Good time management skills are vital in order to be productive at work. Everyone knows the saying “time is money” and no one wants to waste it!
The best way to find out if your team and you are cost-effective is timing each task. You would then be able to optimise your day and organise your schedule more wisely. For instance, delegate to more competent people the tasks that take you too long, automate some of them, outsource others or eliminate them when they are not worth spending time on.
Nowadays, there are solutions way more efficient than your phone timer to find out how long it takes you to carry out each task.
These bits of software called Time Trackers offer several advantages:
- Identify the necessary time needed to complete a task;
- Analyse how you use your time;
- Simplify the time tracking method to avoid using Excel tables;
- Compare the work planned to the work completed;
- Analyse the ratio between costs and revenues;
- Optimise your hourly wage;
- Identify the most cost-effective projects;
- Analyse the ratio between the time and client invoice;
- Improve your productivity and the one of your team.
5 top Time Tracking tools:
- RescueTime
- Timely App
- Toggl
- Harvest
- Tick
Here you will find a selection of 5 Time Tracking tools to get started immediately.
RescueTime
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Start RescueTime and work as you usually do. The tool registers the time you spend on a software, a website, an app, and gives you a detailed review at the end of the day. You can therefore improve your productivity day by day.
Among the other functions, you can block websites (such as Social Networks) to avoid procrastination, set alarms that go off after a certain time on a task, set daily targets of productivity and see detailed graphs on how you managed your time throughout the day.
As for pricing, there are different options available:
- RescueTime – standard and free
- RescueTime Premium – $9/ month or $72/year (4 months for free) with extra options and the possibility to try it for free for 14 days.
Timely App
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Available on every panel (web, Mac, Windows, etc.), Timely allows you to time precisely every task and provides detailed time sheets.
This time-tracking piece of software allows you to estimate your time and budget, improve the profitability of your projects and optimise the performance of your team and of your company as a whole.
Everything you do gets registered: the meetings that run over, the phone calls, the time spent travelling, sending emails, etc.
This app is also useful for freelancers, who can simply state their hourly wage and esteem directly how much to charge the client for their work.
Timely offers three different packages that can be paid either monthly or yearly (which is cheaper):
- Solo: $8/month for an individual use;
- Essential: $15/month for teams;
- Company: $23/ month for teams (it provides extra functions).
Toggl
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Simple and efficient, Toggl is suitable both for companies, agencies and freelancers. Being available in both desktop, mobile and online version, you can use it from anywhere and at any time.
You will get detailed reviews on how you use your time in order to improve your productivity and the cost-effectiveness of your projects.
You can try Toggl for free for 30 days. The standard package is free indefinitely. If you wish to have more functions, you can choose between three packages that can be paid either monthly or yearly (cheapest option):
- Starter: $9/user/month;
- Premium: $18/user/month;
- Company: contact Toggl for a more precise quote.
Harvest
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How much do my projects really cost? What do I do with my time? Has my team got too many tasks? Or perhaps not enough? Harvest has an answer to all these questions.
Thanks to this software, time-tracking is no longer a constraint. You know what you really achieve with your projects, you become aware of the workload of your team and you can even create invoices yourself sending them directly to your clients with follow-ups. Harvest works on every kind of device and can be synced with tons of apps.
Like every other time tracking piece of software, you can try Harvest for free for 30 days and then choose between three different packages:
- Free: for one person and two projects;
- Solo: $12/month for a person and an unlimited number of projects;
- Team: $12/person/month starting from two users and an unlimited amount of projects
Tick
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Tick is a simple and efficient time-tracking tool that can be used both on iOS, Android, Apple and on your office computer.
Tick allows to update your data in real-time, so that you can identify the problems immediately and act accordingly before you waste any time and money.
Thanks to Tick you can receive precise reports, set automatic invoices to your clients, be more productive and cost-effective and finish your projects respecting budgets and deadlines.
You have the choice between 5 packages changing according to the number of projects:
- 1 project: free;
- 10 projects: $19/month;
- 30 projects: $49/month;
- 60 projects; $79/month;
- Unlimited: $149/month
Goodbye doubts and approximations, hello productivity and precision! Thanks to your time-tracking software, your team and you will be able to better manage your work and optimise the profitability of your projects!
For even more efficiency, please adopt a project managing tool, which will allow you, with other things, to organise the work of your team, centralise your data and communicate effectively. Overall, a vital piece of software to meet your goals and “make good things happen” within your team!
