Best Time Tracking Apps List
Here’s the list of the best time tracking software solutions that I’ll cover in this article, with detailed tool summaries below:
- 3. Wrike — Best time tracking app with a timesheet locking feature and advanced project-level reporting
In today's world of hybrid and remote teams, time tracking apps have risen to the occasion. They're a modern and mobile-friendly solution for tracking employee work hours from anywhere. They'll also increase your employee's accountability and the accuracy of your timesheet data.
Tracking employee work hours has always been important. You want to ensure your staff stay productive and spend their time on the right tasks. You also need a way to confirm how many hours each person worked, for payroll purposes. A well-chosen app can also improve your employee experience and boost the efficiency of your internal admin processes too.
In this article, I'll walk you through the best time tracking apps available on the market today.
How I Selected the Best Time Tracking Apps
Wondering how I selected the best time tracking apps for this list? To start off, I scoured the web and checked out the websites of many time tracking apps that had positive user ratings. Next, I narrowed down my long list by using the selection criteria below to see how each time tracking system compared to the next one.
I also drew on my years of HR administration experience checking and approving (or often correcting) timesheets, to help me pinpoint the features that add a lot of value for HR admin staff and employees alike.
Do you have general questions about time tracking apps, and what they have to offer? If so, take a look at our People Also Ask section below. Otherwise, you can skip right to my detailed app summaries, if that's what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here's a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best time tracking apps for this article:
Usability:
Since time tracking is a never-ending necessity, it's important to pick an app that creates a positive and engaging user experience (UX) for users of all types. To assess an app's usability, I look at the organization of its user interface (UI), including the way its menus are organized and how easy it is to navigate between features or modules.
Mobile Accessibility:
Time tracking apps are not just for office-based employees. In fact, they're even more valuable for remote teams, deskless and front-line workers, or field-based employees since they can track their hours on the go.
All the apps in this list are accessible from mobile devices or tablets (in most cases both Android and iOS), with cloud-based desktop versions available too. In addition, since sometimes your staff might be off the grid completely, offline time tracking is available in many systems too, as well as more advanced GPS and geofencing capabilities.
Software Integrations:
Time tracking data shouldn't live in a silo. It's a fundamental component of many internal accounting processes, including billing clients for billable hours worked, and paying your staff for their time. That's why it's important to take note of any system integrations, such as payroll systems or invoicing software. To save you time, I've noted key software integrations for each app in my list.
Value for Price:
Sometimes it all comes down to cost. Depending on the nature of your business, you may be able to get away with a free plan with basic time tracking features, especially if you're running a small team. In contrast, paid plans will include more features, and may give you a better return on your investment if you need something a little more advanced.
Before you commit to a contract, I recommend getting your hands on a free trial first. This will give you a first-hand experience of how the app functions before you roll it out to your entire workforce. To help you with this, I've included notes on free trials and freemium plans below.
Overviews of the 10 Best Time Tracking Apps
Here's a brief description of each time tracking app to showcase each tool's best use case, and their noteworthy features. I've also included screenshots to give you a snapshot of their user interface too.
Insperity
Best time-tracking app for companies of all sizes
Insperity's human capital management (HCM) software was designed to help small to midsize businesses streamline their HR processes, automate administrative tasks, and provide employee self-service functions through their mobile app.
Why I picked Insperity: I chose Insperity as one of the best time-tracking apps for remote and hybrid teams because of its easy-to-use interface, detailed reporting, and ability to handle complex time-tracking needs, all within their mobile app. Its customizable options, real-time visibility, mobile app, and detailed reporting make it stand out from other tools on the market.
Insperity Standout Features & Integrations:
Insperity offers a range of features that make it stand out from other time-tracking apps. First, it offers customizable time-tracking options, allowing teams to track time by project, task, or client. Second, it provides real-time visibility into team member activity, which is useful for project managers and team leads. Third, it has a user-friendly mobile app that allows team members to track time on the go. Finally, it offers detailed reporting features, including weekly summaries, payroll reports, and more.
Insperity integrates with a range of popular tools, including QuickBooks, ADP, and Sage, making it easy for businesses to streamline their HR and time-tracking processes.
Justworks
Best time tracking app with payroll, benefits, and compliance built-in
Justworks is an all-in-one HR and benefits solution that offers time tracking functionality to help businesses manage their workforce. It's best suited for small to mid-sized businesses with hourly and salaried employees who need an easy-to-use and affordable time tracking solution. Furthermore, the platform offers HR support, which includes a company directory, employee profiles, and document storage, and it also grants access to a network of HR experts who can offer guidance on a range of HR-related matters.
