Looking for ways to track the work (billable) hours of your employees? Do you want to be sure that your workforce is working on their projects? Are you tired of obsessively thinking about billable and non-billable hours? Do you want to improve your productivity? If your answer to these questions is ‘yes’ you may want to start using a work hours tracker.
After considering more than 30 work hour tracking tools, we have picked the top 17 employee hour tracking tools for freelancers as well as businesses and created a list.
Here is the list of the 9 best work hours tracker apps.
A Snapshot of 9 Best Work Hours Tracker Apps
1. Time Analytics
The Best Timesheet Management software
Time Analytics is one of the best and easiest to use timesheet management software on the market, and with a reason to be. It offers plenty of benefits for any company. With the help of Time Analytics, you will be able to easily discover who your most valuable clients are and discover the time utilization rates for employees.
Main features and benefits:
- Time tracking across projects and activities
- Timer or Adding time manually
- Timesheets – Daily list of tasks or weekly timesheets with breaks
- Time off tracking
- Transparent invoicing- Time analytics integrates with Excel making invoices an easy task
- Intelligently manage your workforce- Time Analytics helps you have a precise overview of each one of your employees’ strengths and weaknesses so that everyone can work on a project that fits them the best
- Monitor your admin tasks- Know how many hours you are spending on certain activities
- Figure out where you need to make changes- Track how each client’s projects are performing and identify areas where increasing fees is necessary
Pricing plans:
- Starter- 4.99 USD per user, month
- Optimum- 6.99 USD per user, month
Try Time Analytics free for 14 days.
2. ClockIt
Easy-to-use and simple time clock software
ClockIt is a time clock software that tracks employee work hours. ClockIt software comes in handy with custom reporting, Slack integration, web clock, leave accruals and other things. It also offers timesheets that are used to effectively calculate payrolls.
Main features and benefits:
- Generate reports- Time Clock Software meets your time and attendance needs with a dynamic reporting tool
- Shift planning- An intelligent algorithm schedules shifts of employees
- Time clock app- Time Clock App is available for both IOS and Android which enables your employees clock in and out anytime
- Time clock kiosk- Set up a simple time clock kiosk and allow your users to clock in and out from different locations
Pricing– 14-day free trial.
No credit is required during the free trial. The price is set for the entire team.
- XS- 29 USD per month (up to 10 users)
- S- 49 USD per month (up to 20 users)
- M-99 USD per month (up to 50 users)
- L- 199 USD per month (up to 100 users)
3. QuickBooks Time
Employee Work Hours Calculator
QuickBooks Time is a work hour tracker specially designed to track billable hours of the employees, invoicing and scheduling. It is very easy to use and it offers time tracking apps for all devices- PC, Mobile phone, Tablet. QuickBooks Time is a solution for freelancers as well for companies such as construction companies, landscaping businesses, small businesses and more.
Main features and benefits:
- Timesheets- Easily track time and efficiently manage your team
- GPS time tracker- Add a location to each time clock so the managers know exactly where every timesheet is coming from
- Integrations- Sync time tracking data by integrating your chosen accounting software with QuickBooks Time
- Reports- Real-time, interactive reports increase profitability, predict time needs for jobs costs, and more
Pricing- Free trial for 30 days
- Freelancer/ Self-employed
- Simple start- $12.50 per month
- Essentials- $20 per month
- Plus- $35 per month
- Advanced- $75 per month
4. TrackingTime
Project Management and Work Hour Tracker App
TrackingTime is a unique, easy-to-use project management and work hour tracking app made to help both managers, as well as employees, boost their productivity, efficiency, and organization. Because of these reasons, companies of all sorts use TrackingTime. This app offers a wide set of features that benefit the whole team.
Main features and benefits:
- Time Tracker— Start tracking the working hours in one click
- Project Management–– Project management to Improve Teamwork
- Online Timesheet—Simple online sheets for successful payrolls
- Time cards— Easy click in and out thanks to time cards
- Attendance Tracking— Track breaks and attendance
- Time reporting— Keep all your reports organized and in one place
Pricing:
14-day PRO Trial
- Free- (collaboration up to 3 users)
- Pro- $5 per user, per month (unlimited collaboration)
5. Scoro
Work Hour Management Software
Scoro is a time management software that helps businesses with billing, project streaming, utilization optimizing, and others. Scoro also shows you what your time is spending their time on and shows what time is worth.
