Getting Started
Welcome to Tempo, your workstream time tracker. Let’s get started by walking through some of the basic steps necessary to get moving with Tempo.
When you log in to the web application for the first time, you are greeted with the following window:
While we’re on this first page, let’s start a timer to record how much time we spend learning how to use the Tempo web application. We simply use the text entry field to tell Tempo what we are doing:
After hitting Log Time, we can see a smart timer appear in the time log:
The smart timer will keep track of how much time we spend on this task, so we can continue getting acquainted with Tempo without having to worry about counting the minutes. Continue!
Logging Time
Now that you know how to create and manage your projects, let’s take a closer look at how you keep track of your time.
Begin by clicking on the Time & Reports tab in your Tempo account. To create a time slip, click on the Add Entry sub tab and you will see the following form:
Use the buttons in the upper right corner to switch between the quick text entry window, and the more traditional form. Let’s start by creating another time slip. Simply tell Tempo what you are currently working on, using the pound symbol # to identify the project and the @ symbol to identify the appropriate tags. When you are finished, click the Log Time button.
This will start a new smart timer for the project New Project with the tags tempo and testing; you will see our description appear as the note creating new time entries. Notice that Tempo automatically stops the timer that was previously running, and records it as a time slip in the time log.
In order to keep your tags and projects consistent, the text entry field has type-ahead suggestion:
If you do not specify a project, Tempo will assume that the time slip is associated with the same project as your previous time slip. For more information on text-based entry, see our help section.
From the time log, we can easily start and stop the timers for our different time slips. For example, if you are done making new time entries and you want to continue learning about tempo, click the clock icon next to the appropriate time slip.
You will see in the time log that Tempo has stopped the timer for ‘creating time entries’ and restarted the timer for ‘learning how to use tempo’.
It is time to learn how to organize all these time slips into a report. Onward!
Starting a Project
Tempo assigns everyone an initial project called Personal. However, for those with an account level of Andante or above, you can add more projects to your account. Let’s do that.
Begin by going to the Project Dashboard tab. This is where you can view all of your current projects, as well as some helpful aggregate information about them. We currently only have one project:
In the upper left corner of the display, click on Add Project and you will see the following:
Enter a project name, and an estimation of how many hours you want to devote to this project. After clicking Create Project, your project will appear among the others in the Project Dashboard display:
One the right, you will see two icons located in the heading of the project. The edit button 
allows you to change the name of the project as well as your time estimation. Using the Active checkbox, you can deactivate a project and prevent anyone from logging any further time slips to that project:
Clicking the add button 
allows you to invite other collaborators to your project.
As you add collaborators, you will see their names appear underneath the heading of the project. The dashboard view allows you to quickly
Moreover, by clicking the edit button to the right of a collaborator, you can change that person’s status with regards to the project. For example, you can make them a project manager, or decide to deactivate them:
Let’s learn more about how to log time.
Creating a Report
We can now explore what really separates Tempo from competing time-tracker applications. Tempo’s tag-based organizational scheme makes it easy to quickly organize your time slips into a report.
After you log into your account, click on the Time & Reports tab and you will see a report of all the time that you have logged in the past seven days. This is the default setting:
However, the sidebar to the right of the report allows you to change the contents of the report quickly and easily.
Tempo offers some standard date ranges available in the first drop down menu; however, the ‘more’ link will reveal Tempo’s date range selectors. You may use these date selectors (or the calendar view 
) to select the range that you desire.
Under the Projects heading, simply click and highlight those projects that you want to show up in the report:
As above you should also highlight the tags and collaborators that you want in the report. As you make these changes, Tempo’s time log will update automatically, leaving you with the report that you customized.
Let’s go through one example. Suppose you want to know how many hours Keith Kogane and Lance McClain spent doing database development in June for the projects [Big Box] Web Dev and [My Company] Internal. First adjust the date range by selecting the ‘month to date’ option from the drop down menu. Click the appropriate projects under the Projects heading. Likewise, highlight Keith and Lance in the People heading, and select the tags database and development. It will generate the following report:
Continue on to see Tempo’s many report options.
Charts, Invoices and More
After you organize a report in Tempo, you have many options regarding what you can do with the report. Let’s begin by discussing the four options in the upper right corner of the report window:
Clicking ‘clear report’ returns the window to its default status; in other words, it will show all your time slips from the previous seven days. The other options are very intuitive: ‘print report’ prints the current report, ‘lock entries’ will lock all the time slips in the time log, and ‘save report’ will save the report so you can return to it later.
What really separates Tempo from its comptetitors are the options provided by the tabs above the reports window. If you open the Downloads tab you can obtain hard copies of the report in both .PDF and .CSV format:
The Saved Reports tab is where you will find exactly that, your saved reports.
The Charts tab provides you with many different ways of viewing the report data. Choose from any of the options in the display, and the chart will appear:
For a further exposition on what each individual chart does, see our help section.
You can use your reports to easily create a Blinksale or Quickbooks invoice. Simply organize a report to contain the time slips you want to invoice, and then open the Invoice tab:
Use the buttons in the top right corner to choose between Blinksale and Quickbooks. After entering the necessary information, just click Create Invoice. Of course you need to have Quickbooks or Blinksale in order for this to work. You will also need to set up your Tempo account to work with these programs. For more information on how to do this, see our help section: Quickbooks or Blinksale.