The Best Employee Time Tracking Software in 2024
With increasing workloads, tight deadlines, and the need to maximize productivity, organizations are constantly seeking ways to enhance efficiency and streamline their operations.
This is where employee time tracking software comes into play, offering a powerful solution to monitor and optimize time usage.
Looking for the most effortless and accurate time tracking tool for your team?
Turn time tracking into a task so easy that your team will even enjoy it
By implementing reliable employee time-tracking apps, businesses can gain valuable insights into how employees allocate their time, identify areas of improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance productivity.
In this article, we’ll explore the best employee time tracking software available in the market today and provide insights on how to choose the best software.
We’ll examine their features, functionalities, and unique advantages, empowering you to make an informed decision when choosing the greatest app for employee time tracking.
The 10 best employee time tracking software
1. Timeular
Timeular stands out as the most effortless, accurate, and best employee time tracking app on the market today.
With a remarkable rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Capterra, and more than 30,000 teams served, it has proven to be a reliable and efficient time-tracking app that allows its users to save up to 90% of the time they usually spend on time tracking.
Timeular provides a user-friendly interface that allows seamless time tracking without distractions.
With multiple tracking options, including calendar view, keyboard shortcuts, and the Timeular tracker — a physical device with 8 sides representing different activities — Timeular makes it easy for the entire team to adopt the time tracking habit.
Track your time with a physical Tracker
Build a habit using muscle memory and a powerful physical reminder. All new users get 2 months free subscription when connecting a new Tracker.
Timeular helps teams increase productivity with little effort — using different features, you can measure productivity by efficiency, revenue, or impact.
One of Timeular’s most exciting features is the time-tracking cube – a physical tracker. When flipping the eight-side die with an activity facing up, the software starts automatically to track time for that peculiar task. The tracker is helpful in building muscle memory and reinforcing the habit of time-tracking.
Moreover, Timeular is specifically suited for teams who need to track billable vs. non-billable hours. With its intuitive interface and keyboard shortcut, switching from one activity to another is a piece of cake.
Teams can collaborate in a shared folder, tracking time collectively so supervisors can have a unique report to look at. With Timular, team leaders stop chasing timesheets because they have all the time tracking data in one place already, presented with intuitive graphs and charts. Another great Timeular feature for teams is leave tracking. Timeular allows you to effortlessly track overtime and all types of leaves, providing comprehensive control over your work schedule.
Automatically track your team’s time with no effort
Why spend 5-10 minutes per day entering a handful of made up time entries, if you can track everything, even the little things, in <1 minute per day?
Timeular has integration capabilities with over 3,000 apps, allowing users to track time with tools like Jira, connect with their calendars, and export data in various formats such as CSV, PDF, or Excel.
Timeular is the best app for employee time tracking for professionals and companies in consulting, law, marketing agencies, design, and other industries where it is crucial to track billable hours.
Timeular enables them to optimize time management, enhance productivity, and accurately track time for billing and project management purposes.
Timeular Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use: Timeular’s intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it incredibly easy for users to track time accurately and efficiently. | 30-day free trial but no free plans |
| Versatile: The app and its features are highly adaptable to individual, team, and business needs and processes. | |
| Data accuracy: Timeular’s user-friendly approach ensures that the tracked data is more accurate than other solutions, minimizing discrepancies. | |
| Team Folders: Makes it easier to work and collaborate for the common goal of a team. | |
| Track billable hours: Allows teams and individuals to accurately track billable and non-billable hours | |
| Physical time tracker: The Tracker’s physical nature makes it easy to establish a time tracking habit through muscle memory, ensuring users never forget to track their time again. |
Related article: The best time tracking apps for designers
2. Clockify
Clockify is an employee time tracking app that allows employees to track time across various projects, create timesheets, and generate insightful reports. Its user-friendly interface and integrations with popular project management tools make it a cost-effective choice for businesses looking to improve time management.
However, despite Clockify’s overall acclaim, users have reported encountering frequent bugs in its Android app. While the user interface remains intuitive, the mobile app experiences sluggish processing times and frequent crashes.
Additionally, the app’s functionality is significantly hindered without an internet connection.
Given Clockify’s affordable pricing plans and range of features, we can say that it’s the best free time tracking software for employees solution for most businesses that don’t require a 100% foolproof tool.