Why I picked Justworks: I chose Justworks as one of the best time-tracking software because of its intuitive interface, customizable settings, and automatic time-off tracking. Its time-tracking feature allows managers to track employee hours, monitor attendance, and generate reports for payroll. In addition to time tracking, Justworks provides an array of other essential features, such as employee benefits management, HR support, and compliance assistance. It allows businesses to offer various benefits, such as health insurance, 401(k) plans, and commuter benefits, while also ensuring compliance with taxes, payroll, and HR regulations.
Justworks Standout Features & Integrations
Features include its seamless integration with other HR tools, such as payroll and benefits administration. Justworks also provides a mobile app for employees to clock in and out, request time off, and view their time-off balances. It's a reliable and straightforward solution that can help businesses comply with labor laws and improve productivity.
Integrations include 15Five, Accurate Background, Bench, Checkr, Culture Amp, Expensify, Found, JazzHR, Lattice, Pilot, Remote, Teampay, Velocity Global, and Zip Recruiter.
Wrike
Best time tracking app with a timesheet locking feature and advanced project-level reporting
Wrike is a project management software system that includes a time tracking feature to help you understand how much time employees spend on assigned tasks and projects. It also has a workflow automation feature to help you save time on repetitive tasks, so you can devote more time to critical issues.
Why I picked Wrike: Wrike is the best time tracking app to retain full control of timesheets because it has a timesheet locking feature. With Wrike, you can prevent regular employees from editing their old times or adding new entries to past dates, ensuring accuracy and helping you prevent fraud. You have the option of locking timesheets weekly, monthly, or manually at specific times to comply with your company's payroll needs.
Wrike Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include automatic timers or the ability to log time manually, if needed. Wrike also features advanced reports for project or individual performance, and resource management and allocation, with the ability to drill down into an individual or project level. Their report builder feature also generate real-time reports you can share with team members, your leadership team, and other stakeholders. Other features include customized workflow tools, dashboards, request forms, and automation tools.
Integrations are available natively with 400+ popular software systems and project management tools, including Dropbox, GitHub, Jira, Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others. They also offer mobile apps for Android and iOS devices too.
Insightful
Best time tracking app with additional employee monitoring capabilities
Insightful is a workforce analytics suite with separate modules for employee time-tracking, automatic time-mapping, and employee monitoring. It's user-friendly and has a broad set of features that can help organizations manage and monitor growing remote teams.
Why I picked Insightful: It's a great time-tracking solution for organizations with remote employees since it includes additional features to monitor employee activity, including time spent on specific projects and tasks, or on third-party websites or apps. It strikes a great balance between being easy to use and offering advanced features that make it great for scaling a remote business.
Insightful Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include project or task-specific time tracking, automatic or manual time entries, real-time monitoring, attendance tracking, productivity tracking, productivity labels for tasks, time & labor budgeting tools, and detailed reports to help organizations improve their productivity and optimize their workflows. There's also a set of features for remote monitoring—activity tracking, web usage tracking, and screenshot auto-grabs.
Integrations are available with various project management tools including Asana, Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Jira, Slack, Trello, and others.
Connecteam
Best time tracking app with geofencing capabilities
Connecteam is an all-in-one solution for tracking and managing employee productivity. It has a task management feature to allocate and oversee tasks, ensuring that critical tasks get assigned to employees with the right skill sets. It has communication tools for getting in touch with individual employees, groups, and your entire organization, including chat messages, surveys, suggestion boxes, and polls.
Why I picked Connecteam: Their time tracker app is a good choice if you handle remote employees and want to limit where they can clock in or clock out because of its geofencing capabilities. You can use Connecteam to define worksites and associate them with customers, jobs, or projects to prevent employees from clocking in and getting paid for their time outside of their designated stations or projects. Connecteam's geofencing feature also allows you to approve or decline employee requests to clock out from non-fenced areas, ensuring that emergency work is accounted for.
Connecteam Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include advanced GPS time clocking, task management and scheduling tools, and digital forms and checklists that can be completed while in the field. Connecteam also lets users claim any available shifts, save past due tasks in a quick view, or save tasks as drafts for future completion.
Integrations can be created with most payroll software providers, though specific payroll systems are not noted on their website.
Homebase
Best time tracking app for managing hourly workforces
Homebase is a time-tracking solution tailored for small and midsize businesses that work for remote and hybrid teams. It has an intuitive user interface (UI) with drag-and-drop functionality, which is a good option if you’re looking for a feature-rich employee scheduling and time-tracking platform that has a relatively short learning curve.
Why I picked Homebase: With Homebase’s scheduling and time tracking app, you can easily drag and drop shifts, make duplicates of employee schedules, and copy current shift schedules to other days with just a click. You can also easily group your employees into teams or departments and view their schedules at a glance, based on their roles. This is useful for businesses like restaurants or organizations with hourly employees, especially those that manage remote or hybrid teams.
