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Effort reporting settings
These settings decide how often teams submit, whether they're reminded, how long people have to undo, when old weeks lock and how leave is reported. Most are on one page: Settings → Delivery → Effort Tracking Review.
You need to be a Flowstate admin to change them.
Some settings change finance figures
Leave attribution changes CapEx and R&D figures. Agree changes with your Finance lead before a period closes.
Change a setting
- Go to Settings → Delivery → Effort Tracking Review.
- Find the section and change the option.
- Select the section's save button, for example Save Cadence. AI Effort Analysis and Leave attribution save as soon as you change them.
Review Cadence
How often teams are asked to review and submit. It also decides whether Flowstate reminds them.
| Option | Shown as | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Off (default) | Reminders disabled | No automatic effort reminders or notifications. |
| Weekly | Due every Friday | Teams submit every week. Each team manager gets a task for every week their team still owes. |
| Fortnightly | Due every other Friday | Teams submit every two weeks. |
How reminders reach people, in the app, by email, in the digest or in Slack, is set in Choose how people are notified.
Reporting Dimension
Whether the weekly report lists projects, or groups them under initiatives. The options use your organisation's names for projects and initiatives.
| Option | Effect |
|---|---|
| Projects (default) | One row per project a person worked on. |
| Initiatives | Projects grouped under their initiative, with subtotals. Projects with no initiative are grouped together. |
Effort is always recorded against projects, so this only changes how weeks look — including past weeks. Submitted figures don't change.
Submission Lock Period
Lock submissions older than sets how far back people can submit or edit effort: No lock, 2 weeks, 1 month (default), 2 months or 3 months. See The lock period.
Undo Windows
| Setting | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Submission withdrawal window | 24 hours | How long a submission can be withdrawn and returned to draft. |
| Approval undo window | 24 hours | How long an approver can undo their approval. |
Each can be Disabled (no undo), from 1 to 72 hours, 7 days, 1 month or No limit.
AI Effort Analysis
Use AI to analyse and improve daily reports is off by default. When it's on, after each daily estimate Flowstate reviews each person's tickets. It can move a share of a day onto the project the work belongs to, and suggest links for projects in your tool that aren't linked yet. See How your team's effort is estimated.
Leave attribution
| Setting | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Carry leave forward to the last project worked on | Off | Reports a day of leave against the projects the person worked on just before. CapEx and R&D figures go up; total cost doesn't change. |
| Look back at most | 30 days | How far back to look for the last working day, from 1 to 90. Shown once carry-forward is on. |
See Handle leave in effort reports.
Approval stages
Who approves a team's week is set in Settings → Scenarios → Review Workflow. See Set up approval stages.
Effort review emails are controlled under Settings → Organisation → Notifications, in the Effort reporting category. See Choose how people are notified.
Project tool settings that change effort
These are on your project tool's connection, in Settings → Integrations. They decide which ticket activity counts at all. See Connect your project tool.
| Setting | Effect on effort |
|---|---|
| Delivery status mapping | A ticket only counts once it moves into a status mapped to In Progress. In Azure DevOps, work left at New never counts. |
| Task Types to Include | Which ticket types count. |
| Only Count Leaf Items | On unless you change it. Only tickets with no child items count, so a parent ticket and its children aren't counted twice. |
| Auto-create Flowstate projects | Links each project in your tool to a Flowstate project as it arrives, so its work doesn't land in Unattributed. |
Matching people matters just as much: in Settings → Integrations → User attribution, every person needs matching to their account in your tool, or their work doesn't count.
GitHub settings that change effort
Blend GitHub into effort (on by default) and Commit-timestamp attribution (off by default) are on GitHub's Effort blend step. See Choose how GitHub shapes effort.
Slack
Effort submission notifications, in Slack's settings under Settings → Integrations, sends team managers their week in Slack to submit or edit. It needs Review Cadence to be on. See Submit from Slack.