We test-drove these time trackers. Here's what we learned.

Updated 9/26/19: Since the publication of this article, one of the time trackers we reviewed—Freckle—rebranded to become Noko. As far as we can tell, the name is the only thing about the app that changed, so we’ve left our review largely as is, updating the links and name only.

As the makers of a time-tracking (and day-planning and team transparency) application, we work to stay informed of other time trackers on the market. We try them out, drawing inspiration from the things we like and learning from the things we don’t. In doing so, we can’t help but identify a few favorites.

In order, here are our current top four picks along with details about what makes them stand out, why we don’t use them (there’s a reason we built a time tracker, after all), and how Daycast stacks up next to each—see a features comparison chart here.

1. Timely

If we had to pick a winner, it’d be Timely. In our travels so far, we’ve only found two time trackers other than Daycast that allow users to make specific plans about how they hope to spend their time before actually spending it—a feature that, to us, seems pretty important if effective time management is one of your priorities. If you’re not planning your time, how do you work toward greater productivity and incremental goal completion? If you are planning how you use your time but must do so separate from the tracking of it, then time tracking becomes a chore, a necessary evil. A focus-breaker. Better to plan and track in the same place, we say.

Timely agrees.

Read the rest of our Timely review

Plan with Timely.

With just a couple of clicks, users can add specific tasks to the day they plan to work on them, even estimating how long they think each task will take, if desired. Tracking time against those tasks is then simply a matter of starting and stopping the timer. Easy.

Making planning even easier are cool features like the ability to move tasks from one day to another or copy tasks to multiple days at once. Careful though… when you copy a task, you copy any time logged against it too.

Team transparency!

Something else that separates Timely from the pack is the visibility it offers to teams. Users only need to toggle their view from Solo to Company in order to see what their teammates have worked on, are working on, and plan to work on next. This capability is a big deal to us because we believe teams work more efficiently in transparent environments. Why interrupt a coworker with something that can wait when there are tools like Timely that allow you to see when they’re neck deep in a cognitively demanding task?

Why don't we use it?

As much as we like Timely, there are some key drawbacks:

1. It’s too revenue-focused. Don’t misunderstand: We’ve got nothing against monetary success. But we see that success as a natural byproduct of prioritizing the important over the urgent, minimizing distractions, and leveraging our resources to solve problems for our customers. With Timely’s always-on, billable hours ticker equating time with money in the interface, it’s difficult to keep the true targets—winning solutions to real problems—at the forefront of our efforts. And while the Timely team acknowledges the toxic effects of short-term revenue worship on long-term profitability, their product isn’t aligned with that perspective. It’s hard to imagine a team that could use Timely day in and day out without favoring billable hours over value delivery.


2. It’s top-heavy. While not as bureaucratic as many other time trackers we’ve tried, Timely still emphasizes the singular needs of management in a way that may adversely affect the larger workforce population. For example, admins have the power to strip some users of any visibility beyond their own hours and projects while others enjoy an open view of the whole team. Similarly, admins can alter team members’ day plans, re-allocating tasks to other team members as they see fit. And though we can easily imagine situations in which this sort of capability might come in handy, it’s also not difficult to imagine more collegial ways to navigate those situations.

How Daycast stacks up:

Currently, Timely’s got Daycast beat in the reporting department. Between tagging and the ability to create custom report templates, Timely allows users to quickly and easily zero in on the data they need without having to wade through any that they don’t. Then there’s mobility: While you can use Timely on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android devices, Daycast is strictly a desktop application (for now, anyway).

On the other hand, Timely’s a bit more labor intensive to use. To start or stop a timer it takes two clicks—one to open the task, another to start/stop—rather than Daycast’s easy one click. Similarly, creating a new task in Timely requires a little more effort than in Daycast. All of which makes switching gears on the fly harder with Timely.

We also think Daycast does more for teams in the transparency department. Beyond offering equal visibility to all, Daycast also boasts real-time status updates even when users aren’t clocked in. If your teammate’s out for lunch, their Daycast status will let you know. With Timely, all you’ll see is that they’re not working.

Note: We haven’t tried Timely’s Memory tracker, which will track everything you do on your machine and create an ongoing timeline of your day based on that info. Some people love it, but in the words of our Lead Systems Administrator, “A background process that is tracking my clicks (and keyboard?) and sends it to a third party is not something I am at all interested in installing on my computer intentionally.” Hear, hear.

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2. Noko

Noko (previously Freckle) bills itself as “friendly online time tracking software,” and friendly it is.

High usability:

With an attractive, well-organized interface and the ability to start tracking time right away—no in-depth initial setup required—this web app makes diving in and learning the ropes easy. Which isn’t to suggest that Noko offers a cookie-cutter, non-customizable experience. On the contrary, users can configure everything from their preferred time and date format to user permissions to billing increments. All of which is painless to do thanks to Noko’s commitment to the idea that good software shouldn’t hurt.

