Tired of chasing down expense reports?
Chasing down receipts and manual data entry are a nightmare. It’s repetitive work that wastes valuable hours your team could spend on core operations.
These endless tasks lead to inaccuracies and frustrating delays in reimbursement approvals, which ultimately hurts team morale and slows down your entire financial cycle.
This inefficiency isn’t just a minor annoyance. It directly impacts your company’s financial accuracy and hampers your ability to make agile, data-driven business decisions.
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Thankfully, the right platform can fix this. It helps by automating compliance and reporting and frees your team from drowning in administrative tasks.
In this guide, I’ll help you navigate the crowded market. I’m going to review the best time and expense software designed to streamline your workflows.
You’ll discover how to choose a tool that boosts accuracy, maintains audit-ready records, and dramatically simplifies approvals for your entire organization.
Let’s dive in.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clockify → | Growing mid-sized companies | |
| 2 | Everhour → | Finance managers, mid-sized firms | |
| 3 | QuickBooks → | Mid-sized companies | |
| 4 | Harvest → | Finance managers, mid-sized firms | |
| 5 | Connecteam → | Mid-sized companies |
1. Clockify
Struggling with accurate time and expense tracking?
Clockify offers various timekeeping methods like a timer, timesheet, or kiosk, directly addressing your team’s need for flexible tracking. This means you can easily capture work hours, whether in real-time or via weekly entries.
Clockify provides robust reporting features, allowing you to see where time goes and analyze costs, giving you the crucial insights needed for precise financial management and informed decision-making. This helps eliminate the guesswork in budgeting.
Here’s how Clockify helps.
Clockify introduces comprehensive solutions that simplify time and expense management, ensuring your financial records are always audit-ready. You can accurately track time for payroll, calculate employee costs, and even manage leaves and holidays with dedicated time-off features.
Clockify allows you to record project expenses and associated fees, streamlining your expense reporting process. Additionally, you can create invoices directly from billable time, track daily employee attendance and overtime, and gain visibility into team activity, including who works on what tasks and where time is spent. The result is a reduced administrative burden.
Plus, its project-focused capabilities let you set client budgets, track project status, and manage resources for optimal utilization. This integrated approach means you’re equipped to handle everything from detailed time logs to financial planning and approvals, ensuring seamless operations.
This provides essential control over project financials.
Key features:
- Flexible Time Tracking: Use a timer, timesheet, calendar, or kiosk to record work hours in real-time or log entries weekly, ensuring all time is captured accurately.
- Comprehensive Reporting & Analytics: Generate detailed reports, analyze costs, track team activity, and monitor rates to gain deep insights into productivity and profitability.
- Integrated Management Tools: Manage expenses, create invoices from billable time, schedule work, approve timesheets, and handle time off, streamlining your entire workflow.
Clockify features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Clockify stands out as a highly capable best time and expense software solution for growing mid-sized companies, offering features like robust reporting, expense tracking, and scheduling that directly address accuracy and approval challenges. Its versatile timekeeping methods and integrated management tools ensure you can maintain audit-ready records and simplify complex financial processes.
2. Everhour
Struggling to keep projects on budget and on schedule?
Everhour offers powerful time management software that stands alone or integrates directly into your existing project management tools. This means less tab-switching and more focused work.
You can manage your project’s budget with ease, ensuring your finances never catch you by surprise, while gaining clear insights into time and money spent.
Here’s how to simplify your daily operations.
Everhour goes beyond simple time tracking, supporting various day-to-day operations for your business. You can create tasks, track time, and watch project progress all in one centralized location.
This allows you to easily see who is working on what in real-time, all without disrupting their workflow, while also simplifying invoicing based on reported time for accurate billing and faster reimbursements. Additionally, Everhour helps you track team leave, manage complete employee records in one place, and keep important documents easily accessible for everyone.
The result is a streamlined workflow, improved team productivity, and seamless project management, empowering you to keep your projects transparent and on schedule, ultimately helping you know where your team’s time is truly going and spot potential burnout.
Key features:
- Integrations: Works natively with popular project management tools like Asana, ClickUp, Jira, and over 40 other apps, embedding controls for a seamless workflow experience.
- Budgeting & Invoicing: Manage project budgets effectively and generate accurate invoices based on reported time, ensuring financial predictability and efficient billing.
- Real-Time Tracking & Reporting: Monitor real-time progress, approve timesheets, and generate highly customizable reports detailing time and money spent on projects and individual tasks.
Everhour features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Everhour is an excellent choice for best time and expense software for finance managers at growing mid-sized companies. Its robust integrations, real-time tracking, and comprehensive reporting features, combined with budgeting and invoicing capabilities, make it ideal for gaining control over project finances and streamlining time management. Over 344,000 people have already completed over 196 million tasks using Everhour, validating its effectiveness.
