The Best Time Tracking Software for Freelancers and Small Business

If you are a freelancer, self-employed or small business owner, you know how important it can be to track your time. Whether you are keeping track of billable work for different clients, tracking the percentage of time you are spending on marketing or even tracking the other tasks you do in your day, time tracking can be a great way to stay organized. There are a lot of time tracking software out there. I was looking for something that could be used with more than one person, track different projects, clients and tasks, keep track of billable time as not all my time is billable, provide robust reporting, and is easy to use. Here is a review of my experiences.

1. Toggl

Toggl is hands-down my favorite time tracking software. It was the first one I started using and I went back to it after I was done experimenting with others. Toggl is a straight-forward and intuitive way to track your time. Here are some of the features you will get.

Tracking Time

Tracking time with Toggl is easy. All you do is select the project and client (needs to be configured ahead of time), and click start. You can manually edit your time and add entries as well. If you leave your time running for too long, Toggl will send you an email to let you know that you may have forgotten to press “stop”. You can even track your time from a desktop version or mobile phone app.

Reporting

As with free or free time tracking software (or even low-cost), the reporting provided by Toggl is quite robust. For any period of time you can get a high level overview of where you time was spent and you can even get a detailed overview. You can view time spent overall, by project or by client. You can even see a detailed breakdown of different tasks performed and how long they took. You can also run reports for individual members of your team.

Project Management Integration

Another great thing about Toggl is that it integrates with a number of different project management softwares including Asana, Basecamp, Freshbooks, GitHub and Teamweek. Here is an article on the Asana integration which is the free project management software I use.

Billable Rates

In the paid version of Asana which is very reasonably priced, you can set billable rates for your projects so you can keep track of both billable time and non-billable time. You can set your standard hourly rate, a project hourly rate, and even a team member hourly rate if you have multiple members on your team with different rates.

Scale-able Team Size

In the free version of Toggl, you can have up to 5 members on your team. If you upgrade to the paid version, you can have an unlimited team size.

Conclusion

Toggl is a very solid product and has a lot of integrations. It isn’t good for invoicing but if you have a good invoicing system you may not need it. I have been using this for over a year and even if i stray away, I seem to always return!

2. Ding

I tired out Ding in their 45 day free trial. The person I was working with at the time said we just had to try it because the interface was so sexy and easy to use! This is very true. If you want the sharpest-looking time tracking software then go with Ding. While I have very few gripes with Toggl and use it daily, Ding is a little bit more intuitive to use.

Tracking Time

Tracking time is straightforward in Ding, as it is most software. You press start, stop, and select which client or project you are working on. You can also take some notes with your entry. See how sexy it is? There is also a phone app that works really well.

Reporting

The main reason I switched away from Ding is the lack of reporting. While you can look at all of your entries, it doesn’t have visual graphics like Toggl does or other time tracking software. Honestly, this may or may not be a big deal, it depends how much data you want and what you want to do with it.

Project Management Integration

Ding does not have any integrations. If you want anything integrated, this could be a deal breaker for you. However, if you are a team of one or two and don’t utilize a project management software anyways or its usage is minimal, this may be just fine. This wasn’t a deal breaker for me… the fee for not many features was.

Billable Rates

This is my favorite feature of Ding! It is really easy to set billable rates for differnet clients and projects. The best part is that it shows you how much money you have made throughout the day, week, month, etc. and this can be very motivating. Other softwares do not show you this on the main dashboard. I say this feature would probably be most attractive to the individual freelancer.

Scale-able Team Size

In the $10/month version of Ding you can have one team member: yourself! For $25/month you can have an unlimited team size. These are the only two pricing options.

Conclusion

I think Ding is a pretty nice product. It seems like the guys that created it had a lot of passion but I’m not sure if it’s being upgraded anymore. There are a lot of things i would like to see done with it and even though $10/month is nothing at all, small expenses as a business owner add up. This may be a cheap price to pay though for freelancers who have a lot of work, multiple clients, and really need to keep track of billable work and when they have invoiced for the work. I don’t know what other time tracking software allow you to mark time as invoiced.

3. Harvest

Harvest is the third time tracking software I have tried. This is the most robust of the three, has the most features, and also costs the most so it’s not good for all small businesses until they cross over some threshold where the free stuff no longer suits their needs. Harvest has more integrations than any other time tracking software I have seen

Time Tracking

The time tracking is simple like with the other software I have reviewed. Click to start, click to stop, and do it on the go with a mobile app.

Reporting

Harvest has great reporting capabilities. The reports are visual, intuitive to read, and you can apply a number of different filters to the reports. You can also see billed vs. unbilled hours as well as invoiced vs. un-invoiced which is helpful.

Invoicing

Unlike the other two softwares, Harvest has the ability to send invoices. You can customize the invoices with your company logo and even get paid online. It is also possible to set up a retainer.

Project Management Integration

Harvest integrates with Basecamp, Asana, Co-op, Trello and even more popular project management softwares. It also integrates with Xero, MYOB, Zendesk, Quickbooks, and many more. Check out this page for a complete list of integrations.

Billable Rates

Harvest has the ability to set different billable rates for different projects. You can even mark projects as invoiced or non-invoiced. You can even set retainers! This is awesome.

Scale-able Team Size

As this software has more features, the price is a bit more. The free version is for one user, 4 clients and 2 projects. The other packages are listed below.

Conclusion

I think Harvest can be a great solution for many people. At this point in time, I am not using it because I try to keep expenses low (important for startups) and I don’t believe the integration with Quickbooks is quite seamless enough. Other time tracking software does what I need it to with an unlimited team size for a fraction of the cost. But if you are looking for one software that does it all, Harvest may be the way to go.