Employee Time Tracking App: Essence and Popular Software

Editor’s note: Vladimir overviews employee time tracking software: its key capabilities and choice factors. If you need help with the implementation of employee time tracking software for your company, you are welcome to explore ScienceSoft’s software development consulting offer.

The essence of an employee time tracking system

An employee time tracking app is used to measure employees’ overall active time at work, time spent on specific tasks and projects, breaks and time off. For example, it can generate real-time reports showing you when your employees are active or idle when they log in and out of their computers, and more. The system can be integrated with other software like project management, accounting applications, and more. Read on to learn how to choose the best employee time tracking system.

How to choose the right time tracking software

Here are the most important factors you need to consider before making your choice:

• Functional requirements. You need to define the scope of your future time tracking software, including employee activity and status (e.g., work time, overtime, leave time) tracking, real-time monitoring, reporting, and more. You can get some features via integration with other software like accounting, payroll, and project management solutions.
• Implementation options. It is important to determine where to locate the employee tracking tool and the data it uses. There are three deployment options: cloud, on-premises, and hybrid. Today, many businesses prefer cloud solutions as they provide better availability and free the staff from all the installation, maintenance, and upgrade work.
• Cost. The cost of your time tracking software depends on the number of employees (users), integrations with other software, custom features aimed to meet specific HR needs, and more. Also, make sure you haven’t overlooked any hidden costs, such as testing, support, and maintenance costs. What’s more, you should also consider the benefits the time tracking solution will bring, for example, time saved by an HR team and reduction of human error.

Top employee tracking tools ScienceSoft recommends

DeskTime

Overview: DeskTime enables employee monitoring, integrates with project management apps, and provides daily productivity analysis.

Highlights: The software automatically registers employee arrival and departure times (including remote employee monitoring). It offers features like absence calendars and shift scheduling.

Limitations: When many various employee activities need to be tracked and recorded, DeskTime’s productivity tracker may get unresponsive and will need to be restarted.

Pricing: Pricing plans start from $7 user/month; a free trial is available.

Toggl Track

Overview: Toggl Track is timer-based tracking software that offers convenient browser extensions (Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox), a web app, desktop apps for Mac and Windows, mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Highlights: The software offers tracking time via a one-click start/stop web timer, a mobile app, or a desktop timer. The software offers some basic project management features, such as creating and assigning tasks and marking tasks as done.

Limitations: Time can’t be tracked automatically.­­ To start tracking, you need to click “start” and to finish tracking, you need to click “stop”.

Pricing: Pricing plans start from $9 user/month (with limited capabilities); a free trial is available (up to 5 users).

TimeCamp

Overview: TimeCamp is an employee time tracking system that integrates with project management tools.

Highlights: TimeCamp offers an effective productivity tracker. The software integrates with task and project management applications (e.g., Trello, Podio, Asana, Wunderlist, Basecamp, Jira).

Limitations: There are some errors in the application for mobile devices.

Pricing: $5.25–7.25 user/month; a free trial is available.

Manage employee time easily

Employee time tracking software can give insight into employees’ working hours, productive and idle time, time offs, and more. Also, it helps monitor the time employees and teams spend on particular tasks. If you need professional assistance in selecting suitable employee tracking software or implementing a solution tailored to your business specifics, feel free to contact ScienceSoft’s team.