Read also: Clockify vs Toggl Track: which one should you pick
Clockify Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| It’s free: Clockify is free, with unlimited users and time tracking. | Stability: Some users experience occasional glitches while using the mobile app. |
| Integrations: Clockify integrates with more than 80 web apps, and the setup process is very simple. | Limited features: Invoicing is not available in the free plan; The software also lacks integrations with payroll providers; No screenshot feature. |
| Price: many users consider the non-free packages expensive, considering the features available. | |
| Reporting and analytics: The available features are limited for those who want detailed reports. | |
| Tracking: You can’t pause sessions; you have to stop it and create a new one. |
Free eBook: How to plan your team’s time?
A step-by-step guide into the best techniques to manage your team’s time and implement a time tracking method
3. RescueTime
Known to be a great alternative to HoursTracker, RescueTime is a time tracking tool that focuses on helping individuals and teams understand and improve their digital productivity.
RescueTime offers Focus sessions, enabling teams to monitor and optimize time usage, ensuring maximum efficiency effectively.
This feature allows businesses to selectively designate which websites contribute to productivity while identifying and managing those that hinder progress. Moreover, users can limit disruptive notifications from other applications.
The app also generates detailed reports that offer a comprehensive overview of how you spend your time, categorizing activities into productive and unproductive segments.
This software has a free version. At US$12/month, the Premium version contains calendar and music integration, history reports, and warmups for Focus Sessions.
Note: For any business or team that wants to implement this tool, we advise full transparency with your employees. Otherwise, they may think you are “spying”/micromanaging them. Even with this feature, RescueTime is one of the best attorney time-tracking software.
RescueTime Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Automatic time tracking: RescueTime operates in the background and automatically tracks your time spent on different websites, applications, and activities. | Limited manual input: If you need to track offline activities or tasks that are not captured automatically, you may find this feature lacking. |
| Goal setting and alerts: RescueTime allows you to set productivity goals and receive alerts when you spend excessive time on non-productive activities. | Limited integration options: Its integration ecosystem is relatively limited compared to other time tracking tools. |
| Mobile and desktop apps: It offers both mobile and desktop applications, ensuring seamless tracking across devices. | Privacy concerns: As RescueTime tracks your activities in the background, some users may have concerns about privacy and data security. |
Read also: Alternatives to RescueTime
4. Toggl
Toggl is a well-known employee time tracker that enables users to track time across various projects, tasks, and clients. It offers many features, including time tracking, project management, and reporting capabilities.
Its intuitive interface allows teams to create projects, add tags, and start and stop the timer with a single click. Furthermore, users can track billable hours and generate reports on their time usage.
With its one-click timers, Toggl ensures ease and efficiency, and you can run multiple timers simultaneously.
Toggl also offers compatibility between your phone and computer, allowing you to initiate a timer in your browser and pause it on your phone. Despite not being essential, having a feature in some cases might be good.
The reporting and analytics features are somewhat limited, resulting in restricted insights into your time-tracking data.
Toggl is a reliable time-tracking tool for lawyers, freelancers, and project managers who need to track their time and manage their tasks. However, while it is a good option for those looking for a primary time tracking tool, it may not be the ideal choice for those who need a high level of accuracy and reporting and analytics features
Toggl Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy setup: Its setup is very simple, allowing users to start tracking time without significant disruptions. | Price: many users consider the non-free packages expensive, considering the features available. |
| Easy to use: It’s very easy to use. No extensive training for employees is required. | Accuracy: Ease of forgetting to switch between activities when tracking time, resulting in less accurate reports. |
| Free version: Toggl’s free version — while limited — offers a range of services, allowing employees to track time and export reports. It’s a great way to test the app. | Limited features: Toggl sticks to time tracking; it does not include functions like invoicing or scheduling, for example. |
| Reporting and analytics: The available features are limited for those who want detailed reports. |
5. Hubstaff
Hubstaff is one of the best employee time tracking software that offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to monitor and manage employee time effectively.
It provides accurate time tracking, GPS-based location monitoring, project management, and invoicing functionalities.
This software is a reliable and efficient tool for managing teams and tracking time. The automatic time tracking feature eliminates the need for manual entry and ensures accurate recording of work hours, making payroll and invoicing processes smoother.
The GPS tracking feature is handy for mobile workers, allowing managers to stay up-to-date on their location and optimize resource allocation.
Despite being one of the best time tracking software for employees, Hubstaff can be quite intrusive for some people and promote toxic micromanagement. This happens because Hubstaff tracks employees’ keyboard and mouse activity by measuring the frequency of a user’s mouse and keyboard strokes with activity levels.