“Good software is like a good concierge: there when you need it, with what you need in hand, fading away magically into the background when you don’t need it.”

— The Noko Team

Read the rest of our Noko review

A+ reporting:

Besides its ease of use, Noko also stands out because of its remarkably robust reporting features. With just a few clicks, users can create detailed reports on any combination of time frame, people, projects, and clients, using tags to drill down further if desired. You can also utilize the search field to pull data that’s too specific to isolate with just the above filtering options.

Why don't we use it?

It comes down to two big, hairy, deal-breakers:

1. Planning isn’t possible. Users can add time entries manually or use the timer to clock their hours in real time, but there’s no way to arrange in advance the tasks and projects we hope to use that time on. Which is sort of like going shopping with a calculator and no grocery list. You may have an accurate accounting of where every dollar and cent went, but did you get what you need?
   
   On its own, this limitation is enough to preclude us from adding Noko to our tool set. Without a planning component, a time tracker is just another time eater.


2. Team visibility is marginal. Depending on permission levels, users may be able to navigate to teammates’ dashboards and get a look at the time they’ve already logged. But there’s no way to know what a teammate’s currently working on or what they’re planning to work on next. All of which means Noko can’t help us help each other.

How Daycast stacks up:

Besides bragging rights in the reporting arena, Noko’s also got a leg up on Daycast when it comes to sharing those reports. While Daycast users can export reports to csv files, Noko users have more options: export to a pdf or excel file or, even niftier, generate a shareable link to the read-only version. With the ability to stop sharing anytime (in which case the link no longer works), Noko users stay in control of their data while enjoying easy, quick delivery of the information that matters.

Similarly, Noko users can invoice in any language and currency right from the app, making billing for tracked time almost seamless. Daycast users don’t have it quite so good.

But for all its bells and whistles, the one thing Noko doesn’t do is help us make the most of our time. On the other hand, Daycast does. With planning and transparency features, we’re able to extract more value from our workdays with Daycast than we ever could with Noko. Yes, we have to invoice elsewhere (though Daycast integrates with FreshBooks, which offers easy invoicing), but thanks to increased productivity, we have more to invoice for.

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3. Harvest

There’s a lot to configure with Harvest, which can give new users the impression that they’re in for a complicated ride. Not so. Despite the somewhat daunting length of their getting started webinar (who wants to spend half an hour learning how to use a time tracker?), Harvest is easy to learn and easy to use. And for the administrators among us, it’s probably a hands-down winner.

Read the rest of our Harvest review

It's admin-friendly.

Harvest is a manager’s time tracker, by which we mean its pros are weighted towards users with admin level permissions. Pros like:

• Detailed cost and budget tracking. Admins can set budgets for projects as well as billing rates and internal costs for employees. Harvest then uses those settings to track how much of a project’s budget has been spent/remains and how much it’s cost so far.


• In-depth reporting. Admins can create detailed reports that include billable hours, billable amount, and uninvoiced amount and that can be broken down by client, projects, tasks, and team. Regular users can also see these reports, but only with respect to their own time.


• Invoicing. Admins can create invoices ranging from pretty simple to very detailed.


• Control over projects and tasks. Employees can only log time to projects they’ve been assigned to by an admin, and to tasks an admin has created within those projects.


• Timesheet approval. Users submit their time for approval by an admin each week.

For freelancers and for managers who prefer to keep tight control over their teams, Harvest is a worthy choice.

Why don't we use it?

The trouble with software marketed to multiple subsets but built to address the needs of just one—in this case, managers—is that for everyone else, it tends to make life harder rather than easier. We see this play out again and again with time trackers, including Harvest. For one thing, planning time with Harvest requires either A) subscribing to their planning app, which is, like Harvest, built for managers what with its admin-weighted power differential and focus on discrete time blocks, or B) using a time-consuming workaround.* Additionally, only those with admin level permissions can see anything beyond their own projects, tasks, and time, which seems like a waste. Why silo your team if you don’t have to?

*To plan ahead with Harvest, save dummy time entries to the day you hope to work on them, edit each to remove the time from them, then save again. You’ll end up with a set of tasks with zero time logged to them that you can then clock into and out of as you work through your day.

How Daycast stacks up:

With its invoicing, reporting, and cost/budget tracking capabilities, Harvest is inarguably the more full-service time tracker. But at $12 per user per month, it’s also twice the price of Daycast. Is the extra expense worth it? That depends.

• Does your team need chunks of deep work time to be optimally effective?
• Do you have to nag to get your team to log time?
• Do you use FreshBooks? Or invoicing software that imports csv files?
• Is your team’s work prompted from more than one source (e.g. support tickets plus project management software)?
• Are your team’s tasks a mix of the routine and the creative?

