HoraFlow 101: Set Up Your First Workflow in 10 Minutes
Get HoraFlow running in under 10 minutes. This step-by-step guide covers adding your team, configuring shifts, installing the desktop agent, and seeing your first live workflow. No IT department needed.
Most teams delay setting up time tracking for a predictable reason: they expect it to be a half-day project. Log in, configure settings, push the agent to 40 machines, run an onboarding call, have the conversation with your team about why this is not surveillance.
HoraFlow was built to skip all of that. If you have 10 minutes and a list of your team members, you will have your first workflow running before your next meeting starts.
This guide walks you through every step, from account creation to seeing live data on your team timeline. No IT department required.
What Is a Workflow in HoraFlow?
Before jumping in, it helps to understand what HoraFlow is actually tracking.
A workflow in HoraFlow is not a Kanban board or a project template. It is the combination of who is on your team, what hours they work, what projects they are assigned to, and how HoraFlow should capture their activity.
Once that is in place, everything runs automatically. The desktop agent tracks active time, screenshots fire at random intervals, productivity scores are calculated after each shift, and managers get a daily email digest every morning.
You set it up once. After that, it just runs.
Who Is This Guide For?
This guide is for managers, HR leads, and operations teams setting up HoraFlow for the first time. It works equally well whether you have 5 people or 500.
If your team runs non-standard shifts, works across time zones, or operates overnight, the shift configuration section is the most important part. Read that before anything else.
Step-by-Step: Setting Up Your First HoraFlow Workflow
Step 1: Create Your Account (1 minute)
Head to app.horaflow.com and sign up. You need a work email and your company name. No credit card required upfront.
After signing in, you land on the main dashboard. It is empty right now. That changes over the next few minutes.
Step 2: Add Your Team Members (2 minutes)
Go to the Team section and click "Add Member." Enter each person's name and email address.
HoraFlow sends them an invitation link. When they accept and install the desktop agent, they appear on your dashboard automatically.
A few things worth knowing:
- You can add team members in bulk by uploading a CSV if you have a larger team
- Each member gets a role: Employee or Manager
- Managers see the full team dashboard. Employees see only their own data.
Step 3: Configure Your Shifts (2 minutes)
This is the step that separates HoraFlow from every other time tracker on the market.
Go to Shifts and create your schedule. For each shift, define:
- The shift name (for example: Morning, Night, Graveyard)
- Start and end times
- Which days it runs
- Which team members are assigned to it
If your whole team works 9-to-5, this takes about 30 seconds. If anyone works past midnight, this step is critical.
[Image: A clean shift configuration screen showing three shift rows - Morning (6 AM to 2 PM), Evening (2 PM to 10 PM), and Night (10 PM to 6 AM) - each with assigned team members and colored time bars. This shows how HoraFlow keeps overnight shifts intact instead of splitting them at midnight.]
Most time trackers split overnight hours at midnight and attribute them to two different calendar days. A 10 PM to 7 AM shift becomes 2 hours on Monday and 7 hours on Tuesday, and neither number is correct. HoraFlow treats the shift as its own unit of work. Those 9 hours stay together and land on the right shift day, regardless of when midnight falls.
Step 4: Create Your First Project (2 minutes)
Head to Projects and click "New Project." Give it a name that reflects your work: a client name, a department, a product line, or even just "General Operations" to start.
Assign team members to the project. If you want granular tracking at the task level, you can add tasks inside the project.
From this point forward, every hour your team logs can be attributed to the right project automatically.
Step 5: Install the Desktop Agent (3 minutes)
From the HoraFlow dashboard, grab the download link and send it to your team. The agent is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, including a signed .deb installer for Linux teams.
Installation takes about two minutes. Once the agent is running, it:
- Tracks active time silently in the background
- Captures screenshots at random intervals (not fixed ones, so they cannot be predicted or gamed)
- Automatically flags idle periods
- Pushes data to your dashboard in real time
[Image: A three-panel visual showing the desktop agent install flow: (1) the download page with Mac, Windows, and Linux options, (2) the installer window launching, (3) the clock-in screen the employee sees on first use. Clean product UI mockup style on a light background.]
Your team does not need to do anything special after this. No timers to start. No manual time entries to fill in. The agent handles everything.
Step 6: Check Your Live Dashboard
Refresh your main dashboard. If at least one person has installed the agent and clocked in, you will see them appear on the team timeline.
- Green bars mean active
- Yellow means idle
- Blue means in a meeting
That is your first workflow running.
Getting Your Team Comfortable With It
The trickiest part of any monitoring rollout is not the software. It is the conversation.
A framing that lands well with most teams:
"We are setting this up so we can see where time actually goes, run accurate project reports, and make sure everyone's hours are recorded correctly, including people on night shifts."
A few things that help with adoption:
Be transparent about what is tracked. Active time, screenshots at random intervals, app and website usage. There is no keylogger, no live camera feed, and no continuous video recording.
