Struggling to track team productivity?
With a hybrid team, it’s tough to know if work is truly getting done without making your employees feel over-monitored or causing burnout.
Manual time entry is prone to costly errors, and project budgets can quickly spiral out of control when you can’t accurately track hours spent.
This lack of clear data leads to guesswork in resource allocation, making it nearly impossible to accurately justify ROI on projects to your stakeholders.
But the right software provides the data you need to optimize team productivity without invading your team’s privacy or creating more administrative work.
In this guide, I’m going to review the best employee time tracking software to help you find a tool that fits your team’s unique workflow.
You’ll get clear comparisons on key features, helping you reduce manual errors and gain the actionable insights you need for better workforce management.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Teamwork → | Growing companies | |
| 2 | Clockify → | Remote & hybrid teams | |
| 3 | TimeCamp → | HR & operations directors | |
| 4 | Insightful → | Growing remote/hybrid teams | |
| 5 | DeskTime → | Growing remote/hybrid teams |
1. Teamwork
Tired of profit slipping through the cracks?
Teamwork helps your growing company manage projects, resources, and profitability, making time tracking a breeze. This means you can maximize billable hours and keep your client projects on track.
Teamwork allows you to tightly stick to project budgets and forecast resources without guesswork, ensuring you always know your profitability. This results in less stress.
Here’s how you gain control.
Teamwork offers faster, built-in time tracking, directly supporting your goal of maximizing billable time and boosting profits. You can also track costs to ensure profitability.
This enables real-time budget and profitability tracking, so you always know when a project is becoming unprofitable. The platform also helps you manage recurring budgets for repeat work and integrate with accounting apps for faster payments.
Additionally, Teamwork’s AI capabilities reduce busywork by turning updates into tasks with one click, speeding up planning, and providing smart insights to keep work on track. Plus, it’s designed for security, with SOC 2 Type 2 certification.
Maximize billable hours and stay profitable.
Key features:
- Maximise billable time: Get faster, built-in time tracking to accurately capture every billable hour, ensuring you maximize profits and track budgets in real-time.
- Manage workloads better: See staff availability and workloads at a glance, allowing you to forecast and manage resources without guesswork, preventing over- or under-utilization.
- Control client relationships: Manage projects from start to finish with client communications and approvals in one place, providing clear reports and dashboards for transparency.
Learn more about Teamwork features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Teamwork is the best employee time tracking software for growing companies, helping you maximize billable hours, manage resources, and track profitability. With features like real-time budgeting and AI-powered task creation, you gain comprehensive control over client projects and workforce utilization, ensuring financial health and operational efficiency.
2. Clockify
Struggling to track time effectively across your remote or hybrid team?
Clockify offers timekeeping features like a timer, timesheet, and kiosk, directly addressing the core challenge of accurate time capture for diverse work setups. This means you can easily monitor work hours, ensuring your team’s productivity is visible and quantifiable.
Here’s how Clockify helps you regain control and gain crucial insights.
Clockify solves the issue of information overload by providing clear solutions for common challenges. You can track time using various methods, including a real-time timer, a weekly timesheet, or even an auto-tracker that monitors apps and websites used.
Additionally, Clockify’s reporting capabilities allow you to analyze tracked time and understand where hours are truly going, which helps with cost analysis. You can also manage team availability, assign shifts, and approve timesheets, simplifying resource management.
Plus, its budgeting and payroll features enable you to set client budgets, track project progress against those estimates, calculate employee costs, and even create invoices from billable hours. The result is less manual error and more actionable insights.
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Key features:
- Comprehensive timekeeping: Use a timer for real-time tracking, a detailed timesheet for weekly entries, or an auto-tracker to monitor app and website usage, ensuring precise time capture.
- Powerful reporting and analytics: Gain deep insights into time allocation, project costs, and team activity with customizable reports, helping you identify areas for efficiency and improvement.
- Integrated management tools: Streamline operations by scheduling work, managing time off and approvals, tracking project expenses, and generating invoices directly from tracked billable hours.
Learn more about Clockify features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Clockify stands out as a robust and versatile best employee time tracking software, offering diverse timekeeping methods and strong reporting to boost productivity. Its ability to manage scheduling, payroll, and project budgets makes it ideal for HR managers and operations directors needing a comprehensive solution for their growing remote or hybrid teams.
3. TimeCamp
Struggling to track time and prove project ROI?
