Time is Gold: Time Tracking for Remote Work

Advantages and disadvantages of time tracking in organizations and the overview of the top 10 best niche apps. We compare trackers with each other by key characteristics and price based on the Table.

In less than a month, millions of people around the world have been forced to work remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The scale and speed of this shift made it an unprecedented problem. Business owners are grappling with the dual fears of how severe the pandemic will be for the global economy, and what steps need to be taken now to keep afloat. Moving staff to work from home is just the first step. The second, much more complicated step is to adjust performance in new working conditions.

Knowing what kind of things people spend time on is of paramount importance to the leader, manager or team member. So it was before the transitioning to remote work — only measurement tools change.

If you did not record the time in detail earlier, you may be surprised to learn that many people consider it to be the lifeblood of their business. This is similar to x-ray vision for projects, with which it becomes noticeable whether you earn or waste money.

Time tracking not only concerns companies, it also helps the self-employed people — most of the successful freelancers will talk about time management, even if they wake up in the middle of the night. The solutions to identify the wasted work time at the workplace are suitable for “loners” or small businesses. For example, the ability to capture which sites and applications are the most frequently used and how long it takes, further presents an overall performance estimate. This allows you to compare the workday from week to week, learn from your experience and optimize your schedule.

Such tools are not able to scale and be accurate for a team of 10+, 100, and especially 1000 people. They have no direct connection to projects and tasks within the enterprise and integration with other data, such as schedules and resources. Time tracking to complete tasks directly is a better option for organizations. This is mostly often done through a combined solution for project and resource management.

Advantages

A lot of small tasks are always involved in business, and most people do not even realize how many of these tasks are being solved at the same time. Time tracking software ensures that big and small tasks are completed on time. Main advantages of trackers provision:

• A clear understanding of workflows

You better understand what is happening in your organization with time management software. Owners get an overview of how employees manage their time. Thanks to this, the processes are optimally ordered and the adjustments are made on the go. Time counting gives the employees an understanding of the work, helping to focus on the implementation of tasks, clearly presenting the routine. Planning also improves because everyone in the team knows the time to accomplish certain tasks.

• Expenses reduction and simplified billing

With time-tracking software, the “gaps” in work processes become immediately noticeable, allowing them to be resolved at the time of occurrence, rather than being understood when filing for bankruptcy.

Correct customers invoicing is another problem that companies face. If your business invoices customers by hours rather than by project, the use of software ensures that customers are charged the right amount.

• Employees are responsible for their free time

When a team gains access to information about how many days of vacation are left, and whether they have unused sick days, everyone regulates their free time relying on these data.

• Less accounting work

It can be difficult for payroll departments to properly calculate hours and make sure that each employee receives the correct payment. With trackers, fewer mistakes are made while reducing routine work. In addition, some systems not only track the employees' time, but also create the schedules, which immediately calculate the salary.

Potential Issues

Time tracking solutions can meet implementation problems, but most of them can be resolved by a well-considered approach.

• Project management or time tracking

If time is a key indicator, the time tracking app is preferable. But when managing complex projects, other project management tools will be required.

• Acceptance problem: confidentiality, paranoia, usability

As a rule, people do not like when their activities are monitored in detail — this causes an eerie sense of life like in the Orwellian world. In addition to violating confidentiality and worsening the working atmosphere, it can bring creative minds into a stupor. Remember, that productivity measurements must be consistent with staff. Most likely, there will be those, who have difficulty in meeting daily deadlines, but still cope well with the assigned tasks.

However, the reason for slow adaptation to programs sometimes lies not in moral dilemmas — the application may simply be inconvenient to use, for example, it takes many clicks to perform one function.

• Productivity is not always time-dependent

Some tasks are easily estimated on the basis of working time, but, for example, the areas of marketing and creativity are not directly subject to a fixed time structure. These tasks are better evaluated on the basis of results: sales quota, profitability targets, and creative results. It is very important to remember that productivity is not equivalent to time spent. Do not bring control to the point where employees complete the task in hurry-scurry, but on time. In addition, an excessive level of monitoring at the workplace can be harmful to mental health.

What to do?

If you really want the project and time management to strike root in the company, be ready to talk. When implementing the solution without prior discussion, you may even lose someone from the staff. It is critically important for your employees to know that this software is not a spying tool and does not come from mistrust of them or their abilities.

The team should know that the solution is set to improve productivity and skills, but not for every-minute monitoring. This conversation will not only give employees an understanding of the true reasons of software installation (expenses reduction, management simplification, tasks automation), but it will also make them feel that you care not only about the business but also about them.

Software Selection Criteria

When choosing a time tracker, it is necessary to focus on the specific needs of the company. But there are also the universal parameters that a quality product must meet.

Time tracking

Obviously, this is the first criterion to think about. It is important to look through the information on how it will be working — for example, remote employees need a package that allows them to use several ways to log in and log out. Best of all, if the solution comes with offline support, so that colleagues do not depend on the network presence or absence.

Timesheets

The software must include the schedule processing. This greatly simplifies invoicing. A quality package allows the project managers to instantly approve or reject schedules.

