Are you struggling to motivate your team to put in the required hours at work? Perhaps you’re a small business owner looking to track productivity, time tracking software could help, as much as salesforce training online. It is also used by service providers and freelancers to monitor and verify work.

Consultants, agents, web designers, lawyers and others who charge per hour require more than a clock to manage a clients’ project. Time tracking tools give businesses and individuals the opportunity to track hours, even the intervals which an employee or worker spends on specific tasks.

It uses a digital clock-punching system to quantify time taken to complete an assignment. For small businesses, the best time tracking software should be easy-to-use, affordable and provide multiple time entry options. The employee tracking app should also manage invoices and projects and create detailed reports.

Harvest

For many years, Harvest led the race as the best all-in-one time tracking software. It is user-friendly, affordable and includes features that make it easy to manage a project’s full life cycle. Harvest is ideal for small businesses, contractors and even solo entrepreneurs with no employees. They offer a free plan as well as a paid plan starting at $12 per month.

Can’t afford to pay $12 a month? Harvest offers three pricing plans between $0 and $12, so you choose what you can afford and what you need it to be able to do.  The free plan is ideal if you’re managing a few projects and you’re not sharing data access with anyone else.

ezClocker

ezClocker is a simple to use time tracking and scheduling software for small businesses. Ideal for construction, janitorial, and landscape companies. If you have a small team and need an easy to use software without all the fancy and complicated features then ezClocker is a good fit for you. Some of the features you get with ezClocker are notifications where employees get notified when a new schedule is published so no more excuses about not knowing they were scheduled or not. ezClocker also provides an option that you control to allow employees to view their co-workers’ schedules to know who was going to be on the shift with them that day.

TSheets by QuickBooks

Tsheets is an amazing time tracking software for businesses whose employees work in the field. It has a GPS tracker that allows employers track the precise location of employees throughout the day.

Similar to Harvest, TSheets offers a free plan to solo entrepreneurs and small business owners who don’t need to add users.  Monthly paid plans start at $5 per active user. A unique feature is the intuitive pop-out window navigation. The robust platform provides a friendly UI, deep reporting, open API for third party integrations and customisable options.

Indy

Indy is a convenient tool that lets you clock in with the simple click of a button and hit pause anytime you take a break. The time tracker allows you to filter your timesheets in different ways so you can get an overview of your work hours and tasks. At the end of the week or month you can link your hours to an invoice, so all you have to do is add your hourly rate before sending the document to a client.

FreshBooks

This is a module within invoicing and accounting app where employees log hours from wherever they are. The software automatically generates invoices, which are sent to the client.

FreshBooks is ideal for freelancers who need time tracking software that automates customer billing and payment. It’s more expensive than Harvest at $15 a month. However, you enjoy features such as expense and income tracking.

Mavenlink

Mavenlink is time tracking software that makes it easy for employees to collaborate, swap shifts and ensure projects are fully-staffed.

The weekly schedule viewer makes it easy to see the tasks and the number of hours employees spend on them. Project managers can shift and edit from within the timesheet in favour of employees who don’t like working on the same task or project for too long.

A huge benefit of Mavenlink is the full-featured project management platform that makes it a good fit for midsize and small businesses with a robust budget. It’s easily the most expensive software on this list at $39 per month.

Wrike

Wrike is more than just a time tracking app. It provides the speed and efficiency required to manage remote teams. Multi-functional groups collaborate via the cloud-based platform to work effectively. You can plan, schedule, discuss, prioritise and track team tasks in real time.

To make the best use of Wrike, ensure your employees or contractors are connected to a strong and stable internet connection. Cloud hosting allows you to streamline the process and ensure employees are connected to your workplace wherever they go. Options in New Zealand include Web drive, Web Slice and Openhost web hosting.

Toggl

Toggl is good time tracking software for individuals and freelancers and includes an invoicing solution, but you cannot transfer hours to an invoice within Toggl. The free plan doesn’t include the expense and invoicing tracking, and creating estimates is only available in the premium and starter plans.

Toggl offers an easy to use tracking interface that lets you assign tasks on the go. It includes a web interface, mobile apps and browser extension. The detailed reporting functionality helps you generate client’s reports or analyse where you spent time. Starter plans start from $10 a month per user and $20 a month for the premium plan.

Desklog

Paymo

This amazing tool is work management, project management and time tracking software all in one. It was designed to help businesses manage projects from end to end.

Paymo is loaded with features and tools for resource scheduling, team collaboration, task management, invoicing, time sheet reporting and automatic time tracking. Ultimately, small businesses can seamlessly manage an entire project.

There are 3 pricing plans. The free plan includes Kanban Boards, Simple To Do Lists, motivational time tracking and offline Desktop & Mobile Apps. Paid plans include small office plans from $11.95 a month per user and business plans from $18.95 a month per user.

Hubstaff

When Hubstaff started out in 2012, the goal was to help small businesses manage remote teams. Today, Hubstaff time tracker provides a robust solution that includes project management tools, online time sheets and a payroll system.

The software also includes activity levels and optional randomised screenshots for deeper productivity tracking. Hubstaff supports integration with business apps such as Salesforce, Asana and Quickbooks.

Similar to Harvest, Hubstaff offers a free plan called solo lite. You get limited screenshot, time tracking and activity levels to view your progress. Paid plans start from $5 a month per user, basic, and $9 a month for the premium plan.

DeskTime

Desktime combines project management, employee monitoring and productivity analysis. Managers and team members can identify unproductive habits and sort applications and web pages into “unproductive” and “productive”.

DeskTime automatically calculates daily efficiency and productivity levels based on categorisation of programmes, URLs and apps. DeskTime has a free version that includes app tracking, time tracking and access to the mobile app.

The premium version is DeskTime Pro starting from $7 a month per user. In addition to the features of the free version, it includes data history, billing rates, windows title tracking, projects, screen shots, vacation and absence tracking.

In Conclusion

When researching a time tracking app, think of the software that serves most of the features you need. Ideally, the best time tracking software will include reports, project management, timesheets, invoicing, integration and customer support.