Best Time Tracking Software For 2017



What gets measured, gets managed.

Twproject is business management software that combines the functionality of project planning, time tracking software, bug tracking software, task management and document management software in one software only. Project Management – Each project can be structured as a task tree / Gantt or as a business process. Each task can be associated to. Time Tracker by eBillity – Best for Law Offices and Bilingual Clients. EBillity’s Time Tracker is a top ProAdvisor pick that comes fully loaded with its own list of special features for time tracking. With unique touches, including a Spanish app and a version designed specifically for law offices, this is an ideal solution for bilingual. Time management tools can be expensive, so I’ve hunted down a good number of the best free, or nearly free time tracking software. Most importantly, though, we’re looking for the best in class tools that are so easy to use, people actually want to submit their timesheets.

In a fast-paced world where time is the most valuable resource, the wisdom behind this proverb is more important than ever. Running an efficient business means budgeting your time wisely and streamlining processes as much as you can.

This can all be done with a time tracking system that suits your unique needs.

TopTracker is one platform that is time tracking software for freelancers. The staff and managers are all the time cognizant about the work by time tracking. Besides normal time-tracking tools, TopTracker features such as, time record, screenshots and work reporting. Time tracking the way you like. Record work hours manually or use the timer available in the mobile app for more accurate data. Get a full overview of what your staff is working on, identify any bottlenecks, and improve team’s efficiency.

To make your days more productive, we rounded up the best time tracking software for small businesses, freelancers, and personal use.

Editor’s Note: Originally published in April 2017, this post has been rewritten to focus on the best time trackers today, with fresh descriptions and updated details.

What is the Best Time Tracking Software for Small Businesses and Companies?

For small businesses, time is money, and every minute counts. That’s why it’s important to find a time management system keeps track of productivity while making reporting and billing more efficient. Below our best picks for small teams and companies.

Time Tracking Software For Teams

NameKey FeaturesIntegrationPricingBest For
Everhour
  • Native integration that makes time tracking feel like an actual feature of your project management app;
  • Create custom reports that show metrics you need;
  • View your team’s productivity within a single dashboard;
  • Keep your project budget under control;
Trello, Asana, Basecamp, Pivotal, GitHub, Jira$7 per user per month;Native integration, accurate time tracking and project budgeting
Harvest
  • Integrates with over 80 applications;
  • Track time through web, mobile, and desktop apps;
  • Can be combined with Forecast for better project allocation;
Over 80 integrationsFree for 1 person; $12 /month user;Accounting, CRM, and finance software
Hubstaff
  • Tracks all activity, including which keys were pressed, which programs were used, which websites were visited and more.
  • May also take random screenshots and track geo location.
  • Automatic employee payments with no fees;
Over 20 project management toolsFree for 1 person; $5 /month user;

Companies that hire remote employees, and do not have that establish working relationship
TimelyApp
  • Imports calendar events into your timesheet;
  • Integrate with your favorite apps to track everything you do, including emails sent;
  • Tools for managing your team’s productivity;
Google Calendar, Wakatime, Office 365, Wunderlist, Todoist$8 /month for 1 person; $15+ /month user;Visualizing your project timelines

Everhour: Best For Native Integration and Deep Custom Reporting

Everhour is an uncomplicated time tracking software that runs smoothly with your favorite project management tools, freeing you up to focus on what’s really important.

Everhour’s best feature is its ability to natively integrate with Trello, Asana, Basecamp, Pivotal, GitHub, and JIRA. There’s no need for your team to spend time learning a new system or familiarizing themselves with a new user interface. Everhour fits so smoothly into your workflow, it feels like a built-in function of the tool.

Once you set up Everhour, you can quickly see how much attention is given to each task or project, and providing you with data to prioritize and allocate resources more effectively.

Best Time Tracking Software For 2017

Our easy-to-use reports reduce the time spent gathering data, allowing your team serve clients without spending too much work on the reporting aspect.

