Small business time tracking is a must-have these days. SMBs owners that want to stay up to date with the latest tech trends should leave the traditional ways to track employee time and substitute it with automatic time tracking. Why do it, and how to choose a time clock app that perfectly meets the company’s needs? Let’s see if we can find the best time tracking software for your SMB!
Why your small business needs time tracking software?
Time is money; we can’t simply deny it. Hundreds of misspent employee hours can cost the company a small fortune. It’ll be hard to get the money back, but at least you can prevent further inane expenses. But it’s not the only reason you should switch from manual hours tracking to a fully automated time tracking solution. Let me introduce the small business time tracking essentials.
🌟 Attendance tracking
Spreadsheets and time punch cards are outdated and have a high risk of costly human errors. An employee time tracking automatically clocks them in and out and collects their standard work hours, time off, and remote workdays.
👉 See how to keep a time log.
🌟 Effective project budgeting
With a time tracking app, you can set a budget for each task and track it according to the project progress. When you and your team log hours for a particular project, the progress bar shows the remaining time, and the system gets you notified when the budget is nearing its maximum.
🌟 Workload tracking
Knowing how many hours similar projects or tasks take is the key to distributing and managing work across your team smarter. Such knowledge is priceless for the SMB sector because the companies often struggle with a lack of workforce.
👉See how to keep track of time and work hours.
🌟Efficient payroll and expense tracking
Calculating salaries and wages is much easier when it’s based on proper attendance data. Employee time tracking apps log work hours and fill the timesheets automatically and accurately. Just combine the results with their hourly rates and ensure your employees are paid fairly for their hard work.
🌟 Tracking non-billable hours
Time tracking helps SMBs indicate the non-billable hours, the administrative costs of various company-related processes. Tracking them helps to understand the true costs of running a business.
🌟 Better knowledge about the labor cost
Remember – you can’t manage and improve things you don’t measure. The tracking project team provides you with priceless data about how much each one is costing you, and the same goes with the employees.
👉 Click here for more specific information about employee cost.
🌟 Compliance with the labor standards act
Each employer is obliged to keep track of employees’ attendance and pay them fairly. Companies’ financial policy should comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (and similar acts in various countries) that states minimal wages, overtime pay, record keeping, etc. It’s much easier to go in line with these standards if you track work hours automatically.
Small Business Time Tracking Apps – choose your favorite!
TimeCamp
Simple yet comprehensive small business time tracking and attendance management tool
Small businesses need a good employee time tracking system. And here, TimeCamp comes with a helping hand, or rather, an opportunity to automate the time tracking process.
TimeCamp offers a rich set of features that streamline daily team management in small businesses:
- automatic time tracking and manual timesheet filling – track time against projects and tasks to find out both projects and labor costs,
- project management features with tags – perfect for high-level project organizational transparency,
- smart reporting capabilities – with preset templates and custom ones,
- non-billable and billable hours tracking – track time you can charge your clients for and the hours spent on administrative processes to understand the true cost of an employee and running your small business,
- attendance tracking with timesheet approvals – save time by turning the hours worked into the employees’ absence recording,
Both in-office and remote teams will appreciate how easily they can log time spent on work-related activities with the TimeCamp time tracking app. It’s available as a desktop app that works in the background and fills timesheets with tracked time automatically, as mobile apps and a browser plugin.
👉 Find out more about Employee Attendance Tracking Apps
Pricing:
TimeCamp’s free plan includes unlimited users and unlimited projects and tasks, tags, project templates, and many more. Perfect for these SMBs that need free time tracking for a start (you can upgrade it anytime!).
Paid plans start at $6.30 user/month and include features such as invoicing, budgeting, and timesheet approvals. Small businesses with custom needs can contact sales to discuss Enterprise plan details.
Free trial available (14 days).
💚 USP of the product: wide range of preset and custom reports
7pace Time Tracker
For small teams using Azure DevOps
If you manage a team working on Azure DevOps, you should try the 7pace time tracking app. The good news is they’re preparing a Github version as well; early access is now open.
7pace offers a straightforward, two-way time tracking: real-time or adding time entries manually in the work items later. Users can track their performance using weekly timesheets or monthly overviews.
Dev teams managers will appreciate features such as sprint health insights, timesheet approvals, and different levels of user settings.