Let employees see their own data first. When team members can check their own productivity scores and timeline before a manager reviews it, the tool feels collaborative rather than one-sided.
Announce a calibration period. Tell your team the first two weeks are about verifying the data makes sense, not evaluating anyone's performance. This removes day-one anxiety and helps people settle into normal working patterns.
What You Get After the First Week
After seven days of clean data, here is what you will have access to:
An activity heatmap showing when each person and the broader team does their most focused work. Useful for scheduling deep work at the right times and keeping recurring meetings out of peak productivity windows.
Project-level time reports that show exactly how many hours went into each client or initiative. If you bill by the hour, this replaces manual tracking entirely.
Attendance records without needing a separate HR tool. Late arrivals, early clock-outs, and approved leaves are all visible in one place.
A daily email digest arriving every morning with a clean summary of what the team worked on the day before. You can walk into your first meeting already informed.
All of this runs without your team doing any extra work. They installed the agent. Everything else is automatic.
Common Setup Mistakes to Avoid
Skipping shift configuration if anyone works nights. Set up shifts before the first clock-in if any team member ever starts a shift after 10 PM. Otherwise hours land on the wrong day and your reports will not add up.
Adding everyone but creating no projects. Even a single project named "General" gives your time data somewhere to land. Without one, the hours are tracked but have no context.
Not sending the installation link before the onboarding call. Ask people to install the desktop agent before your kickoff call so you can see live data during it. It makes the whole thing more concrete.
Expecting people to change how they work. HoraFlow runs in the background. The only habit your team needs is clocking in at the start of a shift. That takes about four seconds.
How HoraFlow Compares to Other Time Trackers
Most time tracking tools were designed for a standard 9-to-5 office. If your team works outside that window, most of them will give you broken data.
Three things set HoraFlow apart:
Proper night shift support. HoraFlow treats each shift as a unit of work, not a calendar date. Overnight hours stay whole and land on the right shift day automatically.
Flat-rate pricing. Tools like Hubstaff and Time Doctor charge per user per month. A 100-person team can run to ,000 per month with those tools. HoraFlow is per month flat for up to 100 users.
Linux support. Almost no monitoring tool ships a working Linux desktop agent. HoraFlow does, including a signed .deb installer.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it really take to set up HoraFlow for the first time?
Most managers complete the initial setup in under 10 minutes for a team of 10 to 50 people. The longest step is usually waiting for team members to install the desktop agent, which takes about two minutes per person. If you send the download link ahead of the kickoff call, the whole team can be live within the hour.
Do employees need to do anything special after installing the agent?
Not much. Once the desktop agent is installed, employees clock in at the start of their shift. The agent handles screenshots, activity tracking, and idle detection automatically. There are no manual timers or time entry forms.
What devices and operating systems does HoraFlow support?
HoraFlow has desktop agents for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The Linux version includes a signed .deb installer, making it one of the only monitoring tools that works on Linux workstations without workarounds.
Can HoraFlow handle overnight and rotating shifts?
Yes, and this is one of the core reasons HoraFlow exists. Most time trackers split overnight hours at midnight, causing data to land on the wrong calendar day. HoraFlow attributes every hour to the shift it belongs to, regardless of when midnight falls in the middle of it.
Is there a free trial before committing?
You can book a 10-minute demo to see HoraFlow running with your own team data before signing up. Pricing starts at .04 per user per month on a yearly plan, which is roughly 10 times cheaper than Time Doctor or Hubstaff at comparable team sizes.
Who can see the screenshots the agent captures?
Screenshots are stored in your HoraFlow account and accessible to managers. Employees can view their own screenshots. There is no live screenshot feed. Managers review captures after the fact, not in real time. Idle periods are automatically flagged so they are easy to filter out.
Can I assign team members to different projects?
Yes. You can create multiple projects, assign any combination of team members to each one, and add tasks inside projects for granular tracking. Every tracked hour is attributed to the correct project automatically, which makes client billing and internal project reporting accurate.
What if my team works across multiple time zones?
HoraFlow handles this natively. Each employee's shifts are tracked in their local time zone and reports adjust automatically. You can have people in Karachi, Toronto, and London on the same dashboard without manually converting hours or cleaning up timezone mismatches.
How does idle detection work?
The desktop agent monitors keyboard and mouse activity. If an employee goes inactive through several screenshot cycles, HoraFlow flags that period as idle and sends the manager an email alert. This is designed to catch real issues like connectivity problems or accidental clock-ins, not to penalize short breaks.
Can I add a large team all at once?
Yes. HoraFlow supports bulk team member import via CSV, which makes adding 50 to 500 people much faster than entering them one by one.
Start Your First Workflow Today
Setting up HoraFlow is genuinely quick. Pick your plan, sign up, add your team, configure shifts, and send the installation link.
If your team works nights, spans multiple time zones, or you have ever had to manually fix payroll data because hours landed on the wrong day, HoraFlow was built for exactly this.
Book a 10-minute demo and see what your team's time actually looks like.