Main features and benefits:
- Holistic Time Management- Know exactly what you need to work on and when
- Easy-to-use Platform- Choose the way you get your work done
- Profitability- Time is money so make every minute matter
- Integration with your favorite tools- Integrate Scoro with the apps you already use
Pricing: Get started for free, no credit card required
- Essential- 28 USD per user per month
- Work Hub- 42 USD per user per month
- Sales Hub-42 USD per user per month
- Ultimate- Pricing upon request
6. HourStack
A Simple Time Management Tool for Teams of All Sizes
HourStack is a simple-to-use time management software suited for tracking billable hours of the employees, invoicing, and project planning and management. HourStack is the easiest way to boost the productivity of both you and the members of your time so that every task is delivered on time. Start intelligently managing your time now.
Main features and benefits:
- Track with Ease- Log the time without using the calendar
- Analyze with Insight- Visual reports help you improve time utilization
- Plan your success- Build transparent schedules that maximize productive time
- Remote Teams- Monitor work progress of the whole team
Pricing: Free of charge for 14 days, cancel anytime
- Personal- 9 USD per month/annually, 12 USD per month/monthly
- Team- 12 USD per month/annually, 15 USD per month/monthly
7. Everhour
Time Tracking Software with Integrations
Everhour is an accurate time tracker for client invoicing, expenses, billing and budgeting, project management, painless payroll and visual planning. It is a project management tool that will help your company grow and profit.
Main features and benefits:
- Quick Setup- Connect Everhour app with your tool and start tracking working hours
- Native Integration- Time tracking control automatically appear inside your project management tool
- Automatic Updates- Your reports will always show the freshest data
Pricing: 14-day free trial
All-in-one: 10 USD per user per month
8. BigTime
Billing and tracking of your most important assets
BigTime is software created for the purpose of time tracking, billing, and invoicing. Besides this, BigTime also offers a set of features such as resource allocation, project management, reporting and analytics, integrations.
Main features and benefits:
- Time tracking- Easily visible and transparent data of your team members’ activity
- Billing & invoicing- Send custom invoices quickly and effortlessly
- Project management- Organize budgets, expenses, billing, and projection creation
- Reporting & Analytics- Have a clear picture of how your business looks like with the benefit of advanced dashboards, analytics, and reports.
- Integrations- BigTime is cloud-based, designed to be integrated with the apps you use the most such as Google Apps, Slack, and many other.
Pricing: BigTime, besides a free trial, offers three plans:
- Express- 10 USD per month
- Pro- 30 USD per month
- Premier- 40 USD per month
9. My Hours
Report Your Work, Organize Projects, Track Time
My Hours is a work hour tracking app perfectly suitable for freelancers and members of a team who wish to actively manage their time and work hours. It is also completely beginner-friendly which makes it extremely easy to use.
Main features and benefits:
- Timesheet report
- Timer or add manually
- Timesheet view
- Task and project templates
Pricing:
- Free- 0 USD per person who just started using the app
- Pro- 7 USD per person per month
Benefits of Using a Time Tracking App
Forget Excel and Paper Timesheets
Excel and paper timesheets are slowly becoming a relic of the past. Any modern office manager understands that new solutions are available. These new solutions offer options like calculating key metrics per client, task, employee, and other categories.
Old methods don’t allow managers and admins an automated view of users who have completed their timesheets and those who haven’t. That is why simple timesheet programs and hour tracking apps have become popular. Their biggest advantages are their low pricing (usually only a couple of dollars per user per month), and the efficiency they allow. Namely, the users only need a few minutes at the end of their day to log all their work in detail.
Timesheet software often offers time reporting modules, which calculate and allocate hours per different categories – projects, tasks, clients, etc.
Users who haven’t filled out their timesheets for a week will receive a reminder. This decreases the probability of avoiding work tasks and time theft.
Make Logging Time as Simple as a Single Click
Many time tracking platforms offer a complex system with multiple timers and criteria. The process can take quite some time and disrupt the usual workflow. In other words, the employees will end up taking up more time to track time than on work itself.
That is why it is important to choose a time tracker that allows simple and quick time tracking.
Make Sure You Are Secure With Transparent Work Hours Tracking Timesheets for Your Employees and Clients
There aren’t many things more important for a company to do well than its reputation. Accurate invoices are the key to your clients understanding the trustworthiness of your business. Including a bill that lists each item – be it resources or time and expertise needed to complete the project – increases the level of trust your clients have for you.