Project management

A full-fledged view of processes also requires the tracking of project resources, tasks, and commenting capabilities. Advanced systems include support for expenses accounting and invoicing.

Reports

This is a "must have" — any quality software must have a reporting function that allows you to compile reports of various types. Thanks to this, managers will know about the time spent, expenses, bills. The properly selected software helps to customize reports, where users can include accurate information in each report.

Integrations

After all, integrations are worth considering. Ideally, if the solution is able to synchronize with data from other software that works for you. It is a good idea to look for software that involves integration with CRM packages, payroll accounting, content management, and ERP, which is already installed in the company.

Now, let's review the specific trackers. In the top ten selected, we looked at the following parameters: automatic time tracking, invoicing, billing, offline mode, project budget, work planning, file export formats, browser extensions, number of days of free trial for organizations and price.

More comparison details for each of the products are available in the comparison Table — for example, the article does not consider the possibility of commenting, GPS tracking, downtime detection and access to history.

Toggl

Toggl is a user-friendly service that provides the necessary tools to track the time for tasks performance. It runs both online and offline, works from the web interface, there are applications for desktop computers, iOS and Android.

The free tariff, for which, by the way, the product was liked by freelancers, comes with the basic time-tracking tools. It also includes offline support, weekly report options, unlimited number of projects and clients. Team management functions (up to five teams) are available.

Toggl takes payment for providing a business analysis function — scheduled email distribution and notifications, reports saving and exporting to XLS, project management (tasks, boards, approximate completion time).

Suitable for: updating ancient corporate schedules. It helps to track working hours flexibly without requiring additional training, gives an idea of performance and profitability.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: yes
Work planning: yes
Export file formats: CSV, PDF, XLS
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox
Free trial for organizations: 30 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $9 per month per user

TSheets Intuit

TSheets is a cloud-based solution that helps owners and managers to track the staff working hours through web and mobile applications. Employees use their own devices to log in and out — smartphones, computers, mobile applications, SMS, or even landlines.

TSheets helps users to set up alerts for possible overtime work — notifications are sent via SMS, email, or even via Twitter.

The solution provides customizable filters that collect accurate schedule information for each user, project, and then sorts the data by date, group, work code and calculation period.

Suitable for: everyone, from freelancers to large companies who want to track the employees' hours according to their particular job.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: no
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: no
Work planning: yes
Export file formats: CSV, PDF, XLS
Unlimited projects and tasks: no
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome
Free trial for organizations: 14 days
Free version and price: pay version from $8 per month per user + $20 per month for subscription

Hubstaff

Hubstuff is good because it focuses on one task — optimized employees time-tracking. However, there are already more tracking features than in the previous variants, for example — capturing screenshots of employees and monitoring the keyboard and mouse usage.

Some Hubstaff options overlap with a separate kind of software — monitoring of all employee activity, that is, go beyond the usual time tracking. In the application you can see which websites and applications were opened and visited by employees and the length of these sessions.

The solution supports integration with 30 business applications, including Basecamp, Trello, Asana, Github and Paypal.

Suitable for: growing businesses and startups, developers, e-commerce sites, law firms.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: no
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: yes
Work planning: yes
Export file formats: N/A
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome
Free trial for organizations: 14 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $7 per month per user (starts from $14 or two users)

TimeCamp

TimeCamp is an advanced program, convenient for small and large teams. Thanks to real-time auto-tracking features, TimeCamp is more than a tracker — a comprehensive centralized project management system. In addition to internal project management tools, the solution supports 114 integrations.

The company itself describes TimeCamp as "Google Analytics" for calculating working hours on a computer and offline.

Because TimeCamp is still a time-management tool, there is no planning or traditional approach to time recording at work. Instead, the time spent on tasks or projects is noted, and the software runs in the background to register URLs and applications, visited during the day.

Suitable for: B2B companies that need to track time and measure the project profitability.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: no
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: no
Work planning: no
Export file formats: N/A
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome
Free trial for organizations: 90 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $5.25 per month per user

TMetric

TMetric is a convenient online tracker for freelancers and teams from 2 to 100 people. Provides easy tracking of working hours, breaks, time to complete a specific task. It also monitors money, making it easy to calculate the costs of the account, project or team member, income received from the project and the client.

With the help of reports, all project costs are also visible — TMetric sends out email notifications every time a purchase is made.

TMetric integrates with almost everything, including Asana, Basecamp, Freshdesk, GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Trello, Wrike, Todoist, Zendesk.

Suitable for: software developers, designers, consulting agencies, online stores, copywriters.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: yes
Work planning: no
Export file formats: CSV, PDF
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari
Free trial for organizations: 14 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $5 per month per user

Clicktime

Easy-to-use Clicktime is suitable for all types of users on all platforms and web browsers. Compared to other services, ClickTime offers a wider range of functions with a small IT investment.

It provides easy documenting and expense management even from a smartphone — for example, receipts downloading, proposal viewing by expenses, cost approval and budget preparation are available.

The application has built-in features that allow you to delegate tasks to employees and evaluate productivity, and with the help of Project Insights function, the product predicts business profitability upon request.

