Daily recap
A daily recap is a short end-of-day account of where a person's hours went, entered against the projects they worked on. Unlike a weekly summary it is written while the day is still in mind. The rhythm is the point: one small entry, every working day.
The daily version exists because the weekly version does not work. Ask somebody on Friday how Monday split and they will produce round numbers that total neatly. Round numbers are the tell.
Each entry is small. Three lines, a couple of minutes, done before logging off. The cost per day is trivial and the cost of skipping four days is not.
A recap also does something a timesheet total cannot. It tells a lead what happened, not merely how long it took.
The habit is fragile and worth defending. One busy week where nobody chases it, and the practice quietly stops. A short nudge on a fixed day costs less than a month-end reconstruction, and it arrives while the answer is still easy.
Where the habit holds, a second benefit turns up uninvited. A run of recaps is a record of what a project actually took, written by the people who did it. That is the closest thing a firm gets to an honest account of its own year.
Where this shows up in PeopleMuster
In PeopleMuster the daily recap is the employee's own screen, with week and month views, a per-weekday strip, and a summary of total logged against the expected hours for the week.
Questions people ask
How long should a daily recap take?
A couple of minutes. Anything longer and it competes with the work it describes, which is the reason most daily logging habits collapse in the second month.
What goes in a recap besides hours?
Enough context that the entry still makes sense in six weeks. Which project, and what moved. Not a narrative, and not a justification.
Does a recap replace a standup?
No. A standup coordinates the day ahead between people. A recap records the day behind, for the record rather than for the room.