Work hours trackers allow you to make these invoices as detailed and accurate as possible, answering all potential questions your clients may have about the amount you’ve charged them.
On the other hand, it is equally important to have your employees log their time. Once you have the information about their activity, you will be able to see how truly productive they are. Firstly, you will receive information about whether the employee is respecting the contract they have with the company. Secondly, you will see whether they are achieving the results in line with their peers and your expectations.
A work time tracker offers fair and transparent metrics both for your clients and your employees. It also ensures that the employees will fill their timesheets by sending daily or weekly reminders.
Keep an Eye on Profitability
Time tracking apps offer their users to discover their most valuable clients through project profitability reports.
Work hours tracking apps allow a deeper insight into any business by tracking each client’s project progress and important KPIs. This way you will be able to discover whether you should increase fees or terminate the collaboration with a client.
This way you will be able to focus on increasing your company’s billable time and improving overall client profitability.
Hours Structure Optimization
Each manager and business owner should understand the structure of billable and non-billable hours in their company. Optimizing this structure means reducing the repetitive and menial tasks that don’t contribute to the overall profit of the company. Instead of wasting time on these activities, you can spend it on the tasks and projects with higher billing rates.
Improve Productivity
Employees can also benefit from using an app to track work hours. Starting to track time is usually followed by a rise in productivity. Simply put, employees can see where their time is going, and measure their productivity during the day. Then, they will be able to dedicate their most productive periods to the most demanding tasks, while using the lulls to rest and do administrative or less demanding assignments.
This way they will be able to remain productive while following their natural work rhythm and without overworking themselves.
Regulatory Compliance
Labor laws vary from country to country. That is why it’s necessary to study the laws in your country, or even state. Simply put, some monitoring practices, like taking screenshots of employee devices could go against time tracking regulations.
On the other hand, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) demands accurate records of working hours from each business. So, the areas that fall under the FLSA require some form of time tracking, but the method remains up to the company. Time tracking software solutions maintain and keep these logs automatically. So, if a company is under government audit, all the necessary files are in one place and readily available.
Curb Buddy Punching
Buddy punching is the practice of clocking in instead of a coworker who is running late or has left earlier. Once you start using an hours tracker this way to ‘’steal’’ time becomes impossible.
Buddy punching doesn’t usually make a huge dent in a company’s budget. However, not preventing it in time can encourage other employees to start practicing it and taking it further (being absent for an entire day, for example). That is why it is important to make sure all your employees understand that being honest about their time is a high priority.
75% of businesses in the US suffer from the effects of time theft, according to The American Payroll Association. The total productivity losses were calculated to be $400 billion per year.
Immediately React To Overtime
Overtime has become one of the staples of modern workplaces. Time tracking software notifies business owners or managers of the employees working longer. Multiple situations cause overtime. They range from simply forgetting to clock out, over necessary efforts due to an increase in business to lagging behind because of unnecessary time wasting.
Various overtime regulations protect employee interests. That is why it is crucial to catch on and understand the reasons for overtime in your company. This way you’ll give the right compensation where necessary and can work on improving employee work habits and identifying distractions and problematic behaviors.
An employee time tracker will calculate overtime and allocate the hours to projects and clients automatically.
Prevent Time Theft
Different practices that allow employees to log more hours than they have worked (also known as time theft) result in $11 billion of yearly losses for US employers. Having a system that shows exactly what your employees are doing during their work time is a great way to avoid time theft.
Additionally, your teams will be able to conduct accurate time audits. This way each employee will be able to understand their own work rhythm and adjust their daily tasks to bring productivity up while not exhausting themselves.
Different Forms of Time Theft
- Buddy punching (we have already explained this practice)
- Stand-in attendance – an employee signing in and out instead of an absent coworker
- Late starts and early finishes
- Super long breaks
- Unauthorized overtime – this means overtime isn’t necessary, but the employee is still getting paid for it
- Taking care of personal activities at work
As you can see, there are many ways to commit time theft. A single employee won’t see the significance of their actions. Simply put, five or ten minutes doesn’t seem very important. Except, once these practices become common and widespread in a company, the numbers will add up to quite a sum.
