How to Create a Timesheet from Your Calendar

If your day is mapped out in Outlook or Google Calendar, you've already done most of the work of a timesheet without realising it. Every meeting, call and booked block of focus time is a record of where your hours went. VibaCloud reads those events and builds your timesheet lines from them, so instead of starting from nothing you start from a draft that's mostly filled in. Here's how to make the most of it.

1. Connect Microsoft or Google

On the Import screen, connect the calendar you actually live in day to day. You can link both a Microsoft and a Google account to the same VibaCloud login, which is handy if your client work sits in one and your internal meetings in another. Access is read-only, so VibaCloud can see your events but can't change them.

2. Import a week of events

Pick the week you want and import it. VibaCloud pulls in your events and, in the same click, creates a draft timesheet line for each one. There's no copying titles across or re-typing start and end times. The week you've been living shows up ready to review.

3. Check the durations

Each line's length comes from the event's real start and end time, so a meeting that ran from 10:00 to 11:30 lands as a 1.5 hour line. All-day events are handled differently, because logging 24 hours for a "conference" entry would throw your week out. Instead they use a sensible default you control in Settings, set to eight hours to begin with. Glance down the durations and nudge anything that doesn't reflect the time you genuinely spent.

4. Tag each line to a project

Imported lines start untagged. On the Draft Timesheet grid, assign the right project to each one. VibaCloud then takes the organisation, the billable flag and the hourly rate from that project automatically, so a single choice sorts out the rest. Merge anything that should be one line, delete what isn't billable work you need to record, and add manual lines for any time that never made it into the calendar in the first place.

Getting cleaner imports

The tidier your calendar, the less tidying your timesheet needs. A few small habits make a real difference:

• Write descriptive event titles. "Acme onboarding call" is far easier to tag than "Call".
• Block out focus time in your calendar. If you put it in writing, it imports like any meeting, so deep work doesn't quietly vanish from your week.
• Import regularly. Doing it every Friday keeps each week small and the details fresh in your memory.
• Keep your project list current. Adding a project once means you can pick it in a second every week after.

What VibaCloud doesn't do

It's worth saying plainly: VibaCloud reads your calendar and nothing more. It doesn't edit your events, message your contacts, or share your data with anyone. Your timesheets and the events behind them are tied to your account and visible only to you.

New to all this? Start with Getting Started with VibaCloud, then come back here when you want to fine-tune your imports.