If you struggle with tracking your time on client or company projects, you might want to check out Toggl for time tracking. It is a web-based time-tracking tool to help you manage projects and how much time you spend on them each day. I joined with a free subscription for this review.
Many applications offer some type of time tracking tool, but I’ve seen very few with the speed and ease of Toggl. You can see in this screenshot that you click the little timer, enter a description and it starts timing your work. Click it again and it stops, records it, where you can instantly see it on the dashboard.
Let’s say you have a project that you jump in and out of through the day. You can simply open that task and start timing your progress again. Or, you can create a new task against that project or client and it will auto-fill based on your previous entries or put in entirely new data.
Premium level users can let a team track time on a project, integrate it with Basecamp, and track your earnings. You can also create reports with your logo if you have to submit them to clients separately. Plans start at $5 a month up to $99 a month.
Best features:
- Downloads to CSV format for Microsoft Excel junkies
- Free account is very robust and let’s you slice and dice your project data by task, by project, by client and has decent reporting for no cost.
- You can run it as a standalone desktop application and it syncs up to the web when you connect again. Pretty cool.
- Right out of the gate, or off the home page I should say, they make it super easy for the user. You can sign up by using your Google account (if you have one) username and password as your Toggl account setup. They offer a Mac, Linux, iPhone, and Windows version of the application, too.
- You can choose if the project is “billable” or not.
What could they do better?
It is an elegant tool and one that doesn’t claim to do anything other than track time, but if I had to ask for one thing: It would be an alarm or timer that tells me when I’ve reached the amount of time I’ve actually scheduled for myself. One that rings loudly would be good!
Who is it for?
Any freelancer or small business owner who tracks their hours for customers or for internal projects. If you charge by the hour, Toggl is worth exploring.
Learn more about Toggl.
Joel Libava
TJ,
You are really good at this “reviewing” thing. If I ever find the need to do this type of time tracking, I’ll be sure to check out Toggl.Thank you!
The Franchise King
RedHotFranchises
One minute goes by like a second, an hour goes by like a minute, a day goes by like an hour and a week goes by like a day.
Time is of greatest essence and value, http://www.theactionmachine.com/ is also a great tool to help you manage your time more efficiently.
I say the same thing as Joel: “TJ, You are really good at this “reviewing” thing.”
I think you could use Toogl as a personal productivity tool in order to keep track on the things you need to get done during your work day and how much time you spend on different stuff in your life.
TJ McCue
Thanks Joel & Martin. I appreciate the kind words. Anita gives me a lot of room, as product review editor, to search for apps and services that help us as small business owners to be more productive. I’m always open to suggestions. Thanks again.
Rick Falls
Great find for time management tools.
I am going to combine it with “Cool timer” (google it) and that way I’ll have a sort of alarm clock to jive with it for even greater effectiveness.
Thanks for the find.
Rick
Sounds like a cool tool. I’ll have to check out Toggl. Thanks TJ!
Michelle
Thanks for the detailed review. Will be sure to check it out a bit further.
Jean
I want my boss to check my work, how can I let him see my time tracking? He wants to review my time, but he could not see it. I already add him in my teamroom. please reply
Tanya
Hello Jean!
I use yaware.com. It’s easy to start. I use it already for 1 year. Also every employee in the company I work uses it for time and productivity monitoring. Hope it will help.
Hariharan
Activity Tracker Plus is another free web-based time tracking tool for small business that uses Google spreadsheet as database. There is no restrictions on number of employees that you can track and its free.
dave
True Time Tracker is free and very useful http://www.truetimetracker.com/