Top 10 Best Time Tracking Apps

(2022): Compared & Reviewed

Introduction

What is Time Tracking?

Time tracking refers to the systematic process of monitoring and recording the hours at work put in by every employee for various managerial purposes. It is sort of like attendance but more thorough since it not only records presence and absence but accounts for each and every hour that the employee spends at work. It basically has 3 components:

Recording time entries
Analyzing time entries
Reporting time entries

What are Time Tracking Apps?

Time tracking apps are apps that are specifically designed to record an employee’s working hours. These apps are used across a wide variety of industries ranging from marketing, consulting, IT, design et al. It is especially used by organizations that hire freelancers or employees that work on a temporary contractual basis.

It is also used in occupations that charge their customers by the hour such as accountancy, psychiatric therapy, law firms and a lot more. These apps can also be used by non-professionals or students to manage their time and to optimize their daily productivity.

Time tracking apps can either be used as they are or in collaboration with project management software. Time tracking is a crucial component of project management, billing systems, resource, work and budget allocation. These apps are also used in partnership with accounting and customer support software.

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1. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a very good app for all kinds of work. It can be used to track the progress of your entire team even from a remote location. It can be used to keep a check on the work being done by your team but also has more additional features for advanced and powerful monitoring.

It can be added as an extension on your chrome to automatically log time or can also be used manually by the team member.

Not only this, but this app can also keep track of all the websites and apps that the employees use during work hours. It can also calculate the work hours of all the employees, based on their use of keyboards and mouses.

Go To Hubstaff

Pros

It is very easy to use and can be implemented without complications.
It provides additional day-to-day simple activities that can help you to manage your work according to your goal.
It can easily help you to monitor your employees even from miles away and track their work progress conveniently.
It comprises many time-tracking features like creating invoices based on the employee's work.
It can also be used to create invoices and collect payments from clients.

Cons

You have to go through many complicated steps to set up automatic payroll.
Dragging and dropping is a bit difficult. So, integration should be looked at.

There is no option for live chatting so connecting with employees is not possible.
The project dashboard feature is not at all available in this app.

Pricing-

Hubstaff has a 14-day free trial available to give you a chance to check your compatibility with this app.

It has many pricing plans such as-

Basic- $7 per user per month
Premium- $10 per user per month
Enterprise- $20 per user per month

Final thoughts-

Hubstaff is a perfect time tracking app and can be used by remote teams or field teams or even freelancers.

Go To Hubstaff

2. Timely

Timely is an app used to monitor the time employees are working on other apps. It helps to track time and also develop time sheets automatically.

Employees don’t need to enter the time manually; the app uses Artificial Intelligence to work in the background and track time.

Employees can easily view the tracked information. Timely also takes privacy very seriously. It has features by which employees can control what information is made public as this app monitors time on a personal line.

Go To Timely

Not only in time tracking, but it can also help you to monitor your budget so you don’t end up spending more than required. It can also help you to visualize your teamwork by providing various additional features.

Pros

Very easy to navigate and understand the program related to this app.
It also has a very helpful team of support members.It can also provide you with notifications relayed to your goals or appointments.
It can also be used to provide an invoice to customers for tax issues, thereby, making the entire process very convenient.
It keeps your entire contact database stored and has an email generator campaign, which is very easy to customize.

Cons

A lot of features on this app are somewhat unfinished. They need to be worked on by their team.
The smartphone app version lacks performance and UI.
Sometimes, this app runs slow or can freeze. This issue is very rare but can happen.
The iOS version of this app does not have many additional features such as cancelling appointments permanently or the ability to view all the sales.

Pricing-

It offers a 14-day free trial to its customers. It has three pricing plans such as-

Starter- $10 per user per month
Premium- $18 per user per month
Unlimited- $26 per user per month

Final thoughts-

It is a very user-friendly app and can be used by freelancers, consultancies, and agencies.

Go To Timely

3. TimeTrack

TimeTrack can be used to track the work time of your employees along with their attendance. It can also monitor the breaks manually or automatically.

It can be used to keep a track of the time the employees were offline and then make it easier for them to sync their online data when they come back online.

It can also be used to monitor employees' leaves and payment plans.

You can approve PTO and set a time-off budget accordingly using this app.

Go To TimeTrack

It also provides project budgeting and task planning features to compare the resources spent and resources left. This app also has the additional benefit that it can be used to export all the timesheets in a PDF format for convenience.

Pros

It can be used to segment the work profiles of the managers and employees.it can be used to fix the timesheets by the administrator.
It has a very user-friendly UI and can be used along with other software. So, it becomes easier for employees to enter all the information.
It is very flexible and can be used to store information of multiple days and hours in a single line.

