Set up weekly effort reporting

When you've finished this checklist, Flowstate estimates what everyone worked on each day from your project tool, and each team's manager checks and submits the week. Capitalisation, R&D tax claims and the Spend timeline all use submitted weeks. See How the effort estimate is built.

An engineering or delivery lead owns this checklist, with your project tool admin, a Flowstate admin, your HR or people data owner, and your Finance lead.

Before you start

• Set up sign-in and invite your team: team managers need Flowstate accounts.
• Load your people and teams
• Set up your projects
• Connect your project tool
• Optional: Set up your organisation basics. Exchange rates and resource types decide what each person's effort costs.

1. Check Effort reporting is switched on

What: Make sure Effort reporting is switched on for your organisation. Who: Implementation lead, with your Flowstate contact. Where: No setting. Ask your Flowstate contact if it's off. Done when: Delivery → Effort reporting opens on its My teams tab rather than a holding screen.

New organisations have it switched on.

2. Get your project tool syncing

What: Connect Jira, Linear or Azure DevOps and run the first sync. Nothing appears until work has synced. Who: Project tool admin, with a Flowstate admin. Where: Connect your project tool, steps 1, 2 and 5. Done when: Settings → Integrations → Sync Health shows your tool as Healthy.

3. Match people to your tool's users

What: Match every person in your tool to a Flowstate employee or contractor. Who: Flowstate admin. Where: Settings → Integrations → User attribution. See Match people. Done when: The Unattributed group is empty, or only holds accounts you don't want counted.

Work by someone who isn't matched doesn't count as effort.

4. Decide which work counts

What: Tell Flowstate which statuses mean work is in progress, which ticket types count, and whether only the lowest-level tickets count. Who: Engineering or delivery lead. Where: Your tool's settings → Data Mapping: Delivery status mapping, then Effort Tracking Configuration. Done when: Someone you know is working on an in-progress ticket shows effort on the right project this week.

• A ticket only counts once it moves into an In Progress status. In Azure DevOps, work left at New never counts.
• Task Types to Include adds ticket types to the ones that always count.
• Only Count Leaf Items is on unless you change it, so a parent ticket and its children aren't counted twice.

See What makes work count as effort.

5. Link your tool's projects to Flowstate projects

What: Connect each project in your tool to the Flowstate project its effort should land on. Who: Engineering or delivery lead. Where: Delivery → Roadmap, on the tab named after your tool. See Link synced projects to Flowstate projects. Done when: Filtering Link Status by Unlinked shows no project you care about.

Work on a ticket whose project isn't linked lands in Unattributed, and a team's week can't be approved while it has unattributed effort. Link projects before the first review.

6. Give every team a manager and its members

What: Make sure each team has a manager with a Flowstate account, and each person is allocated to their team. The manager submits the team's week, and team allocations decide who's in it. Who: HR or people data owner, with engineering managers. Where: Resourcing → People and teams → Teams for managers, and a person's side panel → Schedule → Allocations for members. See Teams. Done when: No team in Delivery → Effort reporting → All teams says "No manager assigned", and nobody you expect in a team shows under No team.

7. Give everyone a salary or rate

What: Every employee needs a salary and every contractor a rate. Who: HR or people data owner. Where: Load your people and teams, steps 3 and 4. Done when: Everyone working on projects has a salary or rate on Resourcing → People and teams.

Without one, a person's effort still shows as a share of their day, but has no cost. CapEx and R&D figures come out too low until you add it.

8. Turn on the weekly review

What: Choose how often teams review their effort, and the rules for submitting it. Who: Finance lead, with an engineering lead. Where: Settings → Delivery → Effort Tracking Review. See Effort reporting settings. Done when: Review Cadence shows Weekly or Fortnightly as Active.

Review Cadence starts as Off. While it's off, nobody is asked to submit: no reminders, Inbox tasks or Slack drafts. So nothing gets submitted, and every view that counts submitted effort stays empty.

Setting	What it does	Starts as
Review Cadence	Off, Weekly or Fortnightly.	Off
Reporting Dimension	Show the week as one row per project, or grouped under initiatives. Changing it doesn't alter submitted weeks.	Projects
Submission Lock Period	Weeks older than this can't be submitted or edited.	1 month
Undo Windows	How long a manager can withdraw a submitted week, and how long an approver can undo an approval.	24 hours each
AI Effort Analysis	Reviews each person's tickets once a day and suggests corrections to work logged against the wrong project.	Off
Leave attribution	See step 11.	Off

9. Decide who approves effort

What: Stage 1 is always each team's manager. Add more stages only if someone else, such as finance, must approve after them. Who: Finance lead, then a Flowstate admin saves it. Where: Settings → Scenarios → Review Workflow, card Approval Stages. Done when: Your stages and their approvers are still listed after you reload the page.

1. Select Add Stage and name the stage.
2. Add its Approvers.
3. Select Save Workflow.

Of the built-in roles, Team Member can submit effort and Line Manager can approve it. If you use your own roles, check they let people open effort reporting, submit and approve. See Roles and permissions.

10. Optional: blend GitHub into effort

What: Let commits and pull requests decide how a person's day splits across projects on the days they write code. Who: GitHub organisation owner, with a Flowstate admin. Where: Settings → Integrations → GitHub. See Connect GitHub. Done when: Map contributors says "Every active contributor is mapped", and Blend GitHub into effort is on under Effort blend.

• Blend GitHub into effort is on unless you turn it off. It only changes effort for contributors matched to a person.
• Commit-timestamp attribution is off unless you turn it on. It changes effort, and so your CapEx and R&D figures, so agree it with your Finance lead first.

11. Optional: record leave

What: Record people's leave, so a leave day shows as zero on every project, and decide whether leave is reported against the projects around it. Who: HR or people data owner, with your Finance lead for the reporting choice. Where: A person's side panel → Schedule → Leave → Add Leave. The reporting choice is at Settings → Delivery → Effort Tracking Review → Leave attribution. Done when: A test leave day shows in that person's week in Delivery → Effort reporting, with nothing against any project.

Carry leave forward to the last project worked on is off unless you turn it on. When it's on, a leave day is reported against the projects the person worked on just before, in the same proportions. Total cost doesn't change, but CapEx and R&D figures go up. The week itself still shows leave.

Not available yet: importing leave

You can only add leave in the app, one person at a time. The spreadsheet import, REST API, custom integrations and HR system syncs don't bring in leave or absence records.

12. Optional: send weekly drafts in Slack

What: Send each team's manager their week's draft in Slack, to submit or edit there. Who: Slack admin, with your Finance lead. Where: Settings → Integrations → Slack, under Notification Features, switch on Effort submission notifications. Done when: The switch is on.

Nothing is sent while Review Cadence is off.

You're set up when

• Sync Health shows your tool as Healthy, and User attribution has nobody under Unattributed that you want counted.
• Review Cadence is Weekly or Fortnightly.
• No team in Delivery → Effort reporting → All teams says "No manager assigned".
• At least one team manager has submitted a week in Delivery → Effort reporting → My teams, with no unattributed effort left in it.

Next: day-to-day guides

• Effort reporting: what's on each tab, and who uses it.
• How the effort estimate is built: where each number comes from, and which numbers finance uses.
• Review and submit a team's week
• Fix unattributed effort
• Approvals and locking
• Leave
• Reports
• Effort reporting settings