Suggest past hours
What Suggest past hours does
It suggests sessions for days before you installed WFH Diary, from file activity your Mac recorded, found through Spotlight. If several files changed within an hour, that hour may have been a working hour.
They’re suggestions you check, not a record of your hours. Because they’re added after the fact, your PDF, CSV and worksheet mark them “added later”, so your report is honest about what was tracked live and what wasn’t.
How to get suggestions
- Open the diary from the menu bar and choose Reports.
- Click Suggest past hours…. The Suggest past hours window opens.
- Set the From and To dates. It starts at the last three months.
- Click Scan. On the free version, this opens the WFH Diary Pro screen instead.
- Read the Preview: the total time, the number of sessions, and how many are High, Medium and Low confidence.
- Tick the box that begins “I understand these are suggestions from file activity, not a record of where or when I worked.”
- Click Save … draft sessions (the button shows how many).
- Go to Review and check each day. Confirm only the hours you worked from home, and leave out anything that wasn’t.
Saved suggestions are drafts and count for nothing until you confirm the day. On the Day screen they’re labelled “Suggested”, and in your reports they’re marked “added later”. Scanning the same dates twice won’t add the same hours twice.
What it can and can’t find
Suggestions only reflect what your Mac happened to record, so they will often be incomplete.
- It can find hours when files on this Mac changed, such as documents you saved.
- It can’t see reading, calls, meetings or browser work that didn’t change files.
- It can’t see work on another computer, your phone, or a work laptop it isn’t installed on.
- It doesn’t know where you were. A busy hour at the office looks the same as one at home.
- How far back it can go depends on what your Mac still holds, so it may find nothing for some dates.
Does it need Full Disk Access?
No. Suggestions come from file activity that Spotlight already indexes, so WFH Diary doesn’t ask for Full Disk Access.
Normal tracking needs no special permissions at all.
Should I rely on suggestions for my claim?
Treat them as prompts, not proof. The fixed rate method needs a record of your actual hours kept at the time, and estimates aren’t accepted. Suggested hours aren’t that record, which is why they’re marked “added later”. Check each day against what you know, such as your calendar or timesheets, and confirm only what you’re sure of. If you’re unsure about a period, ask a registered tax agent. From today on, WFH Diary records your hours as you work.