you can also plan shifts and manage absences and leave balances.

Screenshots are also part of Premium and are off by default. Most teams do not need them. If yours does, publish the screenshots consent notice first, then turn them on only for the teams that need them; they are taken only for the people who give their consent (screenshots).

8. Track time on projects (optional)

If you bill clients or want to know what your work costs, create your projects and tasks under Projects (projects and tasks). Your team tracks project time with the timer in the dashboard or the desktop app, or assigns tracked time to projects afterwards (timer and timesheet). Add hourly rates to see project costs (rates and costs); projects, rates and costs are part of Pro. With Premium you can also create client invoices from that time (clients and invoices).