Over all, Everhour is a cost-effective solution that works seamlessly with your existing project management system, and gives valuable insights to help save your team a lot of time and effort.

Harvest: Best for Accounting, CRM, and Finance Software

Since 2006, Harvest has been widely used by teams of all sizes. Because it’s available as desktop, web and mobile apps, this gives your team the flexibility to track their work however way they want. It also includes the standard features you would expect out of a time management system, such as reporting, invoice creation, as well as timesheet approval.

One of Harvest’s biggest strengths is that you can use it well beyond developer and project management tools. With integration for Xero, Zendesk, and 80 other applications, Harvest can do more than just track time. Its built-in features help you automate and streamline manual processes like data entry, which allows your team to work more efficiently and productively.

Harvest can also be combined with Forecast, a tool that visualizes where your project is going and how much of your budget remains. A week-by-week analysis lets you see how the tracked hours compares with the forecasted hours, so you can make better scheduling decisions.

If you want to know how Harvest compares to Everhour, we’ve done a comparison to highlight the differences between the two.

Hubstaff: Best for Managing Remote Teams

One of the biggest challenges of managing a remote team is keeping tabs on each member’s work and productivity. Hubstaff not only solves this problem with its comprehensive employee tracking tools; it also comes with an automated payroll software that dishes out payments according to time tracked.

Its main feature is the timesheet app, which captures how much time each team member is spending on a particular task or project, and how their progress is. You can set deadlines and time caps on each project to make sure the team gets their priorities straight. If you really want to make sure each person is spending their time productively, you can activate the employee monitoring feature, which takes automatic screenshots, tracks keyboard and mouse usage, and which websites they are visiting during work hours.

Hubstaff includes pay rates within the time sheet, and automatically pays each team member according to their hourly rate and time worked. This set-it-and-forget-it feature saves business owners the time and effort normally spent on billing and payments.

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It is also worth noting that Hubstaff has native Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS apps, allowing you to track your team using their preferred platform.

Hubstaff’s solution is ideal for traditional businesses, but its features aren’t for everyone. For flat organisations that operate on trust, less intrusive time trackers might be a better option. DevAcademy shared an interesting story about why they switched from Hubstaff to Everhour after giving it a try for one week.

TimelyApp: Best for Visualising Project Timelines

TimelyApp proves that time tracking and project management does not have to literally be a black-and-white thing. This well-designed web application organises tasks and projects into a beautiful calendar, allowing you and your team members to map work in blocks of time and schedule their day more effectively.

Keeping with the calendar-like interface is TimelyApp’s integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Office 365. As soon as you’ve hooked it up with these tools, meetings, workshops, and other calendar events automatically get imported into your day. With this, you can check your schedule at a glance and see if you can accommodate a new deadline or two.

Besides tracking your team’s work, TimelyApp lets you tag each activity or project phase so you can stay on top of your progress. And with the new Memory feature, everything you’ve ever worked on for that day – including emails sent – gets logged into a stunning timeline. You’ll never forget a single thing you’ve worked on, and you get a complete picture of all the billable hours your team worked on.

What is the Best Time Tracking Software for Freelancers?

Whether it’s a simple time tracker for improved productivity, or an all-in-one system with reporting and invoices, we’ve identified the best time tracking software freelancers should use.

Time Tracking Software For Freelancers & Personal Use

NameKey FeaturesIntegrationPricingBest For
Toggl
  • Track hours with a single click;
  • Create project dashboards to keep track of progress;
  • Share professional looking reports to clients;
80+ integrationsFree for 5 users; $10 /month user;Simple time tracking and project management
Hours
  • Easy to use on any iOS device, including the Apple Watch;
  • Beautiful visual reporting;
  • Create a new timer for every project;
None$8 per account per month;iOS time tracking
TopTracker
  • Works for all freelancers, regardless of platform;
  • Detailed productivity reports, with screenshots and webcam shots;
  • Centralized view of all projects;
  • Track time from any device;
NoneFreeTracking time and performance
RescueTime
  • Detailed reports on what applications or websites you spend the most time on;
  • Set daily goals to stay on track;
  • Tasks are grouped into categories and rated with a productivity score;
GitHub, Zapier, ITTTLite: Free;
Premium: $9 per month;
Improving your personal productivity