3. QuickBooks
Struggling with complex expense tracking and approvals?
QuickBooks offers robust features like receipt capture and mileage tracking, directly addressing your team’s needs for accurate data.
This means you can snap photos of receipts on the go and automatically categorize them, significantly reducing manual data entry and potential errors.
Here’s how you can simplify your financial operations.
QuickBooks enables effortless income and expense tracking, securely importing transactions and organizing your finances automatically. This capability is vital for maintaining audit-ready records and getting a clear financial picture.
You can enter employee time by client or project, and then automatically add that time to invoices, which streamlines billing and ensures accurate client charges. Additionally, you can manage your bills online, organizing and tracking them with ease, further reducing administrative burdens.
Plus, you can track project profitability, including labor costs, payroll, and expenses, all in one centralized place, ensuring you make smart decisions about where your money is going and how to enhance your profits. The result is better cash flow management and faster reimbursements.
Key features:
- Automated Bookkeeping: Reduces tedious tasks by securely importing transactions and categorizing expenses, freeing up your team’s valuable time.
- Integrated Time Tracking: Allows employees to enter time by client or project, which automatically translates into invoices, expediting your billing cycle.
- Comprehensive Reporting: Provides general, enhanced, and powerful reports, including sales, accounts receivable, and project profitability, helping you make informed decisions.
QuickBooks features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: QuickBooks stands out as a best time and expense software solution for mid-sized companies seeking accuracy and efficiency. Its integrated features like automated expense categorization, time tracking, and detailed financial reports address key pain points by reducing manual effort and expediting approvals. This allows your team to focus on growth, not paperwork.
4. Harvest
Are your project budgets getting out of control?
Harvest offers simple time tracking and robust expense monitoring, ensuring your team captures every billable hour and cost accurately.
This means you gain crucial insights into your projects and team, helping your company avoid budget overruns and unexpected expenses. The result is better financial control.
Here’s how Harvest helps.
Harvest helps you track time across all your projects easily, giving you instant reports and seamless invoicing. You can set up projects with tasks and team members, or import from your existing project management tools.
This includes features like visualizing project progress, tracking internal costs, and seeing daily/weekly totals. You can also effortlessly turn tracked time and expenses into professional invoices with automated calculations and reminders. Additionally, it features budget monitoring for hourly or fixed-fee projects, with instant alerts when budgets are reached. Plus, you can easily upload receipts for expenses like materials, supplies, and travel costs.
This comprehensive approach helps finance managers at mid-sized companies maintain audit-ready records while reducing administrative burden, streamlining approvals, and automating compliance reporting for better financial health.
Key features:
- Time Tracking: Simple 1-click time tracking with desktop, mobile, and web apps, including subtle reminders to ensure all time is captured.
- Invoicing & Payments: Generate and send invoices in two clicks, allowing clients to pay directly, with automated follow-up and QuickBooks/Xero integration.
- Reporting & Cost Tracking: Create instant reports on budgets, time spent, team capacity, and expenses, with easy receipt uploads and detailed drill-down capabilities.
Harvest features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: With 70,000+ active companies tracking over 4.5 billion hours and invoicing $64+ billion, Harvest is a strong contender for the best time and expense software. Its focus on easy time tracking, instant reporting, seamless invoicing, and budget monitoring makes it ideal for finance managers seeking to improve accuracy and expedite approvals.
5. Connecteam
Struggling with fragmented time and expense management?
Connecteam’s smart time clock and automated timesheets simplify tracking for finance managers. This means you can easily manage daily operations, from scheduling all the way down to payroll, ensuring precise work hours are auto-recorded.
You will gain real-time visibility into your team’s work for informed decisions. It transitions your complex processes into a streamlined solution.
Connecteam centralizes operations by automating scheduling to prevent mistakes and simplify timesheet approvals. You can also leverage digital forms and checklists for instant field reporting with live results, making work flow smoothly.
Additionally, this platform offers robust HR management features, including time off policies and document storage, ensuring compliance. Plus, integrations with tools like QuickBooks and Gusto streamline payroll and financial reporting. The result is reduced administrative burden and audit-ready records.
Say goodbye to app-switching.
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Key features:
- Time Clock & Scheduling: Automates precise work hour recording and simplifies timesheet approvals for accurate payroll, reducing costly mistakes and optimizing labor.
- Forms & Checklists: Enables instant field reporting and task management with real-time visibility, ensuring quality work and simplifying daily operations for compliance.
- HR Management: Streamlines time off management and document storage, helping you enforce absence policies and maintain audit-ready records for your team.
