NateoTime

Roles in NateoTime

There are two roles in NateoTime:

Team members (Users): These are the people who record their work times. Everyone who needs to track time in NateoTime must be set up as a User.

Admins: These are the people who manage NateoTime. You can think of them as supervisors:

  • They add or deactivate team members.
  • They create new activities (cost centers, projects) and assign them to users who should be able to book time against them.
  • They approve vacation requests, late entries, and corrections in NateoTime.
  • They configure NateoTime (e.g. holidays and the NateoTime team account).

Important: Admins are usually also Users, so they can record their own time. While it’s possible to be an Admin only, that’s rare. Most Admins have both roles.

Because of that, Admins don’t need to submit vacation requests—after all, they could just approve their own. Instead, they simply enter their vacation directly. If you don’t want that, you’ll need to separate the roles by creating one account as User and one as Admin.

 

 
 

Activities

Activities are everything you want to book time against.

You define all activities (except for “Work”) yourself.

Examples:

  • Projects or customer jobs
  • Cost centers
  • Special tasks like inventory, travel time, writing invoices, etc.

Activities are easy to set up: they just need a name, an optional cost center number, and a sort order.

The activity “Work” is always available by default. You don’t need to create it, and you can’t disable it.

Note: It’s completely normal (and correct) to book time against several activities at once.
Example: A colleague is taking part in an inventory count and has to drive to another location. She would record time against “Work” and “Inventory” at the same time. As soon as she gets in the car, she also activates the “Travel” activity (and deactivates it when she arrives).

 

 
 

Contracts

Who in your team can book time against which activity?

As an Admin, you decide which users can book time to which activities—and during what time frame.

A new activity is not automatically available to everyone. For example, you wouldn’t want a production worker to book time against “Field Service.”

Also, some activities are only valid during a certain period (e.g. “Inventory” only from December 10 to December 31). Outside that period, no one should be able to book time against it.

That’s where Contracts come in:

Suppose you want to track time for job 5219 – Toolmaking for Fox Inc.. Here’s what you’d do:

  1. Create the activity “Toolmaking for Fox Inc.” in NateoTime and give it the number 5219.
  2. For each team member who should work on it, create a Contract: select the activity and set the start and end date for the period this user is allowed to book time to it.

or each user with a Contract, the activity 5219 “Toolmaking for Fox Inc.” will automatically show up in their time tracking window during the defined period. Everyone else won’t see it at all.

When the time period ends, the activity disappears from the time tracking window and users can no longer book time to it.

Important: The most crucial Contracts are those for the activity “Work”, because they contain the extra information needed to calculate overtime:

  • Target working hours per weekday (important for part-time profiles)
  • Legally required breaks that apply to this user
  • Number of annual vacation days
  • The holiday scheme that applies to this user

 

 
 

Changing Contracts

A Contract’s properties apply to its entire duration. If you change a Contract, it changes from the start date forward.
That’s why you should normally not edit a Contract directly. Instead, end it and create a new one with the updated properties.

Example: Bob’s annual vacation entitlement increases from 25 to 27 days starting January 1, 2026.

Instead of editing his existing “Work” Contract, you:

  • Set the end date of his current Contract to December 31, 2025.
  • Create a new Contract for “Work” starting January 1, 2026.
  • In this new Contract, you enter 27 vacation days.

The same applies if Bob later reduces his weekly working hours (e.g. Fridays only half a day).

If you simply edited the existing Contract, NateoTime would assume the reduced working hours for the entire past period as well—resulting in a lot of false overtime calculations.

 

 

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