7pace time tracking software also offers robust budgeting support for dev teams. It includes billable/non-billable hours, assigning items, iterations, work logs to budgets, and software capitalization support.
With this time tracking app, dev teams can easily check their performance using worklog history and team/individual reports, which are also available for a particular item.
7pace is available as a desktop and mobile app for most popular systems and devices.
Pricing:
7pace doesn’t offer a free plan; however, you can register for a free trial (28 days) to check all the features offered by this time tracking solution. Lowest paid plan costs $5 user/month for teams up to 20 users.
💚 USP of the product: software development-oriented time tracking software
WorkComposer
Automatic time and screenshots monitoring
If your small business needs just a simple time tracking solution, WorkComposer seems to be a good option. Its timer tracks time spent at work and then gives you the breakdown by projects, tasks, or employees.
WorkComposer offers features that help the managers regain control over their employees’ time: screenshots monitoring and URL/app tracking. Based on time tracking data, it generates reports of usage duration and activities. Some team leaders can find it helpful for the right remote worker productivity and performance measurement.
Besides reporting project time, WorkComposer offers project management solutions that help distribute work across the employees and manage/prioritize daily tasks.
Pricing:
WorkComposer offers just one paid plan that costs $2.99 user/month, billed monthly. 7-day free trial included.
💚 USP of the product: screenshots monitoring
Todo.vu
Task management tool with time tracking features
There are lots of hybrid products among the time clock apps. One of them is Todo.vu that besides focusing mostly on project management assets, also acts as a time tracking software.
SMBs that are looking for an all-in-one yet simple time tracking app will appreciate its comprehensiveness. It keeps track of customers’ data, helps you organize daily workflow, helps track billable hours, and offers time-saving perks like recurring tasks, labels, and automated reminders.
What’s more, todo.vu supports teamwork by offering a “Good job!” feature that can help managers appreciate employees’ efforts. Each team member can set the “out of office” status when they’re absent at work.
Todo.vu is available for both desktop and mobile devices.
Pricing:
The free plan includes only one user, so it’ll be a nice time workflow tracking app for freelancers. SMB owners can choose a Business Time plan prepared to manage tasks, track time, and billable hours for teams. It costs $9 per user/month.
💚 USP of the product: teamwork supporting features
Quickbooks Time, former TSheets
Quickbooks time tracking for small business owners
If you’re an SMB owner who’s looking for the best time tracking software for Quickbooks, consider giving Quickbooks Time a try. Formerly TSheets, it’s now a part of an Intuit software group.
👉 Check out our QuickBooks time tracking integration!
Quickbooks time offers different ways of tracking hours worked. There’s a mobile time tracking app that allows tracking and managing employees’ time. Mobile teams will appreciate the Time Clock Kiosk feature that works on any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. SMB owners that hire field workers can benefit from GPS and geofencing that sends real GPS data without draining the smartphone’s battery.
👉 Check here if you are looking for GPS time tracking app.
Besides tracking time spent on daily work-related activities, Quickbooks Time provides teams with high requirements with the job and shift scheduling feature.
Pricing:
Quickbooks time doesn’t offer a free plan, and the lowest-paid one costs a $20 base fee per month + $8 per user per month. Paid plans include one free admin, scheduling, and expert support.
💚 USP of the product: Quickbooks compliance
Project Hours
Simple yet efficient time tracking app
If your SMB needs just time tracking tools without project management, Project Hours seems to be a good choice. It works two ways: as a web timer, or you can add time entries manually in the timesheets.
Project Hours is also available as a mobile app for iOS and Android, so it’ll work well for SMBs from construction or health care industries where not every employee has a desk job.
👉 Read more about construction time tracking software.
Besides tracking hours for projects, the tool also offers a basic reporting feature, prevents data from changing by locking the timesheets, and allows to set the hourly rates for easier cost calculation.
Pricing:
Project Hours offers a long, two-month free trial. After this period, you can upgrade to a premium plan which costs just $2 per user per month.
💚 USP of the product: reliable mobile apps
ClockShark
GPS tracking app and time tracking tool for field and construction businesses
If your business hires field workers and you’re looking for an all-in-one yet not an expensive toolkit, try ClockShark. It works like other time tracking apps; however, is also packed with many other features helpful for daily teamwork management.
Its main purpose is keeping an eye on timesheets and accurate team managing.