Hubstaff Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use: Hubstaff is easy to use and it has a user-friendly extension and app. | Extension: The Chrome Extension could use some work as it crashes frequently. |
| Price: Hubstaff offers a free trial for 14 days. It has a free plan for individuals. | Privacy: Some users feel uncomfortable with the level of monitoring provided. |
| Flexibility: Smaller teams or organizations with a more flexible work structure might find the software to be too robust for them. | |
| Integrations: Hubstaff integrates with over 30 apps, which is not much compared to other options on the market. |
Tired of Hubstaff?
Find the best alternatives to Hubstaff in our recent article.
6. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is an employee time-tracking app designed to enhance overall team productivity.
This platform enables you to identify areas of high and low productivity within your team while offering the ability to monitor both billable and non-billable hours.
All plans provide ample time tracking tools such as time entries, automatic time tracking, idle time tracking, and daily and weekly timesheets.
Join thousands of teams using Timeular
“Since we started using Timeular, we’ve never made another mistake in planning, creating accurate proposals or budgeting for clients” – AC Coppens, Founder of THE CATALYSTS
Paid plans offer additional features, including productivity and time-budget reports, billing and invoicing capabilities, unlimited third-party integrations, and user role assignments.
TimeCamp’s mobile app allows you to accurately track time for your projects, whether you’re on your commute to the office or back home.
This software has a rating of 3.8 stars on the Google Play Store, with some users pointing out bugs that make the experience less than perfect.
TimeCamp Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Forever-free plan: TimeCamp’s free plan allows for unlimited users, projects, and tasks. | Data accuracy: Some users experience problems with data accuracy. |
| Limited features: The free version sticks to time tracking, not including features like invoicing or scheduling, for example. | |
| Android App: User reviews on Google point out bugs in the app. |
7. Timely
Timely is an AI-powered automatic employee time tracking software that promises to provide precise daily records of all the time you spend in documents, meetings, emails, websites, and video calls with zero effort.
Timely’s most unique feature is the Memory Tracker. This feature allows users to switch between tasks, apps, and meetings while it quietly operates in the background, eliminating the need for manual entry.
The Memory Tracker automatically records employees’ activities across different apps and devices and then creates comprehensive timelines, and provides detailed insights into time allocation.
Regarding data security, Timely doesn’t support employee screenshots, keystroke monitoring, or any other surveillance tactics.
Timely Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to use: Timely’s interface is quite intuitive and user-friendly. | Price: Timely doesn’t have a free version. |
| Memory tracker feature: It operates seamlessly in the background, keeping track of all the tasks and activities you engage with throughout your day. | Accuracy: The AI tool needs improvement when it comes to tracking time accurately. |
| Privacy: Timely has a strict anti-surveillance policy that doesn’t allow screenshots and security breaches. | Limited features: Timely does not allow invoicing option. |
Read also: The best Timely alternatives
8. ClickUp
ClickUp is a versatile project management tool that also includes a time-tracking functionality.
With features like timers, timesheets, and reporting, ClickUp allows users to track time spent on tasks, projects, and other activities.
Additionally, ClickUp offers integrations with popular time tracking tools, allowing teams to sync data between ClickUp and external time tracking apps, if desired.
This flexibility lets users choose the time-tracking solution that best fits their needs while leveraging ClickUp’s comprehensive project management features.
ClickUp is one of the best project management tools that allows time tracking. For this reason, it may be overwhelming for teams looking only for an easy-to-use and accurate time-tracking solution.
ClickUp Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| User-friendly interface: ClickUp has an intuitive and user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate. | Learning curve: Navigating through ClickUp’s functionalities and understanding how to set up time tracking effectively can take some time and effort. |
| Comprehensive solution: ClickUp offers a wide range of project management features alongside its time tracking functionality. | Feature overload: While ClickUp’s feature-rich nature can be an advantage, it may also be overwhelming for users who only require basic time tracking. |
| Integrations: ClickUp integrates with various popular tools and platforms. | Limited offline access: ClickUp primarily operates online, which means you need an internet connection to access and use its time tracking features. |
| Limited time tracking features and reporting |
Read also: ClickUp Time Tracking Integration
9. QuickBooks Time
Known to be a reliable replacement for the Time Doctor app, QuickBooks Time is a time-tracking and employee scheduling software designed to help businesses efficiently manage and track employee hours.
