Great Time-Keeping Apps: Time is Money!

As the age old saying goes: Time is Money. SO it is of course very important to make sure you have Great Time-keeping Apps on your side!The days of clocking in your hours on paper, when your employees come in and out is long gone! After all, with Covid-19 many people are working from home, and it is really difficult to tell just how much time an employee has spent working.

Ensuring that your employees can track their time effectively is very important when it comes to running projects and organizations in general as smoothly as possible! This blog is going to run through a few online apps which are available to help you do so!

1. Forest App

This Time-Keeping app comes highly recommended and has grown in popularity massively in the past few years. The Forest App is available to be downloaded onto all kinds of devices from the Apple AppStore or Google Play. Essentially the app has gamified making use of your time and staying focused. The app essentially acts as a timer which you can set and once you have set the timer a tree starts to grow over that period. However, should you decide to leave the app (ie. get distracted on your phone for other reasons) the tree will die, and you must set another timer to grow a tree again. Over time you can view a forest of tree’s which you have grown due to opening the app and being productive on other work whilst letting it grow.

The App really aims to let people be productive and eliminate distractions, another noteworthy feature is that of making friends on the app. You can grow trees together should you wish! This means that should any one person close the app on their phone whilst all working together, the tree will die for the entire team! Further incentivizing productivity and great work.

This app is common amongst students trying to study for tests and exams but could be very useful for project managers to use in their teams, aim to grow 5 trees a day as a team all one hour long, or something along those lines! This way you can help keep track of how long a team/ individual has been working without distractions, or just in general how long your team has taken to complete a task together- work in a time currency of trees! Just for fun.

To check out the Forest App have a look at their website

2. Clockify

Clockify is a widely used app which has coined the term as the ‘most popular free time tracker for teams’. That’s right, unlike Forest above (which has a once off cost) Clockify is free of charge and many awesome features are available to keep track of employee’s times! It is downloadable onto one’s desktop where you will follow the simple steps to installation.
Three of the features which makes this software desirable is its time management features: These are merely a few:

1. Time Keeping:
Time Keeping of the software Clockify includes tracking hours using a timer, tracking of apps and websites, log time in a timesheet and managing time in a calendar.

2. Reporting:
A useful feature is that of reporting on the time that has gone past and making some conclusions thereof. You can see exactly how you spent your time over breakdowns of certain projects and users, you can filter and customize reports, share reports with others by means of PDFs, CVS and Excel.

3. Management:
Last but not least, this feature is highly attractive to project managers are one is able to set hourly rates, create invoices, see current activities and track and leave holidays all in one place.

Clockify is clearly a great way to analyze productivity based on where someone is spending their time on their computer. However, some people might find this intrusive and be discouraged from used this as an option. Time keeping can be done in many ways, and this is perhaps one to consider making use of!

To get a closer look into what the Clockify is all about, have a look at their website here for more info.

3. Toggl

This is a great Time-Keeping tool that simply must be mentioned. Toggl is designed to create time tracking for completing ‘better work, not overwork’.

Toggl aims to assist individuals and employers with managing their time and their staff with the use of intelligent software – hence the attitude of working smart and using your time wisely. In their website they say that busy does not always mean productive!

“Don’t fill your 8 hours for the sake of it. Leave the mundane tasks behind and get more done in less time by focusing on what really matters.”

Toggl believe that their users want a tool that they will actually use, such as something that will fit organically into their lives. Therefore, they have designed their Toggl tools in such a way that is “lightweight, value packed and so beautifully simple”.

Toggl have lots of information on their particular website which you might find useful if you’re looking into Toggl to help you manage your time!

4. Time Doctor

This Time-Keeping software’s aim is all in the name. Time Doctor aims to help people do more with their time and stop wasting their time unnecessarily.
They aim to Track your time and your employees’ time so that you can clearly see what’s done throughout the day, every day. Time Doctor creates a summary of the time spent on each project, client, and task and is continuously being updated in real time! You are able to see how much time employees spend working at the computer vs. away and how long their breaks last. You can also manually edit time if needed, as sometimes cases are changed for different reasons .

Daily and weekly summary are available when making use of Time Doctor programs and email reports are sent to you making it easy to analyse patterns. With Time Doctor it’s easier than ever to track time accurately, bill clients quickly, and pay employees on time. As the famous saying goes… Time is money… , so Time Doctor actually make a point of drawing reports which can diagnose and treat time-wasting habits. All of this with the overall aim of being more productive in the tasks you undertake!
The Time Doctor website also contains lots of information which will be of use to you if this particular software appeals to you! Take a look: here

5. Allegra

Allegra is an awesome project management software. They too have time tracking abilities available in their program to assist with project managers and employees in the team to track their time spend on different elements of the projects.

Unlike these other apps, Allegra is able to illustrate how many tasks have been allocated to one specific individual and consequently the amount of time it might take to complete a task. When this view is available it is also easier to reallocate tasks to others who have more ‘time’ on their hands.
If you’re interested in seeing Allegra’s features live, you will want to make use of their free online demo tools! See for yourself how awesome all the features are which can help lead you to success in your projects!

Time-keeping Apps : Summary

It is no surprise that with more people working from home, the outdated clock-in clock-out method of time keeping by employers doesn’t work anymore! In actual fact, the ability to keep track of time when working from home has proved to be a challenge for many different reasons. Some might find working from home far too distracting, others might consider it stressful and technology proving to be a challenge when communicating with other employees.

Therefore, the need for proper time keeping software is as clear as day. The above apps are all unique and solve a particular problem with time keeping in their own ways. Some are geared more to ensuring productivity and helping individuals do more with their time, others track what individuals are doing with their time and can report back to see what they could do in the future to optimise their time.

If you enjoyed this blog, you may certainly enjoy these other blogs too!

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