Homebase Standout Features & Integrations:
Homebase allows you to create custom schedules, assign shifts, and approve or deny time-off requests. Managers gain real-time insights into the daily activities of their staff, allowing them to effortlessly track daily clock-ins, breaks, and clock-outs regardless of where their employees are working from. Homebase also allows them to keep track of their labor expenses and monitor their schedule to ensure adherence with labor compliance rules and regulations too.
Integrations are available with point-of-sale systems like Clover, Lightspeed, Shopify, Square, Toast, Upserve, and with numerous payroll systems such as ADP, Gusto, Heartland, Paychex, Rippling, SurePayroll, Square Payroll, and others.
monday.com
Best time tracking app with additional productivity and team collaboration features
monday.com is a work management software with task management, content management, and project management features, including time tracking abilities. You can use their software to create detailed reports showing a breakdown of time by tasks, projects, or clients so you can plan accordingly for future projects. Since their time tracking feature records exact time frames, it will help you assess each task's complexity so you can allocate more resources and budget as needed.
Why I picked monday.com: I included monday.com in this list because they offer additional employee productivity tools beyond just time tracking software. For example, on top of tracking every billable hour, you can also assign team members to new tasks, and set a due date and priority status for each item. Once you've added their time tracking widget to your project board as a column (available in their Pro and Enterprise plans), you'll get a detailed breakdown of how many working hours are spent on each project and individual task.
monday.com Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include customizable dashboards, automation tools, an automatic time tracker or a manual entry option, a file management system, collaboration tools, task assignments, digital forms, an in-app chat, and reporting tools. monday.com also works on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux computers and has a mobile app for iOS and Android mobile devices, giving users the freedom to use the software across any and all their devices.
Integrations are available natively with other work and team management tools like Basecamp, Excel, GitHub, Google Calendar, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, Zoom, and others. You can also access additional integrations by connecting a paid Zapier account too.
Beebole Timesheet
Best time tracking app for organizations that charge out billable hours
Beebole provides powerful, reliable, and secure project time tracking to companies of all sizes and is currently used by well-known companies like Michelin, Investcloud, Maersk, and Hitachi.
Why I picked Beebole: Their user-friendly interface makes it easy for teams to track time worked for an unlimited number of clients, projects, and tasks. Users can track and manage overtime, time off, work schedules, budgets, costs, and billing, all in one place. In addition, Beebole allows users to configure rates and costs for team members, clients, projects, and tasks right into their app — a very useful feature for organizations that charge their billable hours to clients.
Beebole Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include streamlined client billing tools, unlimited projects and tasks, and configurable reports that help companies control costs, reduce burnout, enhance budgeting, and identify trends and opportunities. You can also easily export their reports, share them, and link real-time data through Excel and Google sheets using Beebole’s add-ons.
Their free mobile app is compatible with any device with a recent web browser, has optional geo-tracking, and works without an internet connection. Their time tracking system also includes flexible roles and permissions, unlimited data retention, single sign-on, automated reminders, audit trails, and multilingual live support. It's available in 11 languages and is compliant with GDPR, DCAA, and most labor regulations worldwide.
Integrations are available with third-party apps like Azure, Excel, Google Sheets, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and more.
Projectworks
Best time tracking app with resource and project management tools
Projectworks is a cloud-based project and resource management platform with built-in time tracking capabilities. It also has expense tracking and invoicing tools, making it a functional solution for professional services businesses.
Why I picked Projectworks: This software combines many core aspects of managing projects and the people who work on them, which is why I picked it for the list. It can be used to not only track employee time but also understand how you're allocating your resources, and spot over- and under-utilization. Employees use timesheets to log their hours worked on various projects, and those timesheets can be used to produce invoices for clients. You can also generate forecasts and reports to predict and understand how your staff is using their time, and what you can expect from the future.
Projectworks Standout Features & Integrations
Standout features I noticed when testing the software were the various options for customizing timesheets. You can set up your timesheets so they do not need to be submitted, so they need to be submitted only, or so they need to be submitted and approved. This gives you control over how you manage your time tracking depending on how you run your operations.
Integrations include QuickBooks, Xero, MYOB, Jira, Azure DevOps, and Hubspot. You can also connect it with a paid Zapier account to access additional integrations, or use its API to build custom integrations.
Pros
- Capacity planning makes assigning work easier
- Centralize resource and project planning, invoicing, and expenses in one place
- Connect timesheets with invoicing to reduce manual work
Cons
- Takes time to get familiar with all the features and functionalities
- Tailored for professional services, may not be suitable for product companies
QuickBooks Time
Best time tracking app that tracks mileage for field workers
QuickBooks Time is a popular time tracking app that works well for mobile workforces. Their software can be accessed through their mobile apps, web dashboard, or even a clock in/out kiosk placed in a central work location like a warehouse or job site entranceway.