If you answered “Yes” to a couple of the above, you might consider giving Daycast a try. If you answered “No” to all, spring for the pricier Harvest.

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4. Hours Pro

One quick beef before we get into why Hours made the list: Nowhere on the Hours site is any information about pricing, integrations, or support. You have to sign up for an account to learn that:

• The iPhone app is free, but it’s limited if you choose not to upgrade to a paid account.

• There’s only one paid plan, and at $8 per user per month, it’s more reasonable than a lot of other team time-tracking software.

• Hours offers no integrations. It used to integrate with FreshBooks Classic, and legacy users of that integration are still able to access it, according to Hours support. However, we could find no way for new Hours users to integrate with FreshBooks Classic.

Despite the frustrating lack of upfront information, Hours won the last spot among our favorites. Here’s why.

Read the rest of our Hours Pro review

It’s pretty.

Though we value usability over aesthetics (by a lot), we can’t help but admire Hours’ sleek interface, simple graphics, and unobtrusive use of color.



Several steps above dreary, cardboard-bland design that calls to mind grey cubicles, blinking fluorescent lighting, and hovering supervisors, Hours at least looks like it’s pleasant to use. We’d call that a win in a market overflowing with software that’s not only painful to use but painful to look at too.

Ignoring the clock is (mostly) possible.

One thing we’ve noticed about a lot of time trackers is that while they may let you track time independent of time-of-day, if you need to edit a time entry or add one after the fact, you’re tied to the clock: You’ve got to enter a start and stop time to successfully adjust or manually add time. We think that’s annoying, and we do wish Hours allowed its users to edit time entries the same way Harvest, Freckle, Timely, and Daycast do: by correcting total time per entry. But it’s at least possible to manually add time without worrying about time-of-day via their “non-timeline time” feature. Hours users who are diligent about clocking in and out properly should be able to use it without having to remember what time of day they started or ended a task.

Why don't we use it?

The beautiful but less-than-informative website was our first clue that Hours suffers from a form-over-function bias. The app itself, though lovely, is something of a chore to track time with. You’ll have to navigate through three screens (three!) just to start tracking time on a new task or project. Furthermore, though users can plan ahead by setting up the timers they anticipate using, that planning is limited to the day-of. And because setting up those timers is so involved (seriously, three screens), going for anything beyond broad umbrellas that can be used over and over again would be a real pain. All of which means that folks who plan farther in advance than ten minutes and prefer those plans detailed will have to adopt other tools to satisfy their needs.

The same is true with regard to transparency. If you want your team un-siloed and free to collaborate, Hours won’t help you achieve that. Admins alone can view time logged, but even they can’t see anyone’s timer setup but their own.

How Daycast stacks up:

Daycast will handily lose any beauty contest in which Hours is a contestant. Its reporting capabilities are also not as broad or in-depth as Hours’ are. And unlike Daycast, you can use Hours on the go with a mobile browser or an iOS device.

But if the proof is in the productivity, we believe Daycast is the better value. With quick, type-and-go task setup, easy one-click time tracking, and up-to-the-minute transparency, teams have what they need in Daycast to prioritize the important over the urgent and work efficiently together to achieve their goals.

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Honorable Mentions:

There are a couple of time trackers that we want to like but that just don’t make the cut for us: 

• TimeCamp is a web application with optional desktop and mobile phone apps. It’s the only other time tracker we’ve found that allows users to freely and easily plan their days ahead of time. And at $7 per user per month, it’s also affordable. The web version is a breeze, but the desktop apps are maddeningly difficult to use (not to mention uninstall), and the software tracks everything you do. While worthwhile to some, we’re leery of apps that record and deliver our movements to a third party.

• TSheets is a full-service time-tracking system that seems like it’s a perfect solution for certain types of companies (e.g. construction, landscaping, janitorial, site maintenance, HVAC installers) and ideal for still others to replace time clocks (e.g. retail, restaurant, hotel). But it’d be cumbersome and rigid for Daycast’s users: knowledge workers who need to effectively plan and manage their time themselves.

The best time tracker is the one you'll use.

Philosophies and features aside, software that you dread using or forget to use hasn’t earned its place in your toolset. Some of that comes down to personal preference. Which is why we strongly recommend test-driving at least a few different time trackers before making any buying decisions. Most offer free trials ranging anywhere from seven days to Daycast’s thirty. Take full advantage of whatever trial period you’re offered, we say. Put the software through its paces. It may boast great reviews and gorgeous product shots but if it doesn’t sync up with your culture or compliment your team’s working style, it’s not a good fit. We know that trying out time trackers is not the most fun thing to do, but it’s the only way to answer the most important question: Will you use it?

Top photo by Hans Eiskonen

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