With QuickBooks Time, users can create employee work schedules, track and manage employee time for payroll purposes, and invoice clients based on billable hours. It also features GPS time tracking to oversee and coordinate mobile teams and geofencing tracking as a reminder for employees to clock in or out upon entering or leaving a job site.
Real-time reports provide live-time monitoring of employees currently on the job, while the inclusion of overtime alerts helps you avoid exceeding your budgeted hours. Furthermore, you can easily track and approve employee timesheets through the convenience of a mobile or desktop app.
QuickBooks Time offers various plans, each comprising a monthly base fee along with a monthly per-user fee.
Read also: QuickBooks time tracking integration
QuickBooks Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| User-friendly interface: The software offers a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and understand. | Pricing: It has a monthly base fee along with a monthly per-user fee. Depending on the size of your team, the cost may be a consideration. |
| Integrations: It integrates smoothly with other QuickBooks products like QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Payroll. | Mobile app limitations: Some users may find that the mobile app lacks certain features or experiences occasional performance issues |
| Employee scheduling: The software includes employee scheduling capabilities, allowing businesses to manage work shifts and optimize workforce allocation. | Limited offline access: It primarily operates online, meaning an internet connection is required to use the software. |
10. Harvest
To conclude our top of the best employee time tracking software, we choose Harvest.
Harvest is a comprehensive time tracking tool that offers a range of features to streamline time management. Besides making time tracking easier, Harvest also helps users automate invoicing and reporting.
Harvest has quite a long list of integrations, such as analytics & reporting apps, productivity, and finance tools.
This software is accessible through various platforms, including an online version, desktop software, and a dedicated mobile app.
Realistically, Harvest doesn’t present anything groundbreaking but works for those needing a simple app.
While Harvest offers solid functionality, its score on the Google Play Store is only 2,8. Recently, it has been receiving criticism for the latest updates that, according to users, have made the app slow and difficult to use.
If this app doesn’t suit your need, you might be interested in our post on time tracker alternatives to Harvest.
Harvest Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free plan: Harvest offers a free trial for 30 days although it’s limited to one user and two projects. | Stability: Users report that recent updates to the mobile app created glitches and made the app slower. |
| Responsiveness: Track time wherever you work — desktop, browser, and mobile | Difficult to use: Users are generally not happy with the new interface and say it became overly complicated, slow, and clunky. |
| Connectivity: Some users have reported occasional issues with working offline. |
How to choose the best employee time tracking app?
Choosing an employee time tracking app requires careful consideration of several key factors. Here are some important aspects to keep in mind:
- Features and functionality: Look for software that offers comprehensive time tracking capabilities, such as task management, timesheet creation, real-time monitoring, reporting capabilities, and integration options.
- User-friendliness: Opt for software that’s intuitive and easy to use.
- Mobile accessibility: Mobile accessibility and compatibility across different operating systems is crucial. Look for software that enables employees to track their time from anywhere.
- Scalability: Consider your organization’s future growth and select a software solution that can scale alongside your expanding needs.
- Integrations: Consider software that seamlessly integrates with your existing systems, such as project management tools, calendars, and communication platforms.
- Data security: Prioritise software that provides robust security measures to protect sensitive employee and client data.
- Pricing and affordability: Evaluate the software’s pricing structure, including any additional costs for extra features or user licenses, to ensure it fits within your budget.
By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision and choose the employee time tracking software that best aligns with your organization’s needs and goals.
Conclusion
Implementing effective employee time tracker can significantly improve productivity, streamline workflows, and optimize resource allocation within your organization.
By considering the features, user-friendliness, integration capabilities, and scalability of different time tracking tools, you can select the best solution that aligns with your specific business needs.
Embrace the power of team time tracking software to unlock the full potential of your workforce and drive success in your endeavors!
FAQ
Time tracking tools are software applications designed to help individuals and organizations monitor and record the amount of time spent on various tasks, projects, or activities.
The best way to track time for employees is through dedicated time tracking apps. These apps offer features such as automated time capture, timers, and detailed reporting, enabling accurate tracking of working hours.
Time tracking software operates by capturing, recording, and analyzing data related to employees’ work activities. This can be achieved through manual input, automated tracking based on app usage or computer activity, or integration with other tools.
Yes, employee time tracking software is legal. However, it’s important to comply with relevant labor laws and regulations to ensure fair treatment of employees. It’s advisable to consult legal counsel to understand the specific legal requirements applicable to your organization and country.
You might be interested in the following: