How to Manually Add Time on Hubstaff
Hubstaff is built around automatic time tracking — you start the timer, it runs, it stops. But real work doesn't always happen that way. Meetings get missed, the app crashes, someone forgets to start tracking, or offline work simply doesn't get logged. That's where manual time entry comes in.
Here's exactly how it works, what controls it, and why your experience may differ from someone else's.
What Manual Time Entry Actually Does in Hubstaff
When you add time manually in Hubstaff, you're inserting a time block into your timesheet that wasn't captured by the automatic tracker. This entry appears differently from tracked time — it's flagged as manual in reports and timesheets, so managers and clients can distinguish it from auto-tracked activity.
Importantly, manual entries do not generate activity data — no screenshots, no app usage, no keyboard or mouse activity percentages. You get the time block, but none of the behavioral data that comes with tracked time. That distinction matters for teams that rely on activity levels for performance reviews or client billing.
How to Add Time Manually as a Team Member 🕐
The process is straightforward from within the Hubstaff web app:
- Log in to your Hubstaff account at app.hubstaff.com
- Navigate to Timesheets in the left-hand sidebar
- Select the relevant date using the date picker
- Click Add Time (sometimes shown as a + button depending on your interface version)
- Choose the project and task (if applicable)
- Enter the start time, end time, or total duration
- Add a note or reason if your organization requires it
- Submit the entry
The entry will then appear in your timesheet marked with a manual indicator. Depending on your organization's settings, it may go through immediately or require manager approval before it's counted.
Manager Approval: On or Off Makes a Big Difference
Whether manual time entries require approval is a setting controlled by the organization owner or an admin — not the individual user. Some teams leave approval open so members can freely log missed time. Others require every manual entry to be reviewed before it's accepted into payroll or billing records.
If your entry is sitting in a pending state, that's the approval workflow doing its job. A manager or admin needs to review it from their dashboard before it becomes official.
This setting lives under Settings → Policies in the Hubstaff admin panel. Teams handling client billing or strict payroll compliance tend to keep approval on. Smaller teams with trusted members often turn it off to reduce friction.
Permission Levels Control Who Can Add Manual Time
Not every Hubstaff user can add manual time by default. Access depends on role permissions set at the organization level:
| Role | Typical Manual Time Access |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full access — can add for self and others |
| Admin | Can add for self and manage others' entries |
| Manager | Can add for self; may add for managed members |
| Member | Can add for self only (if enabled by admin) |
| Viewer | No time entry access |
If you don't see the Add Time option at all, the most likely cause is that manual time entry has been disabled for your role at the organization level. This requires an admin to change it — you can't unlock it yourself.
Adding Time on Behalf of Another User
Admins and managers with the right permissions can add manual time for other team members — useful when someone is offline, forgot to track, or doesn't have account access at the moment.
This is done from the Timesheets section by switching the user selector to the relevant team member before adding the entry. The process mirrors the standard flow, but the entry gets logged under that person's account and is visible in their reports.
Mobile App vs. Web App: A Practical Difference
Manual time entry is available on both the Hubstaff mobile app (iOS and Android) and the web app, but the web interface tends to offer more control — especially for editing existing entries or adding notes. The mobile version is functional for quick additions, but if you're doing any kind of detailed time correction or bulk editing, the browser-based dashboard is generally easier to navigate.
The desktop app (Windows/Mac) is primarily a tracker — manual entry there is limited compared to the web portal.
Variables That Affect Your Specific Situation
The same task — adding manual time — plays out very differently depending on a few key factors:
- Your role permissions: Members vs. admins have meaningfully different access
- Approval policy: Whether your org requires sign-off changes the flow entirely
- Plan tier: Some Hubstaff plans restrict certain policy controls or reporting features around manual entries
- Project/task structure: If your org uses required task fields, you can't submit without selecting one
- Integration setup: Teams integrated with payroll tools (Gusto, QuickBooks, etc.) may have stricter rules about what manual entries look like before export
How smoothly manual time entry works — and how much flexibility you have — depends heavily on how your specific Hubstaff organization has been configured. Two people on the same team can have very different experiences based on their assigned roles and the policies their admin has set.