Automatically Track Time Off
Knowing whether your employees are at work, and understanding their planned and emergency time off is an important aspect of any business. Knowing how to plan shifts, as well as whether you’ll be able to rely on a specific employee at a specific date prevents understaffing as well as meeting and shift clashes.
An hour tracking app will automatically log attendance and enable the managers, team leaders, or business owners to plan different activities successfully.
Expense Tracking and Estimates
A time and expense tracking platform will draw the total price of a work hour. This includes direct and indirect costs like office space lease and supplies. The platform then automatically allocates them per project and client.
As you can see, a work hours tracker can be used for cost management too. Simplifying business processes while making them more accurate is beneficial to the total productivity as well.
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Tracking Apps
How does a time tracking app work?
Employees log the time they invest in a specific project, client, or task in. Most systems allow the users to mark the hours they log as either billable or non-billable and give them a field to track their billing rate as well.
Once you create a time tracking sheet, you can use it as a template or recurring task pattern for the future.
You can usually track the time manually or through a stopwatch.
The time tracking app draws all data into its base based on the time the employees have logged. Then it delivers different reports on time usage, productivity, and similar indicators.
How Does a Time Tracker App Address Privacy Concerns?
Implementing a new business practice rarely goes without a problem. Issues are more likely to occur when the said practice concerns their privacy. Time tracking is one of those practices, as it logs and makes observations about an employee’s activities during the entirety of the workday.
That is why making sure your employees’ privacy is protected should be one of your main concerns when choosing a time tracker. That is to say, we suggest using a platform where the employees have some control over the data.
Some platforms track employee time by monitoring the apps and documents they interact with during the day. Others take screenshots of employee computers or track mouse motions and keystrokes.
Clearly, these tracking methods are too invasive and signal a level of distrust. An automatic timesheet program will both give the employers all the key information and allow the employees enough control without unnecessary micromanagement.
How Do the Time Tracking Apps Address Security Concerns?
Time tracking platforms are installed on all company computers, and receive data from all employees. Naturally, some security concerns will arise. Entrusting a third party with such an amount of data, personal and company-related isn’t a simple decision to make. That is why it is important to make sure the platform you are using guarantees security for all users.
Time Analytics takes multiple measures to make sure your data is safe with us. The data is used exclusively by the rules of our Privacy Policy. That means none of your data will ever be sold or used for anything except time tracking and time analysis purposes. We pay great attention to confidentiality and personal as well as business data security. The measures we take are, among other things, technical, administrative, and organizational.
Is an Employee Time Tracking App a Good Fit for Both Small and Large Businesses?
A company of any size can benefit from using a time tracking app. Simply put, accurate employee time tracking will save you time and money no matter the size of your team. It will point to the underlying problems and show both positive and negative practices. It will also save you a lot of effort, as it will help you calculate both invoices and payroll. Even freelancers can use time tracking programs to determine the best way to distribute their time during the day.
Will a Free Time Tracking Application Be Good for My Business?
Some time tracking apps are completely free, while others offer a free plan. The quality of these free options can vary. Using a free program or a free version can be a great option for your business if said software provides all the data you need.
Simply put, some businesses only need a relatively simple solution, while others demand a more complex approach. If the version of the software you’re currently using limits your possibilities significantly, you should look into a paid solution with more options.
How Much Does Time Tracking Software Cost?
Employee time tracking software usually costs only a few euros per employee on a monthly level. This isn’t a big expense for smaller teams. However, larger companies may find the cost burdensome. Hence, some tools offer a discount for a larger number of employees. For example, you may find a plan that suits you on the Time Analytics Pricing page.
Final Thoughts
Wage and time theft cost companies across the world billions of dollars per year. The results of these practices don’t only impact the revenue, but also the reputation of your company.
Salary.com’s statistics show that time-wasting and wage theft are still very prominent. Namely, the data shows that 39% of employees waste up to an hour on non-work-related issues, while 29% waste up to 2 hours. Then there are the extreme cases – 21% of employees waste 5 hours a week, and 3% ‘’steal’’ a quarter of their workweek.
The last year has shown a rise in overall productivity once most employees started working from home. Yet, if this trend is to continue in the future, it is necessary to make sure your employees are using their time the best way they can, while also paying attention to equal and fair work distribution to avoid overwork and burnout. A time tracking system could be the perfect solution if you manage to introduce it as a positive addition to your practices instead of a spying and micromanaging tool.