Connecteam features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Connecteam offers a comprehensive solution for managing time and expenses, making it an ideal candidate for the best time and expense software for mid-sized companies. Its integrated features for time tracking, forms, and HR, combined with integrations like QuickBooks, help cut operational costs by 50% and ensure audit-ready compliance.
6. Toggl
Struggling with accurate time and expense tracking for your team?
Toggl Track offers a unique approach to time tracking, providing an easy-to-use solution that encourages 100% user adoption. This means you can finally get the precise data you need.
It helps your team track time effortlessly from various platforms, and integrates calendars to simplify entry. The result is better visibility into where time is spent.
So, how does Toggl make it easy?
Toggl Track focuses on turning time data into profitable decisions for your business. It allows you to build custom reports from your team’s time, giving you clear insights into project duration and resource management.
You can track time your way, using web, desktop, mobile apps, or browser extensions, while its automated tracking can convert background activity into time entries. This comprehensive tracking helps increase efficiency and revenue. Plus, with over 100 integrations, including Salesforce and Jira, Toggl fits right into your existing tech stack, streamlining workflows and supporting team growth by providing custom data dashboards for tailored business insights, avoiding generic reports.
This brings clarity to high-performing teams.
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Key features:
- Automated Time Tracking: Effortlessly captures activity across web, desktop, and mobile, allowing teams to convert background usage into detailed time entries for reporting and payroll.
- Customizable Reporting: Provides unique custom data dashboards and financial reports to analyze project profitability, manage resources, and identify productivity gaps for informed decisions.
- Seamless Integrations: Connects with over 100 popular tools like Jira and Salesforce, ensuring a smooth fit into your existing tech stack and supporting robust enterprise-level security.
Toggl features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Toggl Track emerges as a strong contender for best time and expense software, designed to streamline approvals and boost accuracy. Its focus on user adoption, automated tracking, and customizable reporting capabilities, along with robust integrations, makes it ideal for growing mid-sized companies seeking to manage projects profitably and strengthen client relationships.
7. Rippling
Tired of scattered time and expense data?
Rippling’s workforce management features automate time tracking and enforce expense policies, bringing all your crucial data together.
This means you can gain granular control over company spend and easily manage everything from corporate cards to bill payments. Your finance team can save both money and time.
Here’s how to simplify your operations.
Rippling helps you manage payroll, HR, IT, and spend in one unified platform. This approach eliminates busywork and enables better decision-making for your growing mid-sized company. You can automate and run payroll in minutes with a 100% error-free guarantee, no matter how complex your workforce.
Additionally, Rippling’s Expense Management allows you to enforce company rules automatically for all spend, ensuring compliance. Plus, its global capabilities mean you can compliantly manage your workforce across 185+ countries, simplifying international operations.
The result is increased savings and streamlined approvals.
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Key features:
- Automated time tracking simplifies collecting employee hours, ensuring accuracy for payroll and project costing, and reducing manual data entry for your finance team.
- Integrated expense management allows you to enforce spending policies, manage corporate cards, and process bill payments, providing granular control over company spend.
- Unified workforce platform brings payroll, HR, IT, and spend management into one system, automating compliance and streamlining operations for greater efficiency and accuracy.
Rippling features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Rippling excels as the best time and expense software for mid-sized companies seeking to automate compliance reporting and streamline approvals. Its unified platform and robust expense management features, like enforcing expense policies and controlling corporate card spend, ensure audit-ready records and significantly reduce administrative burden, saving your team valuable time.
8. Smartsheet
Struggling with time and expense complexities?
Smartsheet streamlines operations by empowering you to manage projects and automate workflows at scale, making it perfect for your evolving team needs.
This means you can make better investment decisions and align your team with business needs, ensuring projects are aligned with organizational goals.
Here’s how Smartsheet helps.
Smartsheet transforms your work management into a personalized, predictive engine using AI, helping you work the way you want, at the speed you need. This platform helps you deliver efficient services and improve client retention, which is crucial for handling multiple currencies and mobile accessibility.
It empowers your teams with people-first project management, accelerating new product development and fast-tracking product launches. Additionally, Smartsheet lets you integrate your favorite apps, keeping all your work in sync and your team in the loop for seamless financial ecosystem integration.
Plus, you can automate repetitive tasks, simplify processes, reduce errors, and save time, cutting down reporting time and improving work quality. This is ideal for compliance reporting, remote team approvals, and audit-ready records.
The result is streamlined workflows and greater accuracy.
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Key features:
- Workflow Automation Automate repetitive tasks, simplify processes, and reduce errors to save time, ensuring accurate deductions and streamlined approvals for time and expense.
- Team Collaboration Collaborate in real-time, share updates, and keep everyone in the loop to reduce reimbursement delays and maintain audit-ready expense records.