Suitable for: a business where you need to plan, manage and report on the employees time or expenses. Particularly for organizations, seeking to reduce costs, improve performance and take control of the budget.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: yes
Work planning: no
Export file formats: CSV, PDF
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera
Free trial for organizations: 60 days
Free version and price: pay version from $9 per month per user

EverHour

Everhour is designed for smooth operation of teams on project management platforms such as Asana, Basecamp, Pivotal, Trello and GitHub. It is a solution that tracks time and manages tasks.

The application monitors the progress of all projects, as well as the tasks of each team member. Reports are configured individually: add columns, change the order, apply filters and formatting — everything to suit your needs.

Data is available for a full-scale analysis of workflows thanks to information coming from projects — tags, estimates, work stages.

Suitable for: teams, where it is necessary to track projects, set budgets and notifications, separate paid and unpaid hours. For scheduling the employees' work hours, viewing their workload and free time.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: no
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: no
Project budget: yes
Work planning: yes
File export formats:
Unlimited projects and tasks: N/A
Supported platforms: iOS
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera
Free trial for organizations: 14 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $8 per month per user

Harvest

Harvest is a business management web application that, in addition to tracking, creates and sends professional quality invoices directly to customers. The platform comes with an intelligent and easy to use interface.

The solutions include powerful reporting tools that give users the online access to time, project, and budget information, where each team member is displayed next to the task bar diagram.

Suitable for: freelancers, who need time tracking and invoicing, and for teams that track time for multiple projects at once.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: no
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: yes
Work planning: yes
Export file formats: CSV, XLS
Unlimited projects and tasks: N/A
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Edge
Free trial for organizations: 30 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $12 per month per user

RescueTime

RescueTime is a web-tool of time tracking and analytics that runs in the background mode on a computer, tracking the time, spent on applications and websites.

The classification of each application and site you use by productive/unproductive parameters on a scale of 1 to 5 is available.

There is an opportunity to set weekly goals, such as “spending X hours a week on productive tasks and less than Y minutes on unproductive ones". There is a "Focus" option to block distracting websites for a certain period of time.

Suitable for: companies of all sizes, seeking to increase productivity and manage the employees time.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: no
Billing: no
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: no
Work planning: no
Export file formats: CSV, XLS
Unlimited projects and tasks: N/A
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome, Firefox, Edge
Free trial for organizations: 30 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $6 per month per user

DeskTime

DeskTime is a fully automatic time-tracking software that promises to increase the employees productivity by 30% in the first weeks of use.

It helps to track the project time, regardless of Internet connection, and automatically calculate the expenses, based on the hourly pay of employees. DeskTime uses a computer to scan open applications, website tabs, and browsers on the user's screen.

You can create the configurable reports of internal use, plan the employees shifts, vacations, calculate the overtime and save contact information for each team.

Suitable for: middle-size and large companies. Simple and secure time-tracking application that improves enterprise efficiency and productivity.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: yes
Billing: yes
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: no
Work planning: no
Export file formats: N/A
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, Android
Browser extensions: Chrome
Free trial for organizations: 30 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $5.94 per month per user

WorkTime Corporate

WorkTime is an enterprise-class performance monitoring software that tracks computer usage factors: login and logout, personal Internet usage (including use of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks), software and application usage, activity, and downtime.

Monitoring results are stored on client servers, the solution is available both local and on cloud. By virtue of manageable list of features, the interface does not look cluttered and you can quickly learn how to use WorkTime.

The small feature set of WorkTime is comparable to its low price — it does not monitor either chats or the contents of documents and files. The WorkTime is useful if you need a brief overview of your employees' activities.

Suitable for: IT companies, government, start-ups, large (10,000+) and medium companies without the need for strict control.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: no
Invoicing: no
Billing: no
Offline mode: no
Project budget: no
Work planning: no
Export file formats: PDF
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, Terminal/Citrix Server, Mac
Browser extensions: N/A
Free trial for organizations: 30 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $3 per month per user

Teramind Starter

Teramind provides software that additionally to time tracking detects suspicious user activity, possible threats, optimizes performance and ensures regulatory compliance.

Solution has built-in remote desktop monitoring (RDP), alerts and logs (available in real time). Teramind allows you to view your employee's desktop and, if necessary, allow or block remote control of the system to prevent malicious activity. Lockdown, redirects and alerts are performed automatically to ensure the most efficient and secure operation.

The user interface offers a command center with precise monitoring functions, dashboards and reports, while not complicating navigation and configuration.

In Teramind, all actions are indexed. A list of web pages and applications displays a histogram of the most active applications and a separate breakdown by employee time, processes or URLs they visited.

Suitable for: large companies and enterprises, as it’s a comprehensive platform that supports a numerous devices, with advanced data loss prevention features.

Interface



Automatic time tracking: yes
Invoicing: yes
Billing: no
Offline mode: yes
Project budget: no
Work planning: yes
Export file formats: N/A
Unlimited projects and tasks: yes
Supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Web-Based, Android
Browser extensions: N/A
Free trial for organizations: 7 days
Free version and price: free version with limited functionality; pay version from $12 per month per user (start with 5 users)