ClockShark allows your field team to communicate in real-time. As soon as employees clock in, they get the instructions from their managers that are important for fulfilling current responsibilities accurately.
With this tool, you can automate time tracking using web timers, mobile app, and time kiosk features. What’s more, it offers GPS tracking and geofencing to help you know where your employees are. As one of the schedule tracking apps, you can use its drag and drop feature to create the job schedules in no time.
Pricing:
With a free trial, you can access all the premium features for 14 days. Then, you can choose from three paid plans, the lowest price starts at a $15 base fee plus $3 per user per month.
💚 USP of the product: instant scheduling
Rippling
Employee management with time tracking solutions
If your SMB needs time tracking apps for small businesses that also support payroll, Rippling can help. It’s an employee management toolkit that consists of various different features for managing employee onboarding and offboarding effortlessly.
One of the features that streamline daily workflow management is time and attendance tracking. It automates the entire process – from early clock-ins to getting paychecks. Employees can use computer web timers, mobile apps, or time kiosks to check in and out. Then, it’s up to managers if they accept or reject their timesheets.
Rippling offers high-standards HR and IT solutions. Sounds big, but small teams no matter the industry will also benefit from their workforce platform.
Pricing:
The base fee is $8 per user per month. Rippling is a customizable platform, rather a toolkit than a standalone tool, so you can contact them to choose the services that your SMB requires. They’ll send you a custom quote.
💚 USP of the product: comprehensiveness
Buddy Punch
Online punch clock with shift scheduling
If you want to regain control over how much time employees spend in a shift-based work environment, try Buddy Punch. It’s one of the time tracking tools that are also packed with employee scheduling. The app seems to be a good choice for these small businesses who hire employees that, instead of working in the same location, need to change them often during the workday.
Once the employee clocks in, the time card app puts it on the timesheet and the GPS location feature lets manager know about it. With automatic reminders, you always know when the employees are close to exceeding their time so that you can adjust their schedules accordingly.
Thanks to the built-in calendar, employees can request time off, both paid and unpaid.
Buddy Punch offers Job Codes feature that allows you to track time project team members spend working for a particular job or a company during the workday. Users can change the codes freely; the information will immediately appear on their time cards.
Pricing:
Budd Punch’s pricing plans vary depending on the team’s size. Starting price is for a team of up to 4 members, $25.99 for Time&Attendance, $35.99 for Time&Attendance + Scheduling, and $45.99 for an Enterprise plan. Prices for bigger teams are rising every five users.
💚 USP of the product: Job Cards are basically projects but seem to be a good option for employees who often change their work locations.
Deputy
Work scheduling with tracking time simplified
Shiftwork small businesses will surely appreciate this all-in-one scheduling platform.
Deputy allows building the schedule with just a few clicks, saving hundreds of hours of manual work during the year. It sends the schedules to employees automatically and, if changes occur, they see the updates and can confirm their availability. Smart and user-friendly interface allows swapping sifts each time someone calls out sick. GPS tracking is a real perk; employees can clock in just by taking a snapshot of their current location.
With Deputy, small businesses can ditch the paper timesheets and replace them with an automatic clock-in clock-out system. The tool creates timesheets seamlessly and sends them to the managers who can approve the records in bulk or individually.
What’s more, this time clock tool calculates employee rates for every shift, including overtime pay; it also integrates with various payroll software.
Pricing:
You can get Deputy’s top features as separate pricing plans: both Scheduling and Time&Attendance cost $2.50 per user per month, billed monthly. But if you need a full-packed option, the premium plan will cost you $4.50 user/month. Free trial included.
💚 USP of the product: Automatic scheduling
Wrap-up
Running an SMB doesn’t mean having minimum requirements. Teams differ depending on the industry, team size, billing way, daily workflow, etc. Some of them need just basic time tracking features, others are looking for an all-in-one toolkit or a comprehensive time and attendance platform that integrates with e.g. their project management, CRM, or accounting tool.
No matter what app you’ll choose – one from the above or you’ll find it somewhere else – the first step to efficient time tracking is behind you. Make sure to introduce time tracking your employees properly and that they understand the importance of work tracking for your company. Don’t forget to highlight its benefits and discuss their concerns. Mutual trust is the key, no matter the size of the team.
Now you’re on a right track to streamline daily employee management!