Toggl: Best for Simple Time Tracking and Project Management

You’ve probably heard of Toggl from their free Pomodoro Chrome extension, which also works as a time tracking and reporting tool. If you liked their Pomodoro timer, you’re probably going to enjoy using their full-featured time tracker.

There are good reasons why Toggl is used by individuals and businesses alike. With mobile and desktop versions, over 80 integration, and a simple interface, your use of Toggl can be as simple or complex as your needs.

Their web interface contains everything it has to offer, from project dashboards to team management. The main focus, however, is the ability to start and stop time tracking with no fuss. The great thing about Toggl its multi-platform experience; you can start the timer on your desktop, work offline, and end it on a different device. Your tracked time can then be converted into billable weekly reports, which makes invoicing clients a breeze.

Best Time Tracking Software For 2017 Mac

If you’re curious about Toggl’s features versus Everhour, we’ve done a detailed comparison here.

Hours: Best for iOS Time Tracking

Very rarely is a time tracking app designed for a single OS, but this narrow focus on iOS devices is part of what makes Hours a huge success. Designed by award-winning indie developer Tapity, Hours is a very simple way to get started with time tracking, whether it’s for better time management or gaining insights into your billable hours.

Using Hours is as fuss-free as installing it onto any iOS device and setting up your first timer. The idea is to create timers for every project or every task and rearrange them according to priority. Hours then tracks everything in real time. If you need to work on several things in one morning, switching between projects is as simple as tapping the timer.

You can see your worked hours through the beautifully-designed reporting function, and view all of your activity in just one place. This lets you spot trends and allows you to readjust your priorities as needed.

Hours is available for all Apple devices, including the Apple watch.

TopTracker: Best for Tracking Time and Performance

TopTracker is as clean, intuitive, and simple as it comes. Designed specifically for freelancers by freelancers, TopTracker does simple timekeeping while offering features like webcam shots and screenshots of your work in progress.

Simply set up your project and enable (or disable) the features that you like. As soon as you start working, the app ticks and tracks quietly in the background so as not to disrupt your work session. If you’re working with a team, you can also get a centralised view of your team’s productivity and projects. Simple graphs and other data can be viewed with a simple click.

Best time tracking software for 2017 macSoftware

TopTracker is completely free and available as a web and desktop app.

RescueTime: Best for Improving Personal Productivity

RescueTime has been helping professionals and freelancers stay focused since 2008. Like all the other apps we’ve covered, RescueTime is great at fulfilling its core function – tracking time. But what makes it different is the kind of information it captures, and how it makes this data usable.

The moment you get it up and running, RescueTime sees which windows you’re using, takes down the window name, and tracks how much time you’ve spent on it. Through a detailed report, you understand exactly which tasks or websites are eating up most of your time. RescueTime also quantifies your progress with a Productivity Score, which automatically categorizes your activities on websites and applications, then scores them. You can customise the goals and activities to suit your needs.

RescueTime is available for free, but a premium upgrade gives you more sophisticated features, like detailed reports and website blocking.

Choose a Time Tracking Solution According to Your Needs

We hope this helps you find the right time tracking solution for your business. Choosing a software requires a bit of effort, but gaining more productive work hours and efficient processes in the future makes it worth your while.

If you have questions about the time tracking tools we mentioned, our team is happy to help. Contact us anytime, or book a demo of Everhour – it’s completely free.

Whether you are a freelancer, small business, or large organization, tracking the time spend on projects and by employees is an important part of checking efficiency, as well as keeping an eye on expenses and stabbing to deadlines. Keeping a record of how long definite jobs can take also helps in building estimates, and costing projects swiftly and precisely.

If you are searching for the best time tracking software, you have landed at the right place. Opting for a suitable time tracker is quite grinding as there are numerous apps available in the market.

Here, we have performed a thorough market research and tested the leading apps to present you the top 10 online time tracking software and save you from all the hassles.

Everhour

Everhour is time tracking software which caters detailed features to ensure all the time tracking requirements of the user are met satisfactorily. Everhour is not just a browser add-on, it also integrates with many tools used for project management. The time tracking tools are intelligently embedded inside the interface to get the native functionality atmosphere. Highly polished features, easiness of usage and regular updates makes it better than the rest.

The trust shown in Everhour by over 2000 businesses spread across 70 countries speaks about the high quality it offers at a very affordable price.

TSheets

It is a cloud-based application. It allows the employees to track out their job timings with the help of the devices placed in their pockets. This app is highly beneficial for the organizations as because of this, paper timesheets of the firms can be replaced with the computerized data. Through this productive scheduling and time-tracking app, invoicing and payroll has also become more cost-effective and swift.

FunctionFox

The popularity of the app can be determined from its growing number of users i.e. over 100,000 professionals are using this online time tracking app in 120+ nations. FunctionFox is an industry leader in online time tracking and project management applications, offering user-friendly timesheets and estimates, as well as robust scheduling, task assignment and reporting. The capabilities are uniquely suited for the specific billing and timesheet requirements of creative teams. Try a free demo at http://www.functionfox.com/demo or check out the short video overview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnSpMQjClis

Time Doctor

This productivity and time tracking app runs on the core of bestowing more and more to the users. By eliminating all the distractions, it assists its users to determine the activities where they are spending their time. The used applications as well as the sites visited by the user are also analyzed by the Time Doctor.

Paymo

If you are looking for an advanced project management tool that handles your project from scratch until its completion, this app is the best for you. It is suitable for individuals as well as for small businesses. Everything from beginning to the end is covered in this software whether you want to get payment from your clients, assign tasks to your workers and so on.

Timely

If you want your software to track time for you and also perform the function of a to-do list and a calendar, then Timely is the one to go for. With every task tagged with its project, this comprehensive app is a one stop for all your needs. Moving projects has also been made easy with its drag and drop feature.

Toggl

This renowned app assists individual teams within the bounds of a company. With the help of this, companies can distinct hourly rates to its employees. It is also purposeful for the firms who are working with the freelance workers as individual work spaces can be created for the security of the private documents.

Harvest

Harvest is one of the best expense management and time tracking tool that also supports accounting solutions (Xero, Quickbooks as an add-on) as well. It can even work in a standalone way for businesses that have simple expense tracking and billing related needs.

Mindsalt

MindSalt Time and Expense is a web-based application that allows you and your employees to access your timesheets and expenses from anywhere in the world. Track time and expenses, generate reports in a variety of formats, monitor projects in real-time, export data to Excel, and manage and approve timesheets and expense reports. Monitor your costs, budgets, and bill your customers with ease. Free trial with no credit card required.

Best Time Tracking Software For 2017 2019

Project Hours

Project Hours is a basic, easy-to-use and very affordable time tracking system. The system has a timer function but users can also enter hours manually on projects and activities. Project Hours is geared towards organisations: it has user management including user groups and Excel reports per department. The Project Hours mobile applications allow for easy time entry.

ClickTime

This application tracks the work hours for an easier apprehension of the casual time taken for a task completion, an account’s profitability, employee utilization for proposals and estimates in the future.

Pro Tip

Best

Best Time Tracking Software For 2017 Download

While choosing a tool for you, go with the one that can be easily used by your team, delivers results and is in line with your business needs. Do let us know about your favorite time tracking software and why you like it in the comments section below.