Getting Started

ActiveCollab helps you organize your work and collaborate with others.

Your Account

To start using ActiveCollab, you’ll need either to:

Create a free trial,
Get an invitation from another user. You’ll then be able to create an account and log in to ActiveCollab.

After logging in, click on your name in the upper-right corner to access the following settings:

Personal Settings - to change your profile photo, name, email address, time zone, date format, time format, and the first day of the week, to change the appearance by picking a color scheme, set email notifications, browser notifications, unread message email settings, daily report emails, update notifications, choose the default screen upon login, and set the view of completed tasks,
Change My Password - to set a new password,
System Settings - to set settings General, Workday, Project, Time and Expenses, Invoicing, and Online Payments,
Billing - to see more info on your subscription,
Sign out - to log out of ActiveCollab.

Projects

A project is where you work together with your team and clients.

Every project is made up of different parts:

Tasks show you what needs to be done and when. You can assign them to yourself or others, set a due date, and group them into lists,
Discussions are the place to exchange ideas and feedback. If you come up with a particularly interesting suggestion, you can also convert it to a task,
Files show all the attachments on tasks, comments, or notes. You can also upload files to the Files section directly,
Notes are simple text documents. They’re great for collaborative writing and tracking the changes,
Time is where you and your team members can log how much time has been spent working on tasks,
Expenses are fixed costs that help you keep track of how much the project is costing you,
Activity shows all the changes and updates made on a particular project.

Sample Projects

Sample Projects are virtual playgrounds designed to show you how ActiveCollab can be used by different industries. Each sample project is designed with an intention of teaching you new and useful ways to get the most out of the software.

Sample projects have no influence on your subscription plan, nor do they add up to a number of your active users. Apart from that, they are completely the same as your regular projects so feel free to explore and play around – you can't mess anything up.

If you erase or skip sample projects, you can always import them from the Add-Ons section.

My Work

This part of ActiveCollab shows you everything that is related to you. My Work helps you keep track of updates and all your tasks, time logged, your activity, and availability.

Activity

This page helps you stay up to date. Here, you can see everything that's been happening on all projects on a given day. It's great for catching up after you’ve been absent from work or to see what others have been doing.

Calendar

The calendar gives you an overview of when something needs to be done. If you set a due date for a task (or a start and end date for a task list) it’ll appear on the calendar automatically.

ActiveCollab also lets you create custom calendars and add events that don’t belong to any of the projects:

Open the Calendars dropdown menu and click +New Calendar to create your own calendar. Enter the name, pick a color and decide who can see it,
After you’ve added a calendar, you can create your own events and notify people about them,
To reschedule an event, simply drag and drop it to another date,
If there are too many events on a calendar, you can always filter them by using the Calendars dropdown menu and choosing what you want to see,
You can export your project's Calendar to Google Calendar, OS X Calendar, Outlook, or any application that supports iCalendar feeds. You’ll see the calendar, it will update automatically, but you’ll still only be able to Add or Edit events from ActiveCollab.

People

Click +New Company to create a company for your clients or subcontractors,
Click +Invite People to add new users by entering their email addresses, selecting their system role, and giving them access to projects on your account,
Edit existing users to give them access to projects or change their role to Owner, Member, Member+, Client+ or Client. You can also adjust daily capacity for each team member, to set their availability hours,
Remove a user from your account by moving them to Trash. Note that the work they did on your account will stay there even after you remove a user.

Invoices

Issuing invoices and sending them to clients is quick and easy:

Click +New Invoice and enter the client details,
Choose whether you wish to create a free from invoice and add items manually. Or you can create an invoice automatically from Tracked time and expenses and Fixed-price budgets,
After you’re done, you can edit the design or send the invoice PDF by email.

Estimates

Estimates are useful for offering your product and services to your clients,
Click +New Estimate to create a proposal for your client,
An estimate is similar to an invoice - after adding items, you can send the PDF to your clients,
When you reach an agreement, you can mark the estimate as Won and Start a project from it.

Reports

Payments - shows an overview of all payments in a selected time period,
Uninvoiced - shows time and expenses that haven’t been included in an invoice yet,
Invoices - gives you an option for advanced invoice searching and filtering,
Projects - for advanced project search and filtering,
Tasks - lets you find tasks by filtering the information you need,
Tasks By User - helps you distribute tasks evenly among your team,
Team Timeline - get a timeline overview for each team member,
Projects Timeline - See start and due dates across multiple projects,
Time - shows how much time has been tracked across projects,
Time (legacy) - basic overlook of tracked time on your account, and narrow down the search with advanced filters,
Expense Tracking - lists fixed expenses across projects,
Estimated vs.Tracked Time - helps you see how accurate your time estimates are,
Project Budget vs Cost - make sure your projects are running on budget.

Trash

All items (projects, tasks, files, reports, invoices, etc.) that you don’t need in your ActiveCollab can be moved to the Trash. Items are stored there for 30 days before being permanently deleted: