Best Employee Time Tracking Software for Small Business

If you’re wondering what software should be used to track employee hours, we’ve written this post for all you managers, team leaders, and business owners.

In this article, we’ve gathered, carefully analyzed, and tested the best employee time-tracking software of 2023. Out of the 23 tools we reviewed, 13 are free of charge, like yours truly:

Paymo – native automatic time tracker for stress-free work
TimeCamp – a simple attendance tracker for your employees
Clockify – an employee monitoring tool with GPS tracking
Everhour (max. 5 users) – an employee monitoring tool with screenshots
Hubstaff (one user) – intensely-close employee monitoring app
Toggl Track (max. 5 users) – an intuitive time tracker with color-coded entries
Harvest – time tracking with other pm features
RescueTime – a time-tracking tool with analytics
connecteam (max. 10 users) – employee attendance with digital geofencing
homebase (one location) – the best solution for hourly work
MyHours – a timesheet-like time tracking solution
Tick (one project) – a basic time tracker mostly for Mac users
TrackingTime (max. 3 users)

Everhour, Hubstaff, Toggl Track, TrackingTime, etc. are also free but with limitations, which is not bad if you want to test the tool yourself before you adopt it for your team. Paymo will remove the user limitation this coming month, so be sure to give it a test run.

We try to update this list as often as possible. However, please double-check whether their free plan is still in effect, in case pricing plans change after the publishing of this article.

Criteria in review

Strong time tracking capabilities: native time trackers, automatic time tracking, timesheets, active timers, idle detection, etc.
Business needs: does your business also need project management capabilities, strong reporting features or even employee monitoring?
Team-oriented: is the app suitable for teams, do employees find it useful—this one is more like a hypothetical question, since we’ll allow you to decide for yourself.
Pricing. Is it affordable for your team or business?

Before we start the review, we need to state our case against employee monitoring. We hate any surveillance tactics, spyware, or hidden processes that infringe employee privacy. We believe in psychological safety, dignity, trust, and the right for privacy. Respect and empathy.

You shouldn’t go policing your employees, but empower them using the right tools and a safe company culture. We know how important trust is to every team, distributed or not, and the digital tools you use should foster it.

Surely, the benefits of time tracking cannot be dismissed, from accurate estimates and billing, to proof of work, to efficiency and productivity and other insights; however, we don’t encourage incentivizing employee time tracking or using pure time metrics for performance review without a qualitative assessment of your employees’ performance.

Time tracking helps to create healthy work rhythms and cadences, to make sure you’ve got a healthy work-life balance and get to do significant and deep work that furthers your career or bolsters your goals.

Without further ado, let’s inspect some of the best employee time tracking software out there.

1. Paymo

Paymo is one of the best employee time-tracking software for small businesses. It’s great value for money, as it incorporates much needed functionalities for any small and medium business to thrive. Paymo has native automatic time tracking, project management, resource scheduling, and invoicing, and integrates with Google, Zapier, and Slack, to name a few.

Best for: small businesses that need employee time tracking, timesheet reporting, project management, and billing for their clients.

Paymo is a modern and intuitive agency time tracking software for project-based businesses that helps your team manage projects through their entire lifecycle. Plan and schedule your projects, collaborate with your team, share files, track time, and ensure you stay on budget.

Would employees find Paymo useful?

What makes it appealing is that you can track time in your way: either manually, through the web timer, adding time in bulk, or logging time through a dedicated desktop app, Paymo Track, which automatically tracks time as employees are doing their work diligently. User data is stored locally on their devices and they have full privacy and control over what gets logged. The Pomodoro technique is also available for fans who want to timebox their efforts.

Paymo’s desktop time tracker

All the time records are automatically recorded in a standard timesheet, so admins and project managers receive all the necessary insights to run a team effectively.

Note: You can even bill clients, thanks to Paymo’s native invoicing module, which turns timesheet data into an invoice at a click of a button. This is a step up from using an invoice generator, a simple online tool. It’s cheap as it cuts down on the need for accounting services and is also professional.

Another great feature is the Active Timers, which allows you to see who’s tracking time for which task and for how long already at the same time. This is a more discrete way to check with your team instead of using random screenshots or intentional shoulder peeking.

Note: Paymo launched in 2022 a useful project profitability feature, which calculates your internal costs against billed hours. Suppose you’re not sure how to calculate it. In that case, you don’t even have to—this project profitability analysis is an excellent example of how tracking your time is crucial to accurate profit estimates.

Automatic time tracker

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS
Plugins: n/a
Desktop: Windows, Mac, Linux

Price:

Free plan available for 1 user (unlimited users coming soon)
Starter – $5.95/user/month (for one user)
Small Office – $11.95/user/month
Business – $24.95/user/month (minimum five users)

Try out Paymo today free of charge.

2. TimeCamp

TimeCamp is a time tracker tool that monitors productivity, desktop activities, does attendance tracking, and integrates with other apps. The downside is that you need to pay for TimeCamp Planner (formerly HeySpace) if you need to manage tasks, projects, or anything related to project management. There is a free plan for up to 5 users that integrates with TimeCamp, so that might work out if you don’t mind using two products.

Tip: Mark your calendar for deep work and learn how to manage a project with this simple-to-follow guide.

Tracking time is as simple as a few clicks, even for its manual stopwatch, and you can easily edit or copy entries. There’s also an automatic timer for which certain keywords can be set, connecting your employees’ time entries with relevant tasks.

All these you can do in Paymo—and more, such as detecting idle time, adding time in bulk, or switching to Pomodoro Mode for all your employees who thrive on this technique.

Would employees find TimeCamp helpful?

Besides geofencing tracking multiple locations, TimeCamp does attendance tracking, meaning it will signal whether employees are working remotely, are on paid leave, working in-office, or simply not working that day, through a simple punch-in-and-out dashboard.

I find it curious that they track data such as “Active Computer Usage” and “Total time between computer turn on/off” since people might have different work patterns or might use their personal device for work—which can render that data useless.

Employee tracker with geofencing

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS
Plugins: Chrome, Microsoft Edge
Time Clock Kiosk available for download.

Pricing

Free plan available.
Starter: $3.99/user/mo.
Basic: $7.99/user/mo.
Pro: $10.99/user/mo (most popular).
Enterprise plan available.

For a detailed review of TimeCamp, read this subsection covering TimeCamp’s features.

3. Clockify

Clockify is a time tracking solution for managers and business owners to manage schedules, approve employee timesheets, create invoices, track expenses, and control budgets and hourly rates.

As for time tracking, there’s a simple start-and-stop timer to track work hours. You may also edit hours manually and mark them as billable. There’s a “Force Timer” feature, which won’t allow your employees to edit or enter time manually.

Would employees find Clockify helpful?

There’s a Time Kiosk that can make it easy for employees to tap in and out of work and break time, aggregating the time logged during that work day or shift. There’s a GPS tracking capability to display your team’s location while on the clock, along with employee monitoring through screenshots—that’s one every five minutes.

Some users complained of inaccurate reporting, deeming it “borderline useless, at best incredibly confusing,” while others noted that “sometimes the program is a bit slow and unresponsive.” Also, If only the UI didn’t look outdated—let’s just say the interface needs a facelift.

Employee monitor

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS
Plugins: Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox
Time Clock Kiosk available for any device.

Pricing

No free plan available.
Basic: $4.99/user/mo.
Standard: $6.99/user/mo.
Pro: $9.99/user/mo (most popular).
Enterprise 14.99/user/mo.

Check out this subsection for a longer conversation on Clockify and its time-tracking features.

4. Everhour

As soon as you land on their homepage, Everhour positions itself as an in-house and remote employee time-tracking software built for teams. And for good reasons. It connects with several task and project management tools, pulling all projects and tasks into the platform so you can forget about data migration.

Indeed, when working remotely and full-time, not just a side gig, you need an easy tool to help you track time.

What I liked were the project budgeting options. Each user has a unique rate/project, so senior and junior employees can be paid in direct proportion to their level of skills and contributions.

At the same time, the project budget can be reset daily/weekly/monthly, which is an excellent addition if you run retainer projects as part of your business.

Would employees find Everhour helpful?

Besides its attendance tracker, Everhour has an employee monitoring capability via screenshots (taken randomly every 10 minutes), for which your employees will have to install its native screenshot recording app.

Where Everhour excels, though, is team availability. You can set a weekly capacity for each team member and compare their time logs against their schedules on a visual timeline. Available hours will appear in green, breaks/leave days in gray and overtime in red.

The tool also comes with a native invoicing module, although a bit light if you ask me compared to other bespoke solutions.

Note: In my experience, keeping track of your time and getting paid for it has been a breeze starting these 2020s. Plus, almost all invoicing tools are free, regardless of whether you’re a small business or a freelancer. If you’d like, read our selection of the best invoicing software for small businesses we’ve managed to test and review.

Clock app

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS (beta)
Plugins: Chrome
Screenshot app: Windows, Mac.

Pricing:

Free plan available for up to 5 users.
Lite – $6/user/mo (min. 2 users).
Team – $10/user/mo (min. 5 users).

All in all, it’s best for teams who want visibility across workloads. For more info, read this subsection covering Everhour.

5. Beebole

Split into two products, Project Time Tracking and Time Clock, Beebole can be a reliable timesheet solution. Administrators can access a team overview to check project status, team performance, and overtime in one glance. Beebole’s approval flow allows project managers and admins to bulk review, approve timesheets, request changes, and lock time entries.

