Never Forget to Track: Auto-Import Calendar Events as Time Entries
The problem: forgotten time
Retrospective time entry is the enemy of accurate billing. You finish a meeting, move on to the next task, and by the end of the day you are guessing when things happened. Studies show that people lose 10–15% of billable time simply because they forget to log it. For freelancers and consultants billing hourly, that is real revenue left on the table every single week.
The irony is that most of that time is already recorded — in your calendar. The meeting invites, the client calls, the workshop blocks. The data exists. It just lives in the wrong tool.
What auto-import does
Auto-import bridges the gap between your calendar and your time tracker. When enabled, Teetrack reads events from your connected Google Calendar and creates draft time entries for each one. These drafts appear in your time entry list with a clear "Draft" badge so you can distinguish them from confirmed entries.
Crucially, drafts are not automatically billed. They do not count toward project summaries, reports, or invoices until you explicitly confirm them. Auto-import is a suggestion engine, not an autopilot — you stay in control of what gets tracked.
The draft concept
A draft time entry is a proposed entry that mirrors a calendar event. It carries the event title as description, the start and end times, and a link back to the source event. Drafts are visually distinct and excluded from all aggregations — totals, reports, and exports ignore them completely.
To confirm a draft, click the checkmark icon. The entry becomes a regular time entry and participates in all calculations. You can also edit the draft before confirming — adjust the project, description, or duration as needed. If the event is irrelevant (a personal lunch block, for example), dismiss it and it will not reappear.
How to enable auto-import
Navigate to Settings → Calendar Integration and toggle on Auto-import events as drafts. This feature requires an active Google Calendar connection and is available on the Business and Pro tiers. Free-tier accounts can connect their calendar for viewing but do not have access to auto-import.
Once enabled, Teetrack checks for new events periodically. New calendar events appear as drafts within minutes. You can disable auto-import at any time without losing existing drafts — they remain until you confirm or dismiss them.
The 7-day lookback
When you first enable auto-import, Teetrack does not just start from now — it looks back up to 7 days and imports events that occurred in the past week. This catches the meetings you already had but forgot to track. It also imports events scheduled within the next 24 hours, so tomorrow morning's standup already has a draft waiting.
After the initial sync, Teetrack continuously monitors your calendar. New events, updated events, and cancelled events are all handled automatically. Cancelled events never produce drafts, and if a draft was already created for an event that later gets cancelled, the draft is removed.
Duplicate detection
Nobody wants the same meeting imported twice. Teetrack uses multiple signals to prevent duplicates. First, each event's unique calendar ID is tracked — the same event will never be imported again. Second, Teetrack checks for time overlap: if an existing time entry (confirmed or draft) overlaps with a calendar event by 80% or more, the event is skipped. Third, dismissed drafts are remembered — once you dismiss an event, it stays dismissed even if the calendar syncs again.
What gets skipped
- All-day events. Events without specific start and end times are skipped. Auto-import only processes timed events — the ones with concrete durations that represent actual work.
- Cancelled events. Events with a cancelled status are never imported. If a previously imported event is cancelled, its draft is automatically removed.
- Declined events. Events you declined in your calendar are excluded from auto-import. Only events with an accepted or tentative status produce drafts.
Who this is for
Auto-import is designed for anyone who tracks time against a calendar-heavy schedule. Freelancers who bill hourly and spend their days in client calls. Consultants who jump between advisory sessions. Agency teams where every meeting is a billable touchpoint. If your workday is defined by your calendar, auto-import means you never have to manually recreate that timeline in your time tracker.
It is also valuable for team leads who want to ensure their team captures all meeting time. With drafts appearing automatically, the friction of "I forgot to start the timer" goes away entirely.
Related
Related keywords
- auto-import calendar time tracking
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- auto-create time entries from meetings
- Business tier time tracking features