Why I picked QuickBooks Time: Their time tracking app is an excellent choice if you have employees working in the field because of its mileage tracking functionality. It uses GPS tracking to monitor how far employees travel while they’re on the clock and in the field. QuickBooks Time’s mileage tracking feature also provides employees with accurate mileage data for reimbursement and tax-filing purposes.
QuickBooks Time Standout Features & Integrations:
Features include mobile time tracking, employee scheduling and team management functions, plus tools to help you control business expenses by automatically importing income and expenses data from your bank account, credit cards, POS machines, and others. Its dashboard can help you track your business' profitability by helping you keep a tab of your income and expenses. Their time tracking app also works on iOS and Android mobile devices, letting employees track work hours and submit them for approval no matter where they are working from.
Integrations are available with other apps, including ADP, Microsoft Excel, FreshBooks, Tax Planner Pro, and other QuickBooks products.
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10 Best Time Tracking Apps Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top time tracking software selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best app that works for your budget.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Insperity Best time-tracking app for companies of all sizes | Not available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
2 | Justworks Best time tracking app with payroll, benefits, and compliance built-in | Free demo available | From $59/user/month | Visit Website |
3 | Wrike Best time tracking app with a timesheet locking feature and advanced project-level reporting | Free plan available | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Insightful Best time tracking app with additional employee monitoring capabilities | 7-day free trial | From $8/employee/month | Visit Website |
5 | Connecteam Best time tracking app with geofencing capabilities | Free plan available | From $29/month (30 users) | Visit Website |
6 | Homebase Best time tracking app for managing hourly workforces | Free plan available (unlimited employees) | From $20/month (payroll add-on is $6/user/month + $39/month) | Visit Website |
7 | monday.com Best time tracking app with additional productivity and team collaboration features | 14-day free trial + freemium plan available | From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) | Visit Website |
8 | Beebole Timesheet Best time tracking app for organizations that charge out billable hours | 30-day free trial | From $6.99/user/month | Visit Website |
9 | Projectworks Best time tracking app with resource and project management tools | Free trial available | From $370 /month (for up to 10 users) | Visit Website |
10 | QuickBooks Time Best time tracking app that tracks mileage for field workers | 30-day free trial | From $8/user/month + $10/month base fee | Visit Website |
Other Time Tracking Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best time tracking software list:
- Clockify
Best time tracking app that allows unlimited users within their freemium plan
- Jibble
Best time tracking app with a free forever plan for small teams
- Harvest
Best time tracking app with an automatic invoicing feature
- Nowsta
Best time tracking app for organizations with event-based staffing needs
- Toggl Track
Best time tracking app for monitoring personal website or app usage
- Tyme
Best time tracking app for Mac OS and iOS users
- Buddy Punch
Best time tracking app for hybrid teams with integrated payroll processing
- 7shifts
Best time tracking app for managing shift workers in the restaurant industry
- BambooHR
Best time tracking app for automated timesheet approval processes
- Factorial
Best time tracking app for ease of use
People Also Ask
Here are some answers to commonly asked questions you may have about time tracking apps and how they can add value to your internal HR admin processes:
Why should I track my team's time?
What are the main benefits of using time tracking software?
What key features should I look for when evaluating time tracking software?
How do time tracking apps help productivity?
Are there any free time tracking apps?
Final Thoughts
Tracking time apps simplify the time tracking experience for employees and employers. They ensure that your employees are paid accurately for their work hours, and can help your company with billing clients for your services promptly. Even better, an automatic time tracking app will handle time management tasks for you, giving you more time back that you can devote to other important business concerns.
Not sold on the options above? You might find what you're looking for in my list of the Best Time Tracking Software for Clocking Work Hours instead.
Other Resources
Before you go, I recommend taking a look at our other helpful resources covering hybrid and remote work arrangements, and other popular employee productivity tools. Here's a selection of my favorite employee productivity resources to get you going:
- Best Task Management Software For Managing People Remotely
- Hybrid Working: What Is It And How To Approach It
- Best Hot Desk Booking Software for Managing Hybrid Work Arrangements
- Attendance Tracking Software to Better Manage Your Team
- Best Employee Monitoring Software
- Office Space Management: 5 Steps to Maximize Your Office Potential
- Best Office Space Management Software Systems
Lastly, I also recommend subscribing to our free People Managing People newsletter. You'll stay up-to-date on our latest articles, podcasts, and more cutting-edge tool recommendations too.