TimeCamp offers automated time tracking and robust reporting, directly addressing your need for precise activity monitoring.
This means you can capture every billable hour, simplify payroll, and gain crucial insights into team productivity and project profitability.
Ready to streamline your operations?
TimeCamp helps you log work hours, create payrolls, and manage attendance efficiently. This means your team can track time seamlessly across desktop and mobile, even offline.
You can monitor productivity, project profitability, and precise billing with features like geofencing for field workers and a Kiosk mode for easy clock-in/out. Additionally, the integrated Planner platform enhances team collaboration, helping you track tasks, manage projects with Kanban boards, and facilitate team communication to resolve productivity pitfalls and optimize performance.
The result is increased revenue, quicker budgeting, and a significant boost in productivity.
While TimeCamp streamlines time tracking for profitability, for broader financial insights, you might find my guide on best financial reporting software helpful.
Key features:
- Automated time tracking: Effortlessly captures time spent on applications, websites, and tasks, ensuring accurate data for payroll and project billing without manual input.
- Comprehensive reporting and analytics: Provides detailed insights into work efficiency, project profitability, and team performance, allowing for data-driven decisions and optimized resource allocation.
- Flexible attendance and leave management: Simplifies tracking of work hours, overtime, time-off, and sick leave, streamlining payroll and ensuring compliance for diverse work models.
Learn more about TimeCamp features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: TimeCamp provides a comprehensive solution for HR managers and operations directors seeking the best employee time tracking software. Its features, like automated tracking and detailed reporting, lead to significant improvements, with users experiencing an average 15.8% increase in productive hours and 83.4% seeing a surge in profits.
4. Insightful
Struggling to balance productivity with privacy in your team?
Insightful connects work to outcomes, optimizing team output and improving workflows through smart time tracking and activity monitoring features. This means you can gain clarity on how work truly happens.
You’ll find it easier to pinpoint where time goes and what might be slowing your team down. This approach replaces scattered reports and surveillance-style tools.
Here’s how to lead with insight.
Insightful helps you cut operational waste and improve efficiency fast by providing detailed logs of active and idle time. Additionally, its automatic time mapping reduces human error for accurate time allocation, keeping your projects on track and within budget.
Its screen monitoring capabilities boost visibility with screenshots and app usage, helping you understand what empowers your team to perform their best work. Plus, you can optimize productivity based on location data and proactively detect security risks. The result is real-time visibility into team activity trends, ensuring efficient use of work time and simplifying attendance.
This platform empowers all teams, from startups to enterprises.
While optimizing team workflows, understanding Applied Behavior Analysis Software can also offer unique insights into human behavior.
Key features:
- Automated Time Tracking: Eliminate manual headaches and automatically map time to activities, ensuring accurate allocation and reducing human error for precise project budgeting.
- Productivity & Activity Monitoring: Gain real-time insights into team activity, including active/idle time, application usage, and screen monitoring to identify trends and optimize output.
- Workload Management & Optimization: Balance team workloads, spot burnout risks, and streamline workflows to reclaim lost hours and improve overall operational efficiency.
Learn more about Insightful features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Insightful stands out as the best employee time tracking software for growing companies with remote/hybrid teams. Its comprehensive suite of features, including automated time tracking, productivity monitoring, and workload management, directly addresses core challenges like ensuring scalability and promoting fair workflows, making it ideal for optimizing team productivity and operational efficiency, with users reporting up to 92% productivity gains.
5. DeskTime
Struggling with team productivity and project profitability?
DeskTime offers effortless, automatic time tracking, addressing key pain points for HR and operations leaders. This means you can gain deep insights into work hours and activity without constant manual input.
You’ll eliminate the common problem of manual time entry and human error, helping ensure accurate time data for payroll and project budgeting. This is crucial for avoiding costly mistakes.
So, how can DeskTime help your team?
DeskTime solves this by automatically tracking time as soon as your computer is active, stopping when you close it. This ensures accurate time capture for both in-office and remote team members.
You can also track specific tasks and projects, monitor URL and app usage, and even keep tabs on document titles to see overall progress and habits. This comprehensive oversight helps identify productivity blockers and areas for improvement, like recognizing if certain applications are unproductive.
Additionally, DeskTime includes features like shift scheduling, absence calendars, and attendance management to help run your office smoothly, whether hybrid or fully remote. Plus, features like break reminders and private time options promote work-life balance and prevent burnout among employees, supporting overall well-being.
