Ensure effective time management, ongoing employee monitoring, and accurate expense tracking.
As a project manager at a small business, you know how important it is to stay on top of employee hours and project completion time. If you don't, you risk making inconsistencies and errors in your payroll processing. Investing in time tracking software will help you stay on top of your business’s accounting and payroll needs.
Employee time tracking software makes your job easier by automatically tracking work hours and maintaining a record of employee time off. This data ensures that employees are utilizing their time on projects so you can calculate labor costs accordingly. In addition, you can integrate time tracking software with your project management tools to assist with time management.
When considering the various time tracking solutions available, it is essential to select one that is reviewed by small business project managers in order to make an informed decision. This article highlights, in alphabetic order, the five top time tracking tools for small businesses based on user reviews. For each product, we include overall user ratings along with the highest-rated parameter, review excerpts from industry professionals, and product pricing. Read more.
1. Bill4Time
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Highest-rated parameter
Commonly used by
Starting price
Device compatibility
Screenshots
Time tracker in Bill4Time (Source)
Here are some review excerpts from small business professionals who have used Bill4Time for time tracking:
"The software is easy to use. It is intuitive, practical and has the right things I need to track time, expenses and create billing quickly and efficiently. Linked with the app for business travel, I have not lost any expenses and doing this during trips in live time has been a huge time saver for me."
"We have used this for four years, and are very pleased. It is easy for all users to input time and expenses, easy to generate bills, and easy for me to pull up a client's account history if they have a question. Also, ability to accept payments directly through portal is useful."
"ove it all!Easy to use and intuitive. User on boarding went well.Nice web based interface. Not as much of a headache to enter time as previous software."
Read all Bill4Time reviews here.
2. Elorus
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Highest-rated parameter
Commonly used by
Starting price
Device compatibility
Screenshots
Timesheet in Elorus (Source)
Here are some review excerpts from small business professionals who have used Elorus for time tracking:
"I think that this is the best choice I could make. It is not expensive for a company like mine, it is very easy to use and the service is immediate and helpful."
"Possibility to use it without an added cost to the small company, the support has been great!"
"Easy to use, desired features, excellent servise, very kind and helpfull"
3. FunctionFox
Key Features
- Highest-rated parameter | Functionality - 4.5/5
- Commonly used by | Small businesses
- Starting price | $5 per user, per month (billed monthly)
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Device compatibility
Screenshots
User dashboard in FunctionFox (Source)
Here are some review excerpts from small business professionals who have used FunctionFox for time tracking:
"What a great product, it's simple, it works well, and has never failed to do what we need.The sales and onboarding process was done very well and I felt taken-care of the entire time.I highly recommend this for time-tracking."
"Even though we don't use it like we should (we're hiring a project manager soon), the Gantt charts are awesome for planning out a project and adjusting schedules as needed.I don't have to train my designers how to use it; Function Fox provides one-to-one live tutorials."
"I love the stopwatch timer for tracking my time as I work on projects each day.Having this feature has allowed me to bill for every single minute I work instead of letting things fall through the cracks.Then, at the end of the month when I am ready to invoice, I can quickly and easily produce reports for each client that show details for each task I have completed."
Read all FunctionFox reviews here.
4. Streamtime
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Highest-rated parameter
Commonly used by
Starting price
Device compatibility
Screenshots
Scheduler in Streamtime (Source)
Here are some review excerpts from small business professionals who have used Streamtime for time tracking:
"It's a smart, flexible and easy to use and meets our needs perfectly. Beautiful clean design - a real pleasure to use. The ongoing support is excellent and the team are friendly."
"budgets, times, cashflow is so much easier with streamtime. Even my most creative employees find it easy to use."
"I love the software, it's easy, intuitive, colourful (just a nice UX) and all my contractors love it and anyone I show it to loves it. It's easy to scale the business with it, it connects to Xero.... it's brilliant. The phone app is also a huge plus"
Read all Streamtime reviews here.
5. Timesheets.com
Trial/Free Version
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Highest-rated parameter
Commonly used by
Starting price
Device compatibility
Screenshots
Time tracker in Timesheets.com (Source)
Here are some review excerpts from small business professionals who have used Timesheets.com for time tracking:
"Also their employee scheduling system is easy to use. Most of all, they have an excellent service team. Every time I call, there is a live person to help me. They are very knowledgable, call you back if necessary, and will walk you through the steps to answer your question or solve the problem."
"Overall, I loved the save time and auto-save feature. I think it is one of the rare software that you can use for a long time and be satisfied. Also, thank you for your interest in customer service."
"Easy of implementation, easy of use, straight to the point, excellent support, liked by users (consultants tracking their time), liked by accounting teams who can extract the billing and costing reports per client / resource / project / account code."
Read all Timesheets.com reviews here.
What features do time tracking tools offer?
The core features of time tracking software are:
Billable and non-billable hours: Track billable hours and/or non-billable hours related to the tasks performed by employees.
Online time tracking: Track employee time spent on tasks using features such as browser monitor.
All products listed in this report include the features mentioned above.
Besides these core features, employee time tracking software tools also commonly tend to offer:
Automatic time capture
Employee database
Employee scheduling
Overtime calculation
Timesheet management
Vacation/Leave Tracking
How to choose the right time tracking software for your business
When choosing employee time tracking software for your business's resource management, it is crucial to understand what to look for before finalizing your selection. These key considerations will help you determine the best time tracking software.
Opt for sharable timesheets: See if your selected time tracking tool allows you to share employee work hour timesheets with the clients. You should be able to download the timesheets in the desired format (PDF, Excel, etc.) with details that justify every working hour cost down to a second. In addition, see if there is a client portal to check the employee hours timesheets instead of asking you to share them with the clients every time.
Assess real-time employee monitoring: An ideal time tracking solution should let you monitor the number of hours spent by each team member to complete tasks in real time. The tool typically offers a browser extension to monitor employee activity. This way, you can ensure that your team members are wisely spending their work hours, boosting employee productivity.
Look for an employee job scheduler: Look for a time clock management system for employees that lets you create employee schedules with details such as hours required, job type, and more. Further, the tool should notify employees each time a job schedule is added to their queue via email alerts and tool notifications.
Common questions to ask software vendors before purchase
These are some common questions you should ask vendors in order to find the best time tracking software to analyze employee productivity:
Does the tool have auto-time entry capabilities?
Automatic work hour recording replaces manual employee monitoring methods, such as tracking time cards and generating paper timesheets. With auto-time recording, users can clock in and out using their computers and mobile phones, and the time tracking tool automatically calculates the work hours. Since this method minimizes errors that are associated with manual time tracking methods, see if the time tracking solution includes auto-time recording capabilities.
Does the tool allow you to export data?
If at the end of a month, quarter, or year, you want to understand clock-in and out patterns or see how much time is being spent on projects, you’d want the ability to export the record data to a data analysis solution. Check if the tool allows you to do so. Understand if you can convert the data into PDFs or CSVs.
Can you create bills and invoices using the tool?
You will need bills and invoices during the time of payouts and creating them manually can be redundant. Learn about the tool’s expense tracking abilities to generate bills and invoices automatically. Some time tracking tools also send out these bills and invoices to clients automatically. If this is something that your small businesses can benefit from, ensure that expense tracking and billing, and invoicing is a part of the tool you pick.