Tip: If you plan to or want to become a project manager but don’t know how to learn or what to study first, get started by reading this guide. Here’s another guide if you’re interested in learning more about project management methodologies and types of work styles.

Besides its ease of use for employees and administrators, Beebole offers highly customizable and powerful reporting on employee time, budget, margin, and profit. Build the exact report you and your team need, or use one of the custom KPI dashboards Beebole offers to unlock powerful business intelligence insights.

Would employees find Beebole useful?

Beebole can be set up for employees to clock in and out or to track time for clients, projects, and sub-projects using a one-click timer or manual entry. Time tracking can be done on both desktop and the free mobile app, with or without an Internet connection.

It’s also easy to log attendance, vacations, and leaves of absence. Some users may complain of lack of customization or a steeper learning curve, but overall like the simple time tracker that does its job.

Time tracking app

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS

Pricing:

No free plan available.
Paid: $6.99/user/month.
Volume discounts and 10% off for NGOs and educational institutions.

Beebole is great for employee time clocking or project time tracking, both of which come with flexible reporting. For a more detailed analysis, read this subsection of Beebole.

6. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is by excellence an employee monitoring software with time tracking capabilities that allows managers and business owners to closely manage their employees.

By close monitoring features, I mean screenshots, URL and app tracking, keystroke and mouse click tracking, scheduling, GPS and location monitoring, idle time, etc. The whole gamut of surveillance features. Hubstaff tracks hours worked by employees and monitors their productivity, which is measured by keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Would employees find Hubstaff useful?

Hubstaff is suitable for those teams who want to see what everyone is working on, and that’s done with screenshots and activity rates.

Hubstaff’s employee monitoring randomly takes up to three screenshots every 10 minutes. Plus, Hubstaff calculates activity levels based on the percentage of keyboard and mouse strokes over time.

Users complained about how this close monitoring is mentally taxing and even denting their overall performance since tracking keystrokes and clicks might not reflect productivity, especially when various factors, from a slower internet connection to work away-from-keyboard, might skew said “activity and productivity levels.”

Employee time monitor

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux.
Mobile: Android, iOS
Plugins: Google Chrome
Desktop apps: Windows, macOS X, Linux, Chromebook.

Pricing

Free for one user only.
Starter: $7/user/mo (min. 2 users)
Grow: $9/user/mo (min. 2 users)
Team: $12/user/mo (min. 2 users)
Custom plan available

Read a more detailed review of Hubstaff in this subsection.

7. Toggl Track

Toggl Track is an easy-to-use time tracking solution for teams who need flexible time tracking for their projects. Indeed, I found it easy to onboard and add my first project and tasks.

Time can be tracked in multiple ways, from manually adding time entries to turning on to the timer directly in the web tab where you’re working with the help of the Chrome or Firefox extension. There’s also Toggl Track Timeline meant to automate some of that time tracking by assigning time entries to tasks.

Also, one feature that really stands out is its powerful reporting with pie charts to help users visualize their time spent.

Would employees find Toggl Track useful?

Users find Toggl Track easy to use and unintrusive, with simple reminders throughout the workday to track their time. Overall, users of Toggl Track find it an intuitive app that does its job.

If employees only find the color scheme problematic, namely the complicated color system to classify projects or clients (especially for reports or invoices), or some time sync issues but don’t complain about close monitoring, then it’s safe to say that it’s an app worth considering.

Employee time tracker

Web: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: Android, iOS
Plugins: Chrome, Firefox
Desktop apps: Windows, macOS

Pricing

Free plan available for up to 5 users.
Starter: $10/user/mo
Premium: $20/user/mo
Enterprise plan available with custom pricing.

Here’s a more detailed explanation of Toggl Track and its time tracking capabilities.

8. Harvest

If you’ve been in the productivity space long enough, you will stumble upon Harvest. It’s a time-tracking tool with a Team Overview for managers to keep an eye on who’s working on what and who’s overworked, making sure employees aren’t burnt out.

As for managing your team, Forecast, their sister company, builds itself on top of the current app to help you schedule resources in advance – although it’s sold separately. Harvest also integrates with several tools, most of which are project management software.

Would employees find Harvest useful?

This versatile employee time-tracking software is excellent for businesses requiring a stricter work discipline, partly due to the automatic reminders that nudge team members to clock in. But also, there’s a timesheet approval system through which project managers review and approve time entries, thus preventing potential errors.

This is not to say that the software is not intuitive. On the contrary, the team overview comes with analytics to see which projects take most of their efforts and whether they’re working on the right ones—I’m talking about the billable vs. non-billable time breakdown.

All in all, Harvest is a simple time tracking software for those who value insight.