Your team’s productivity and well-being will thank you.
Key features:
- Automatic Time Tracking: Effortlessly captures work hours as soon as your computer is active, reducing manual errors and providing accurate data for payroll and billing.
- Productivity Insights & Monitoring: Offers detailed data on employee productivity, including URL/app tracking and optional screenshots, helping you identify areas for improvement and resource optimization.
- Workforce Management Tools: Includes shift scheduling, absence calendars, and attendance management, providing a comprehensive platform for overseeing your entire workforce operations.
Learn more about DeskTime features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: DeskTime stands out as a strong contender for the best employee time tracking software, especially for growing companies with remote or hybrid teams. Its combination of automatic time tracking, productivity insights, and workforce management tools, plus a 4.5 out of 5 rating from 375 reviews, empowers you to optimize team efficiency and prevent burnout effectively.
6. Hubstaff
Is balancing productivity with privacy a struggle?
Hubstaff offers robust time tracking and workforce management, directly addressing your challenges in overseeing remote or hybrid teams. This means you can gain crucial insights without compromising employee trust.
You will find that Hubstaff provides detailed time reports and automatically generated timesheets. This eliminates manual entry errors and frees up valuable time for your HR and operations teams. The result is increased accuracy and efficiency.
Hubstaff helps your team work smarter.
It solves common time tracking problems by providing a multi-device time clock, allowing employees to track hours across various devices seamlessly. You can unlock actionable productivity metrics, like time spent in meetings or on specific applications, helping your team focus better.
Additionally, Hubstaff streamlines payroll by converting time tracking data into automated payments, integrating with popular platforms like PayPal and Wise. You also get comprehensive attendance and leave management, making it easy to handle schedules, shifts, and PTO. Plus, with project cost management features, you can effortlessly tailor pay rates and send automated invoices. This gives you full control.
You can gain confidence in your team’s output.
While optimizing team productivity, you might also find my guide on best connected worker platform useful for enhancing operational efficiency.
Key features:
- Time Tracking & Timesheets: Automatically track employee work hours across devices, generating accurate timesheets for streamlined payroll and precise time reporting.
- Workforce Management & Analytics: Manage employee scheduling, attendance, and access real-time productivity metrics to optimize your team’s performance and workload.
- Project Costing & Integrations: Control project budgets, tailor pay and billing rates, and integrate with over 35 tools like Jira and QuickBooks for a unified workflow.
Learn more about Hubstaff features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Hubstaff stands out as a strong contender for the best employee time tracking software, offering comprehensive features like automated timesheets, precise project cost management, and over 35 integrations. Affordable Staff, a Hubstaff customer, reported saving $4.2M over 12 years, proving its value in optimizing team productivity for growing companies.
7. Harvest
Struggling with complex time tracking and project profitability?
Harvest offers simple time tracking and robust reporting, making it easy to manage your team’s workload. This means you can finally gain crucial insights into your projects and team utilization.
This software helps your team spend time wisely, automatically calculating amounts due based on tracked hours, meaning you gain control over project budgets and expenses.
You need clear comparisons for the right solution.
Harvest solves this by providing effortless time tracking across projects, which leads to instant reports and seamless invoicing. You can easily set up projects, tasks, and team members, or even import them from your existing project management tools.
This allows you to visualize project progress and switch between project progress and hours per week, helping you track internal costs. Additionally, Harvest automates invoice creation and online payments, letting clients pay directly from the invoice, with automated follow-up reminders. Plus, you can track billable and non-billable hours, materials, supplies, and travel costs, easily uploading receipts for invoices, giving you comprehensive financial oversight.
The result is accurate, real-time data for better decision-making.
While we’re discussing streamlined financial processes and accurate record-keeping, understanding the importance of Eway Bill Software is equally vital for compliance.
Key features:
- Simple Time Tracking: Track time with a single click across desktop and mobile apps, with subtle reminders ensuring accurate daily logs.
- Instant Reporting: Generate immediate reports on budgets, time spent, team capacity, and expenses, allowing for detailed drill-downs and analysis.
- Automated Invoicing: Create and send invoices from tracked time in two clicks, allowing clients to pay directly and integrating with popular accounting tools.
Learn more about Harvest features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Harvest is an excellent choice as the best employee time tracking software for growing companies, helping you manage project profitability and team utilization. With over 70,000 companies and 4.5 billion hours tracked, it’s a trusted solution for accurate reporting and streamlined invoicing.
