As the economy relapses from a pandemic and more recently a recession (almost), productivity is of paramount concern to everyone. Business owners are leading this debate especially due to the rapid progression of WFH culture across the globe.
It, thus, is no surprise to anyone that the time tracking tools, and software kits are becoming a necessary management device rather than a niche practice. As the acceptance of these programs increases, so does the number of options to choose from.
Here is a simple guide to help you find a solution that suits your need –
A complete solution to all your issues with productivity management. This comprehensive solution covers Time tracking, Expense Monitoring, Invoice reports and a resource planner. The platform can also be accessed from your mobile using an application.
Its time-tracking tool not only allows you to monitor your employee’s work hours but also lets you see exactly how long they worked on a task or a project. This feature is especially useful for Law firms, IT consultants and contractors for whom keeping track of the billable hours for each client is a must. Combine this with the fact that the platform is directly integrated with QuickBooks, Xero and PayPal, and you get a complete one-stop solution.
It is one of the most comprehensive solutions available in the market. It is simple to adopt and has a plethora of options to completely personalize your experience on the platform, ranging from basic options to set your logo to more nuanced options that let you set the page theme and colour as per your company’s theme.
All in all, ideal for IT consultants, Law firms, contractors and Hospitality setups, while it also has a free version unlike many on the list. It also has a free trial version you can access without having to submit any financial information such as credit card information.
Above all the pricing makes AccountSight the best solution in terms of “value for money”. The pricing ranges from $8 – $10 /user/month.
Timely allows you to track your time and create timesheets, regardless of your industry or business purpose accurately and easily. It has one of the best user interfaces compared to any other program on this list, however at the cost of some functionalities. It, however, is a very potent time-tracking tool.
Timely allows you and your employees to access their recorded data, which is privacy-centric and in a precise and accurate way. Start Timely once, and it shows you the exact breakdown of the apps, tasks and processes you have gone through during the day.
This makes it effortless to create timesheets and identify billable hours, as you do not have to manually go through different apps to find out where your time was spent. To help you track your time efficiently, there are numerous integrations, including tools like Asana, Basecamp, Github, Google Calendar and many more.
Harvest is undoubtedly one of the most popular time-tracking apps in the industry. Some dislike its low feature set, while others love it for its ease of use. Either way, if you want to create cross-project timesheets and nothing else, this is the tool for you.
With Harvest, you can track your time and create reports for your team or individual employees. You can see how much time they have spent on different tasks and projects. There are quite a few integrations with popular tools like Asana, Slack, Trello, Basecamp and others.
For invoicing and payments, you can integrate Harvest with apps like Xero, Stripe and Quickbooks.
If you want to use Harvest forever, you can do so for free as long as you do not work on more than 2 projects.
There are many reasons why Toggl Track has a huge following, but we’ll just pick out one – its promise to be completely supervision-free.
With Toggl Track, you can start the timer and seamlessly switch between different devices and still get a record of all the time spent on various applications in one centralised time-tracking system. Whether you run a business and want to keep track of your employees or you are a freelancer and need accurate billable hours, Toggl has you covered.
If integrations are your main interest, Toggl has a lot to offer. That means over 100 integrations with popular project management, sales and invoicing apps.
The free plan is very popular, but it’s only good for up to 5 users. Paid plans start at $9 per user per month, which unlocks most of the app’s best features.
TrackingTime is a collaborative time-tracking tool that looks different from many other time-tracking apps. This may be because the primary focus of this application is on productivity management by planning resource allocation. You can look into the team/organisation as an individual or as an admin and it gives you a detailed view of where an individual has allocated their time but also how multiple individuals have collaborated in a monthly or project-wide view.
For example, you can schedule blocks of time on your calendar for tasks you intend to work on later in the week or for recurring events, like meetings. An admin can use this to best optimise how people are being assigned tasks. Especially useful for managing large teams.
RescueTime is an automatic time-tracking app with a desktop, web and mobile application. Its assistant can be downloaded to any device, and it continues to monitor the individual’s web and application activity in the background providing useful insights as per their goal settings.
The Assistant helps you manage your daily work progress, goals and reports. For example, it can alert you when you are distracted and multitasking more than normal.
RescueTime’s most interesting features are designed to help you focus and get deep work done on projects that are high-value and mentally demanding. RescueTime calls this type of work “focus work” You can set the activities that count as focus work in your settings and set goals for how much focus work you want to do in a day.
When you are ready to tackle this type of work, you start a “focus session” During this session, RescueTime blocks any websites that you have classified as personal activities (such as social media or YouTube). It tracks how well you focus and at the end of the session, you get a detailed report.
RescueTime takes a little getting used to. You need to familiarise yourself with all these terms and how RescueTime defines and categorises certain activities. But once you get familiar with the vocabulary and settings, you do not have to fiddle around much and can get right to work.
This is also the only app in this round-up that does not let you export your hours or automatically create an invoice. RescueTime is designed for people who want to track their hours worked and analyze the same to learn more about their work habits and optimise their productivity.
Most companies do not start their technical equipment with software for time recording and timesheets. Specifically for Quickbooks, it is very likely that you bought your accounting and invoicing software first. If Quickbooks is your programme of choice, then QuickBooks Time may be your logical choice for timesheet creation.
Formerly known as TSheets, this tool is tightly integrated into the QuickBooks ecosystem and allows you to easily create timesheets for your team, track billable hours and manage audit trails from a single dashboard.
What makes this solution so interesting (besides the native QuickBooks integration) is the ability to physically record time, just like a traditional timesheet. Thank you to time kiosks, mobile apps, GPS location tracking and geofencing, you can create timesheets for team members who work in different locations.
Pricing is a little complicated because QuickBooks Time is not offered as a standalone tool. It’s included in QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite, which start at about $37 per user per month. If you already use QuickBooks, this is the logical choice. If you need a standalone time-tracking tool, there are better options in this list.