Cons

It does not have the feature to remind the person about pending payments.
It does not provide the record of previous payments, thereby making it a little inconvenient.
The billable switch is at the bottom which makes it difficult to enter non-billable information without receiving an error message.
Does not provide information on PTO or other client-related issues.

Pricing-

It offers three pricing plans-

Standard - $4 per user per month
Premium - $8 per user per month
Gold - $10 per user per month

Final thoughts-

It is a very convenient app that can be used by architects, engineers, and construction teams.

Go To TimeTrack

4. DeskTime

DeskTime tracks your employee's work time, attendance, and absence. It claims that it can increase your employee productivity by 30% by using this app continuously.

It keeps a track of all the websites and apps the employees are visiting during their work hours and then categorizes them into three parts- Productive, unproductive, and neutral.

It has an additional facility in which if this app does not detect any keyboard or mouse movement for more than three minutes, it will stop tracking time and go into idle mode.

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This app can also work in offline mode, by keeping the track of time manually or by using the manually logged time. It also offers time scheduling features to create time shifts.

Pros

It is very user-friendly and convenient. All the functions can be understood easily.
It can be used to enter manual entries even in offline mode or when there is a network failure.
It helps to deem applications and websites as productive or unproductive, thereby helping employees to manage their research.
Timesheets and reports provided by DeskTime are very details, thereby making them very efficient.

Cons

Export reports that are used to evaluate employees' work are not in decimal, thereby, making this unsatisfactory.
Adding a block of the private information by the team is not available.
Privacy settings are not very good and so, it can lead to mismanagement.
It lacks many important alerts and private times cannot be mapped to a specific time period.

Pricing-

It can be used for up to 30 users and pricing depends on the number of users. It has three pricing plans-

Pro - $5.97 per user per month
Premium - $7.77 per user per month
Enterprise - $11.93 per user per month

Final thoughts-

This app is very user-friendly and has many different features. It can be used by freelancers, agencies, and remote teams.

Go To DeskTime

5. Timeular

Timeular can be used using their app or a physical time tracker. The physical time tracker makes use of a die that has eight sides.

Each side of that die is connected to a specific task and employees can switch between those tasks by flipping the side of the die. It is like a visual reminder for all the employees and even works without any internet connection.

Enter yourIt has an additional feature like it can send invoices to your clients and generate quotations for you. The physical device can be kept on every employee’s desk and provide them with alerts to manage the time spent by them on each client. You can also organize your time entries by using tags and mentions.text here.

Go To Timeular

Pros

It is very easy to use and convenient especially due to the physical device.
It has very good integration features and can be used to link analogue and digital information.
It can be synced with all kinds of additional devices without any complications or limitations.
It is very intuitive and helps the employees to work efficiently in natural workflows.

Cons

The eight-side die has certain battery issues. It needs a frequent battery replacement.
Setting up this app can be a little complicated and take some time.
There is no option to copy or paste recurring meetings.
It provides insufficient instructions on how to get the physical device started, which can make it difficult to start.

Pricing-

It has a pro plan and a basic plan. Pro plans cost $9 per month.

It also has a plan that includes the physical device-

Basic plan+ physical device- $89 for a year
Pro plan + physical device- $129 for a year

Final thoughts-

The physical device that includes the eight-sided die is very helpful in tracking employee productivity. It is very useful for teams that work daily and is popular among freelancers and remote teams.

Go To Timeular

6. Workpuls

Workpuls makes use of automatic time mapping to assign a specific period to a specific task. This app runs in the background at all times, and the employees don’t need to worry about starting and stopping the timer manually.

This way it eliminates the mistakes due to forgetfulness of the employees and also reduces the problem of remembering to log out or log in. This app can be used to monitor the number of breaks and the time spent on these breaks.

It can also be used to track time manually, allowing you to track the amount of time spent away from the working device. It can also send alerts to the employees when it senses that the employee’s productivity level has reduced.

Go To Workpuls

Pros

It provides a real-time view that shows what each employee is doing at a particular time.
It can help you to track the hours worked to formulate a proper bill when the budget is logged into it.
It is very flexible and can segregate required data from the overall data.
It is very easy to use and comes with offline time logging.

Cons

Its software is not compatible with iPads and Apple products.
The clock-in time takes some time to sync with the system time.
You cannot attach website URLs to your projects with the help of this appEmail reports are not very intuitive and flexible. They need to be fixed to give better performance.

Pricing-

It has a 7-day trial period and offers these four pricing plans-

Employee monitoring- $6 per user per month
Time tracking- $8 per user per month
Automatic time mapping- $15 per user per month)
Enterprise – offers custom pricing

Final thoughts-

This app is very quick and has a wide range of features. It can be used by architects, call centres, and law firms.

