Horaflow 101: Set Up Your First Workflow in 10 Minutes

What Is a "Workflow" in Horaflow?

Before jumping into setup, it helps to understand what Horaflow actually tracks.

A workflow in Horaflow is not a Notion board or a project template. It is the combination of:

• Who is on your team
• What hours they work (including night and graveyard shifts)
• What projects they are assigned to
• How Horaflow should capture their activity (screenshots, productivity score, idle alerts)

Once that is in place, everything else runs automatically. The desktop agent tracks time, screenshots fire on a random interval, productivity scores are calculated at the end of each shift, and managers get a daily email digest by 9 AM.

You set it up once. Then it just works.

Step-by-Step: Your First Horaflow Setup

Step 1 — Create Your Account (1 minute)

Go to app.horaflow.com and sign up. You will need a work email and your company name. No credit card required to get started.

Once you are in, you land on the main dashboard. It will be empty right now. That is fine. You are about to fill it.

Step 2 — Add Your Team Members (2 minutes)

Head to the Team section. Click "Add Member" and enter each person's name and email.

Horaflow will send them an invite link. When they accept and install the desktop agent, they appear on your dashboard automatically.

A few things worth knowing here:

• You can add team members in bulk if you have a CSV list
• Each member is assigned a role: Employee or Manager
• Managers can see the full team dashboard; employees only see their own data

Step 3 — Set Up Shifts (2 minutes)

This step is what separates Horaflow from every other time tracker.

Go to Shifts and create your shift schedule. For each shift, you set:

• The shift name (e.g. "Morning," "Night," "Graveyard")
• Start time and end time
• Which days of the week it applies
• Which team members are assigned to it

If your team works a standard 9-to-5, this takes 30 seconds. If you have people working past midnight, this step is the most important thing you will do. Horaflow will keep every hour attributed to the correct shift day instead of splitting it across two.

Step 4 — Create Your First Project (2 minutes)

Go to Projects and click "New Project." Give it a name — a client name, a department, or an internal initiative. You can be as broad or specific as you like.

Once the project exists, assign team members to it and add tasks under it if you want granular time tracking at the task level.

From this point forward, team members can log time directly to this project from their desktop agent. Every hour is attributed to the right project automatically.

Step 5 — Install the Desktop Agent (3 minutes)

Send your team the download link from within the Horaflow dashboard. The agent is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux — all three have signed installers, so no security warnings or IT workarounds.

Installation takes about two minutes. Once the agent is running, it:

• Tracks active time in the background
• Captures screenshots at random intervals (no fixed pattern, so it cannot be gamed)
• Flags idle time automatically
• Sends data to the dashboard in real time

Your team does not need to do anything else. No timers to start. No manual entries to make. The agent handles everything.

Step 6 — Check Your Live Dashboard

Refresh your main dashboard. If at least one team member has installed the agent and clocked in, you will see them appear on the team timeline.

Green bars mean active. Yellow means idle. Blue means in a meeting.

That is your first workflow running. Start to finish, you just did it in under 10 minutes.

H2: Getting Your Team Comfortable With It

The biggest friction in any time tracking rollout is not the software. It is the conversation with your team about why you are using it.

Here is a framing that works well:

"We are not doing this to watch you. We are doing this so we can see where time actually goes, run better project reports, and pay people accurately for their shifts — including nights."

A few things that help:

Tell them screenshots are random and not live. Horaflow does not give managers a live feed. Screenshots are captured at irregular intervals and reviewed after the fact. There is no Big Brother dashboard.

Show them their own productivity score first. When employees can see their own data, the tool feels like a personal insight rather than surveillance. Let them look at their own timeline before you review it as a manager.

Explain idle detection. If someone goes idle through too many screenshot cycles, a manager gets an email alert. This is useful for catching connectivity issues or accidental log-ins, not for penalizing bathroom breaks.

What You Get After the First Week

After your first week of Horaflow running, you will have:

A full activity heatmap showing when each person and team does their best work. You can use this to schedule the right tasks at the right times instead of guessing.

Project-level time reports that show exactly how many hours went into each client or initiative. If you bill by the hour, this replaces a lot of manual tracking.

Attendance records that do not require a separate HR tool. Who was on time, who was late, who was on approved leave.

A daily email digest every morning summarizing what the team did the day before. It lands in your inbox before your first meeting so you walk in with context.

All of this happens without anyone on your team doing extra work. They installed the agent. Everything else runs in the background.

Common Setup Mistakes to Avoid

Skipping shift setup if you have night workers. If anyone on your team clocks in after 10 PM, set up shifts properly before anything else. Without it, hours will land on the wrong day and your weekly reports will not add up.

Adding everyone but assigning no projects. Time tracking without project context tells you how long people worked but not what they worked on. Even a single project like "Operations" or "Support" is enough to start.

Not sending the installation link before the kickoff call. Ask team members to install the desktop agent before your onboarding call. That way you can see live data during the call itself, which makes the whole thing more real.

Expecting teams to change behavior. Horaflow works in the background. Your team does not need to change how they work. The only habit they need to build is clocking in at the start of a shift — and even that takes about four seconds.