When freelancing or doing work for clients, it’s important to keep track of how much time you’re putting into your projects so you can charge them accurately.
You could use paper to mark down the time you start and when you finish, but that’s for people that don’t use computers and think the internet will be the end of civilisation as we know it.
For folks with computers, there are far better ways to do this. Today, you can find a wide range of time-tracking software options online, and in the best news since Leo won his Oscar (finally!), many of them are free. Mahala. For nothing.
It’s only when you need additional features or to roll it out to more users (usually in larger organisations) that they ask you to cough up a modest amount of dough per user.
We are not selfish. We’d like to share this good news with you. Here are three handy timekeeping solutions for you to consider.
Clockify
- Free Forever for an Unlimited Number of Users
- Paid tiers start at $3.99 per user per month
- Integrates with 80+ online productivity tools
- http://www.clockify.com
Clockify is one of the most popular time-trackers on the market, as it doesn’t cost you a cent, and it lets you track time for multiple projects across multiple clients, with integrations for many popular productivity tools (Asana, Slack, Trello, etc.).
But it’s not just for logging work activity; you can also track attendance (clocking in and out every day) and billable hours on your Clockify timesheets. It also offers extensive and detailed reports so you can see an overview of where everything is, and even manage staff leave, create invoices, and record expenses and fees.
Everything you need to know about where things are can be gleaned at once. It can be accessed via the web and its iOS and Android apps. There’s even a “kiosk app” mode that you can use to run Clockify on a tablet if you’d like to give your staff a way to clock in as they walk through the door in the mornings.
It’s pretty feature-packed, but if you want even more, two paid tiers, Basic and Standard, let you do just that. If you want Quickbooks integration, for example, you could look at the Standard tier that’s $5.50 per user per month.
For more information on Clockify, check out their website, which features a very useful demo video that walks you through what you need to know.
Toggl Track
- Free for up to 5 users
- Paid tiers start at $9 per user per month
- 100+ integrations
- http://www.toggl.com
TogglTrack is another good time-tracking tool, but it’s somewhat pricy compared to others. Fortunately, what TogglTrack offers for free is quite comprehensive, at least for small teams of people. Aimed at freelancers and “micro teams” of up to 5 people, TogglTrack lets you track your time across projects and for different clients.
You’ll be able to see at a glance where you spend your time, and what your actual billable hours are, and it’s all presented in a handy calendar view that makes for easy reference. You can do this on their desktop and mobile clients, so you can update your information from anywhere.
TogglTime offers one-click timers, a project dashboard that lets you forecast budgets and timelines, and detailed weekly reports.
- The internet says people like these things about TogglTrack:
- The app’s project/client segmentation
- Its excellent reports and analytics
- The many, many app integrations
- The user interface
- The ability to add labels to organise work and time
When you opt for the paid tiers, you get even more. Check out what each offers here.
Harvest
- Free for 1 seat and 2 projects
- $10.80 per user, unlimited seats, unlimited projects
- 70+ integrations
- http://www.getharvest.com
Harvest isn’t free for more than one user and two projects, but it’s a powerful timekeeping, reporting, project tracking, and invoicing solution that can be deployed in businesses of any size for R200 per month or so for each person.
“Free” certainly sounds better than this, and you can absolutely go for those free options over Harvest for your time-tracking needs, but Harvest is more than just a time-tracker. It is an all-in-one business solution if you want to issue invoices based on the time your staff commits to projects and receive payments without needing separate software.
Other time-tracking software like the ones already mentioned here can do that, but their invoicing function doesn’t include payment options for clients to make it easier to get paid. Harvest, on the other hand, does. It integrates with external accounting packages to keep business accounts in sync, too.
Using Harvest is also a very pleasant experience thanks to a streamlined interface that doesn’t require much training to get users comfortable with it. Its reporting capabilities are likewise excellent, providing detailed visual reports to help business owners get their heads around what’s happening at any given time.
Conclusion
Since Clockify and Toggl Track offer a lot of their core functionality for free, and Harvest has a 30-day trial, you can try all of these out for yourself to see which one has the functions and features that work best for you.
With smart use of timekeeping software like the packages above, you can more accurately track billable hours, manage project time, and keep up with things thanks to detailed reports. And those are goals worth pursuing.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