Go To Workpuls

7. Replicon

Replicon has many management features such as core time and attendance monitoring. It is very efficient in tracking work hours along with the overtime hours.

It also helps in designing customized timesheets that can benefit the business. It also takes into account the region of the employees, formulate holiday calendars for them, and to develop time-off policies for all the members.

You can also set up time-off rules based on the special day holidays specific to each employee such as birthdays and anniversaries.

Go To Replicon

You can also upload all your receipts in this app to manage all your money in multiple currencies. It has the report feature which can help you to make and schedule reports by using the dashboard to highlight all the necessary details on one screen.

Pros

It makes reporting a very easy task as all the receipts can be logged into one system to be displayed later.
Timesheets are very convenient as you just have to input the name of the clients and the work time to get the entire sheet.
It has very useful tools that increase in intensity as the business grows and there are a greater number of employees.
It also helps in keeping a track of the backend activity which will further make the forward activities faster.

Cons

Setting up this app for many users can be a bit tedious.
The innovation and development life cycle of this app is very low. It takes a long time for new features to get updates.
Its access is low and deployment is complicated when this app is handled through a mobile phone.
There can be an issue of time zones in countries with multiple time zones like the United States of America.

Pricing-

It has the following pricing plans-

TimeBill Quick Start- $60 per month for the first five users, then an additional 10$ for every new user.
TimeBill Plus- $22 per month per user
Enterprise Time Tracking (custom pricing)

Final thoughts-

It is very convenient and can be used by architects, non-profit organizations, and consultants.

Go To Replicon

8. Everhour

Everhour is a tracking app that supports both automatic and manual entries. It can monitor the working time of employees along with the number of breaks they took.

All you have to do is upload your time management policy on the app and switch on the alert system to remind the employees of their work goals. Then, this time tracking data will be used to formulate invoices automatically by this app.

It can be used to set the time for a particular task and also monitor the overall time taken to finish it. It can work with the project management software and can also be used to keep a track of the overall budget.

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It will send you alerts whenever there is a chance you are going over the budget. This software usually works well with small to medium-sized teams.

Pros

It has many amazing features for reporting. These features have options that are customizable and flexible.
It can be used to implement project estimates that make you aware whenever you are going over the budget.
Gives an accurate overview of what everyone is doing at a particular time.
It allows adding URL links that can be used to quickly access reports.

Cons

It does not provide a summary of weekly emails.
The information that is presented to non-admin people is not personalized.
It has tight integration that becomes inconvenient when the system changes.
Mobile asp has very limited options and can be improved.

Pricing-

It has a 14-day trial period and after that, the user has to pay 10$ per month per user.

Final thoughts-

This app has many features that can be easily used by remote teams and agencies to keep a track of their employees’ productivity. It is used by many companies and is very effective in increasing work efficiency.

Go To Everhour

9. ActiTIME

With actiTIME, individual team workers can track their own time and can also make entries manually. It provides a segment under the time entries where team members are supposed to write about what they did during the time assigned.

It comes with many project management software that can help to glance at the progress of the entire project at once. You can also set deadlines for a task and upload the budget estimates easily.

It can generate individual timesheets automatically.

Go To ActiTIME

Then you can view those timesheets and approve them before you submit them for your final payroll. It also provides the feature by which you can enter the time you worked and then leave it to the app to calculate the total cost.

Pros

It is very user-friendly and it is very easy to formulate activity plans in this app.
It is easy for admins to reconcile and then formulate reports using this app.
It saves a lot of time when it comes to filling in reports.
It has many features to make detailed reports.It can be used offline as well as online. Even in case of failure, this app will work continuously.

Cons

Integration with any ERP is not possible through this app.
It does not store a copy of the previous week's work in its timesheets.
User archive is not available; therefore, all the details are public.
A calendar in its advanced form does not function well in this app.

Pricing-

It has a free version but it can be used for 1-3 users. For more than that, it has other plans such as-

Online 1-40 users- $7 per user per month
Online 41-200 users- $6 per user per month
Online 200+ users- custom pricing

Final thoughts-

This app comes with advanced time management systems that can be used by IT companies and remote businesses.

Go To ActiTIME

10. ATracker

ATracker is a mobile app that makes tracing easier for you by simply clicking on the start and stop icons of a task. The app does not stop working even if your device stops working or goes into sleep mode.

Its user interface provides tags and color-coding to organize all your tasks in a manner quickly perceivable by you. You can also set alarms and write notes using this app.