- AI-Powered Insights Leverage AI-driven features like intelligent formulas and data insights to move faster, scale smarter, and lead projects with precision, enhancing expense categorization.
Smartsheet features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Smartsheet stands out as a leading contender for the best time and expense software, offering solutions that automate compliance reporting and streamline approvals. Its workflow automation, collaboration tools, and AI capabilities, as demonstrated by Roche IT managing 30% more projects, directly address the need for accuracy and expedited approvals.
9. BigTime
Struggling with complex project management and unpredictable cash flow?
BigTime simplifies time and expense tracking, allowing your team to manage projects and resources with ease. This means you can finally drop those spreadsheets.
You can streamline your processes so timesheets are always on time, quickly seeing where project budgets stand, making time tracking intuitive for greater accuracy. This reduces administrative burden significantly.
Here’s how BigTime helps your firm.
BigTime introduces simplified time and billing, making it easy for growing services firms to plan teams, track time, oversee projects, and improve cash flow. This allows you to manage time and expenses, plan and allocate resources, oversee and manage projects, and invoice to get paid efficiently.
You can easily adapt resource plans on the fly, balancing capacity and utilization across teams while modeling and forecasting profitability. You can also coordinate budgets, visualize timelines and milestones, and monitor progress to ensure bottom-line success. Additionally, you can speed up time to bill with invoice automation, collect money faster with convenient payment options, and give your finance team a centralized view.
Plus, BigTime helps you harness your data into insights that drive informed decisions, keeping your firm’s broader goals front and center.
Get paid faster and boost your profitability.
Key features:
- Time & Expense Tracking: Make time tracking intuitive for greater accuracy, simplify processes for on-time timesheets, and quickly see project budget status.
- Invoicing & Payments: Speed up your time to bill with invoice automation, collect money faster with convenient payment options, and centralize financial views for your finance team.
- Project & Resource Management: Easily adapt resource plans, balance capacity and utilization, and coordinate budgets, schedules, and scope for bottom-line success.
BigTime features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: BigTime stands out as a best time and expense software for mid-sized firms, offering robust features like intuitive time tracking, invoice automation, and comprehensive project management. Its ability to simplify complex workflows, as evidenced by a 66% reported increase in productivity, makes it ideal for improving accuracy and expediting approvals while scaling with your organizational growth.
10. Hubstaff
Are you tired of complex time and expense tracking?
Hubstaff simplifies managing time, productivity, and payroll across your entire team. This means precise time reporting and automated timesheets.
You can effortlessly track hours across devices, making expense reconciliation straightforward. This helps your growing mid-sized company simplify compliance reporting.
Let’s explore the solution.
Hubstaff offers comprehensive solutions for global, hybrid, and in-office teams, including project cost management and intelligent attendance tracking. This allows you to gain full control over project profitability and avoid manual errors.
You can automate payroll and invoicing directly from the dashboard, removing guesswork and ensuring accuracy. Plus, Hubstaff integrates with over 35 tools like QuickBooks and Jira.
Additionally, access detailed workforce analytics and over 20 customizable reports to pull insights into your team’s performance, helping you make informed decisions and detect unusual activity to optimize efficiency.
Simplify financial oversight and boost team productivity.
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Key features:
- Automated Time Tracking: Capture billable hours across devices, from desktop to GPS, automatically generating detailed timesheets for easy management and one-click approvals.
- Integrated Payroll & Invoicing: Streamline payments directly through the app, connect with preferred payroll platforms, and create custom invoices from your dashboard for maximum profitability.
- Workforce Management & Analytics: Manage employee schedules, track attendance, and access 20+ customizable reports to gain real-time insights into productivity, project costs, and team performance.
Hubstaff features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Hubstaff stands out as a strong contender for the best time and expense software, offering solutions that simplify complex financial processes for finance managers. Its ability to automate compliance, streamline approvals for remote teams, and integrate seamlessly with existing financial ecosystems, as demonstrated by a customer saving $4.2M, ensures long-term adoption and audit-ready records.
Conclusion
Manual tracking slows everyone down.
Finding the right tool is tough. Feature overload and integration worries make it hard to choose a solution that actually works for your growing finance team.
The real cost isn’t just the subscription fee. It’s the wasted hours, reimbursement delays, and the frustration from a clunky system. This directly impacts your company’s financial accuracy and morale.
Here’s the tool I’d recommend.
From my review, Clockify is the clear winner for any small business. It directly tackles the accuracy and approval challenges that bog down growing companies.
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I love how its flexible timekeeping and robust reporting features eliminate guesswork. Choosing the best time and expense software like Clockify provides the crucial insights needed for precise financial management.
I highly recommend you start a free trial of Clockify to see exactly how it can simplify your entire workflow.
Your financial accuracy will skyrocket.