8. Apploye
Struggling with accurate time tracking for your remote team?
You need a solution that simplifies daily, weekly, and monthly timesheets while empowering accurate payroll and client invoicing. Apploye offers robust desktop, mobile, and web time tracking, along with clock in/out features. This means you can finally streamline attendance and manage projects effectively.
Is your team’s productivity where it should be?
Apploye helps you track time and increase your team’s productivity by up to 20%, essentially adding an extra day every week. Here’s how it solves common challenges: it features task management to create and assign tasks, allowing you to measure time spent and allocate resources prudently. Additionally, it offers project and budgeting tools to manage projects, track time, and keep your budget on track. Plus, the optional remote-track add-on provides live feeds and instant screenshots for insight into remote staff activity, empowering data-driven decisions through advanced reporting and an intuitive dashboard. The result is better workforce utilization and reduced manual errors.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best complaint management systems helpful for gaining deeper insights.
Key features:
- Comprehensive Time Tracking: Apploye provides accurate time tracking across desktop, mobile, and web, including clock in/out, custom timesheets, and manual entry with notes.
- Project & Task Management: Create, assign, and track time on specific projects and tasks, allowing for efficient resource allocation and client billing based on billable hours.
- Advanced Reporting & Monitoring: Generate detailed time and activity reports, access an intuitive dashboard for performance metrics, and utilize optional remote monitoring with screenshots and app/URL tracking.
Learn more about Apploye features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Apploye offers a robust set of features for HR managers and operations directors seeking the best employee time tracking software, with capabilities like project and task management, payroll, and remote monitoring. You can expect a significant ROI, with some users reporting over 11,000% ROI, making it a compelling solution for increasing productivity.
9. Connecteam
Struggling with complex time tracking for your team?
Connecteam offers a smart time clock with automated timesheets, designed to streamline your operations and payroll. This means you can say goodbye to manual errors and gain precise work hours effortlessly.
Specifically, Connecteam’s smart time tracking allows for auto-recording precise work hours, simplifying timesheet approvals, and getting your payroll right every time with reliable data.
Here’s how to simplify your daily work.
Connecteam consolidates essential tools into one powerful app, helping you manage your daily operations from scheduling to payroll. Your team benefits from automated scheduling that prevents mistakes and ensures the right people are always assigned.
The platform provides a time tracking feature that auto-records precise work hours, simplifying timesheet approvals and making sure you get payroll right every time with reliable data. Additionally, its task management capability allows for real-time delegation and progress tracking.
This all-in-one approach extends to internal communication, keeping your workforce connected with instant messaging and company updates. Furthermore, HR management features simplify processes, helping you elevate employee engagement and cultivate a thriving company culture.
Gain full oversight for confident decisions.
While discussing communication and management tools, you might find my guide on best mobile content management systems useful for team content sharing.
Key features:
- Smart Time Tracking: Auto-records precise work hours, simplifies timesheet approvals, and ensures accurate payroll data, preventing costly errors.
- Integrated Operations: Combines scheduling, task management, and digital forms into one platform, streamlining daily workflows and providing real-time visibility.
- Comprehensive HR & Communication: Facilitates internal communication with chat and updates, alongside HR management for training, onboarding, and time off.
Learn more about Connecteam features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Connecteam offers a robust, all-in-one solution for HR managers and operations directors seeking the best employee time tracking software. Its integrated platform streamlines time tracking, scheduling, and HR, reducing software expenses by 2X, enhancing communication, and cutting training completion time by 50% for various industries.
Conclusion
Still struggling to optimize team productivity?
Choosing the right software is tough. You need accurate data to justify ROI and manage budgets without making your team feel over-monitored or causing burnout.
Studies show companies using systematic time tracking tools report productivity gains and reduced operational inefficiencies. This proves the right system isn’t just about watching the clock; it’s about getting the data to unlock your team’s true potential.
So, here is my top recommendation.
From my experience, Teamwork.com is the best choice. Its features are laser-focused on solving the core challenges: maintaining project profitability and maximizing billable hours.
For additional insights into team development, my guide on best employee training software is a must-read.
I love how its built-in time tracking connects directly to project budgets, so you always know your profitability. It’s the best employee time tracking software for service-based companies.
I highly recommend you start a free trial of Teamwork and see how it streamlines project finances for your small business.
Regain control over your team’s profitability.
