By tracking your time, you can develop a better understanding of priorities and create more accurate invoices. To get started, choose from these 5 best apps for tracking time.
When you work for yourself, being efficient with your time can help you turn a healthy profit, whereas letting time slip by on projects can hurt your bottom line. The solution to this nagging issue is to find a way to track how much time you spend on each contract (or job).
Experienced business owners leverage time trackers to get the most out of their time and boost the profit margins they achieve from each project. A trial-and-error approach could certainly help you find a good time-tracking tool, but we’ve saved you the hassle.
Keep reading to see what must-have features make a good time-tracking tool and pick from the 5 best time-tracking apps on the market.
Jump to:
- Must-have features for time-tracking apps
- HoneyBook
- TimeCamp
- Toggl
- MyHours
- Paymo
- What is the best time tracking app?
Must-have features for time-tracking apps
Your search for the best time-tracking software should begin with a basic level of functionality if you want to use them as business tools.
For a small business owner or freelancer, time trackers should have the following features:
- Offer both automatic and manual time tracking
- Allow you to input detailed notes on your time logs
- Connect and assign tracked time to different projects and clients
- Automatically calculate project costs
- Easily generate invoices based on tracked time and cost
The minimum requirement for a time tracker is that it operates like a stopwatch. You hit the “start” button, the time starts tracking; you hit the stop button, the tracker stops, and you have the total amount of time that’s passed. While rudimentary, that in itself is data you can use to benefit your business.
For example, if you’re working on a flat-rate project, you can use that time data to calculate your hourly rate. A $300 project might sound great, but if it takes you two 8-hour days to complete, you’ve walked away with less than $19/hour on the project before tax. That’s hardly sustainable for a small business owner, especially given your invoiced amount is collected pre-tax.
Developing a better understanding of how you spend your time can help you strategize methods to improve your efficiency, like using timeboxing. That knowledge is actionable, as it allows you to drop projects or services that aren’t profitable for your business, adjust the way you do work to improve your project value, or even restructure your schedule in a way that makes your time more productive.
Overall, a good time tracker for small business owners not only tracks time but also saves you hours each month in accounting and billing.
1. HoneyBook
Overall, HoneyBook offers a full clientflow platform for capturing leads, booking clients, and delivering services. Its core features help enhance and speed up the booking process, which is why its time tracking + billing software is so helpful.
The HoneyBook time tracker is available on desktop as well as through its mobile app for both iPhone and Android users. You can use the stopwatch feature to start automatically tracking your time in real time, or log your time manually.
You can view all of your time spent as different entries in your time report. Within the report, you can also mark each entry as billable or non-billable hours, download it as a CSV, or add the time entries to a specific project.
The HoneyBook time tracker integrates with the rest of the clientflow platform, so you can easily generate invoices, track your payments, and run your business all in one place (finally!).
2. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is primarily a time tracking platform, but it also offers project management capabilities. With TimeCamp, you can track your time via desktop or app, create invoices and timesheets, and manage your budgets.
TimeCamp is especially useful for businesses with teams, since you can it to create Kanban boards and to-do lists, team planning, team chats, and more.
Though TimeCamp also offers a lot of integrations, it isn’t an all-in-one platform. So, if you’re looking for more than time tracking and project management, it may not be the best fit.
3. Toggl
Toggl offers a few different products, including Toggl Track, Toggl Plan, and Toggl Hire. If you’re just looking for time tracking, you’ll want to go with Toggl Track. With this tool, Toggl stands out because it offers more payroll features than other time-tracking apps.
So, if you manage team members, Toggl can be the best option to track your employees’ time and conduct payroll in one place. Like other time-tracking tools, it also invoicing capabilities, reporting, and budgeting.
Though Toggl also doesn’t offer a lot of additional features for business management, you can also use Toggl Plan and Toggl Hire. Toggl Plan offers visual resource planning and tracking tools, which can pair nicely with your time tracking.
4. MyHours
If you’re used to tracking your time in a spreadsheet but you’re ready for something more robust, MyHours is the way to go. This time-tracking tool is specifically designed for business owners who need timesheets.
Like other popular tools, you can use a timer or log your time manually. What’s great about MyHours is that it lets you organize and categorize your time for more efficient tracking. You can add custom fields, tags, and descriptions to all of your time entries.
MyHours will also remind you to track your time, so it’s great if you need to consistently track in real time.
5. Paymo
Like Toggl, Paymo is another time-tracking app that stands out for its payroll features. But what’s great about Paymo is that it also offers robust project management tools.
If you manage a small team, you can use Paymo to track time, pay your employees, and manage your projects from start to finish. Paymo also provides online invoicing and payments, but that’s where it stops. If you’re also looking for contracts, automations, and client communication, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
What is the best time app for tracking time as a business owner?
The best apps for tracking time all depend on your needs. If you’re looking for team management and payroll, there are some tools we mentioned above that would be a great fit, like Paymo and TimeCamp.
However, as a business owner, you probably have much more on your plate beyond time tracking. If you want to simplify your spending and make business management easier on yourself, consider a more all-in-one tool like HoneyBook.
HoneyBook is a clientflow platform that offers lead capture, invoicing, contracts, payments, client communication, automations, and so much more. You can design custom, interactive files to meet your needs from project start to finish. With all those features, HoneyBook’s time tracking can help you manage projects more and send more accurate invoices.