It provides the feature to sync all your data across multiple devices, so you won’t have to start from the beginning in case of any changes.

It can also generate pie and bar charts to show how much time is spent on each task. It can also be used to write down the tasks you intend to do the next day.

Go To ATracker

Pros

It provides many options to customize your reports using a wide range of icons.
It can be used to group similar types of activities in one category for easy understanding.
It uses alarms to remind a person of their pending tasks.
Creation of pie and bar charts for better analyses of time and activity.

Cons

It does not store backups efficiently, therefore, there is a threat of losing all the data.
The free version of this app is very limited and will let you add only four tasks for each day.
Difficulty in changing the pre-existing entries.
It can only be used on a mobile phone and it is not compatible with other devices.

Pricing-

ATracker offers a limited free plan. It has two pricing plans-

Pro version- $4.99 per user per month (iOS) and $2.99 per user per month (Android).
Premium membership- $2.99 per user per month.

Final thoughts-

This app can be used by contractors and freelancers and can be used by them to track their progress and productivity.

Go To ATracker

Types of Time Tracking

Timesheet: In this method of time tracking, the employees either manually log the hours spent working or software automatically records working hours using the user activity monitoring (UAM) technology. The software has the added benefit of recording data without the hassle of paperwork.

It stores data in an easily transferable format which can be used to formulate predictions and strategies. The software has now become apps that are easily downloaded into portable devices to provide details from remote locations as well.

Time Recording: This method is automatic and therefore necessarily requires software. This software can be used alone but they are generally used in combination with company accounting systems, project management, salary systems, billing systems and resource allocation systems.

It is a more efficient version of the timesheet method. It also involves recording the usage of various applications, games, the internet and documents on the computing system. These methods can also be used to generate meticulous reports that can be used for a variety of purposes.

Methods of Time Tracking

Companies use a number of methods to monitor the time spent by their employees. Some of them are as follows:

Chronological Method: This method requires the input of start and end timings for a particular task or a workday.
Durational Method: This method requires the input of the duration of the workday or the task and not the specific times.
Clock-in Clock Out Method: this is a manual method of recording the start and end timings.
Automatic Method: This method takes the help of software to calculate the amount of time spent on various activities.
Exception Based Method: This method is the same as the automatic method except for the system factors in leaves and breaks which are a part of the official contract.
Monitoring Method: This method uses software to monitor the activity status of the employees. It records active and idle time.
Location-Based Monitoring Method: This automatic method factors in the location of the employees as well.

Benefits of Time Tracking Apps

Time tracking not only helps in systematizing the workflow, but it also helps in increasing the productivity of the employees. It helps in making predictions and estimations regarding budgetary and time allocations on a project and is useful in strategy formulation.

Time tracking apps collect data that can be analyzed in a number of ways to fulfil a number of purposes. The analysis can reveal where time is being spent unnecessarily and these practices can be speedily rectified. Time tracking inculcates a sense of responsibility and accountability within the employees which ensures that all tasks get finished on time.

How To Use Time Tracking in a Corporate Framework?

Time tracking can provide managers and strategists with insights as to where most of the time goes and how to optimize the workflow in order to get the maximum results and ensure that the projects are completed on time.

Time is an essential commodity and its wastage or inefficient usage leads to the business incurring losses that are quite avoidable. Businesses should make sure to install time tracking apps or software on their systems in order to receive tangible benefits and bring about a noticeable increase in the company’s revenue.

Studies show that keeping a track of time makes people less likely to waste it. Knowing the results of the time tracker motivates employees to finish their work and manage their time better. Time tracking not only gives short term benefits such as accuracy in estimations, payroll charts, billing and systematizing everyday workflow but also yields significant long term benefits as well.

If your company works without time tracking software then it's bound to lose unnecessary capital due to problems related to incorrect resource allocation. For instance, if your company is overstaffed, your office is too big as compared to the number of employees, if there are unnecessary members on your team, if the workflow is not optimum, if you are spending money on services that you no longer use et al. then you lose money.

Thankfully, these problems are avoidable. Using time tracking software allows you to record all these details so that you can keep a check on sources that are causing the cash leak and take steps to stem the flow.

Conclusion

Not all time tracking software is the same, some are more suited to the unique requirements of your company. It, therefore, becomes imperative to conduct detailed market research with a comprehensive comparative analysis which takes into account price, notable features, pros and cons, customer testimonials, client reviews et al to give you a sense of what the position of that software is, in the market and how well it will adapt to suit your needs.

Further insight into this can also be had by visiting individual websites and contacting the customer service and availing free demos which give you an insight into the working of the software. Our article is based on all this and more and it hopes to ease you in the onerous process of decision making.

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