Any recommendations for a time tracking app?

  • 27 January 2021
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brian.kim
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Any recommendations for a time tracking app? I have used toggl before, but i resorted back to using a spreadsheet. Challenge I had with traditional time tracking apps was that I would often forget to stop tracking it. Using keyboard shortcuts in Google sheets with some basic math formula (subtraction, rounding, etc) along with pivot tables/data studio works for me but is not really a scalable solution.

Also considering app sheet solution as well, but being able to quickly switch between tasks is important to me because I'm usually switching back and forth between tasks, and I'm much quicker on keyboard than with a mouse

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travis500
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Unusual answer but when I was consulting I used to just block time on my calendar to work on each task for the client so I would just sum those up every Friday and then divide my time block for emails, break and lunch proportionally amongst the clients based on my weekly target hours for each client. ( I know some think that you should not bill lunch and breaks but I think thats crazy, if I spent all day working for you I'm probably thinking about your problems at lunch too and salary people rarely actually put in 8 hours 'billable' work per day)


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devongabrielpena
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I block out time via my Calendar like Travis, but I am a fan of the Pomodoro idea and use a simple Mac App called Flow to track the time. It also has the ability to block apps to maintain focus among other settings.


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brian.kim
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Thanks. Definitely some food for thought there. What I forgot to mention is that at the end of the day, it needs to go into our accounting software (for now). We might overhaul the process entirely if we find a suitable alternative that works for everyone including the person who's tracking the time as well as who's doing the reporting, minimizing room for error as well as any manual entry (copy and paste).

Ideally I would like to see this integrated into CRM but haven't had a chance to take a close look at the one we are in the process of rolling out.


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devongabrielpena
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Googled this and there seems to be some pretty UI friendly ones like Clockify. Have you heard of it?


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devongabrielpena
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and Harvest.


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brian.kim
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Thanks I think I've heard of the name Clockify before but not Harvest. I will take a look!


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bblumenband
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We use Harvest, and I would think it's similar in features to Toggl. There are also some apps out there that either "track" or "learn" what you are working on, which could be something to look into, such as Timely by Memory https://memory.ai/timely


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cspring
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I personally use the free version of trackingtime.co They have a chrome extension that allows you to start tracking time in gmail, freshdesk and other systems . Don't know about keyboard short cuts though. Also I asked this question a few months back in the remote-it channel


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cspring
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Oh and it has a fairly decent app for iOS and Android.


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jfuller.depu

Harvest is a good app for this and has a really nicely featured free tier.



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jfuller.depu

Also, if you need proper Time and Attendance that hands off to payroll, well, my employer makes just such a thing



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jfuller.depu

But it seems rather overkill for just tracking your time; in my consulting days Harvest worked really well and the integrations are nice too. Easy to edit and export.



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lguadiana
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I’ve been using toggl. They have made some pretty cool improvements to where, if you check off the box, it will also track websites that you visit and keep track of how long you spend on them. This may be helpful in helping you keep track of the task switching even when you forget to stop the timer. It has saved me several times!

Lorne_@_AriaConsulting

Disclaimer first: I am an MS partner.  However, I try to always provide recommendations that are driven by the least expensive, most practical way to achieve the most (best bang for the buck kinda thing).

Even with the above, I would suggest checking to see if your company has an O365 subscription.  Or a Dynamics one.  In either case you could get PowerApps and Power Automate.  With those 2 low code/no code tool sets, you could create exactly the data structures and the UX you want, and have extensive, vendor+supported, integrations across over 350 different apps/platforms.

Since you mentioned that you're currently using Excel with formulas and such, that's mostly what's needed for PowerApps after you create the entities and relationships.

Just a possible different direction to consider.

devongabrielpena
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@Lorne_@_AriaConsulting my MGR is good with PowerShell and we do have an 0365 subscription. Do you have some sort of article or guide we could sift through to learn more?



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Lorne_@_AriaConsulting

Not Powershell, PowerApps. 😉

There is a LOT of great info from starting green up to sort of intermediate on the MS Docs site. It is one of MS's biggest areas of investment. And, obviously, if the CRM turns out to be Dynamics, well, MS's biggest advantage (that they do a lot of the work of making their stuff mostly just work together with not much expected at the customer end) really comes into play as you wouldn't have to recreate master data entities and try to keep them synched and all that.  Or hope that Zapier has an existing integration that would ACTUALLY meet your needs (I've been repeatedly disappointed in that regard).

Beyond that, if you look to communities like Collab365, you can find resources that specialize in the Power Platform services if you just want the project done quickly and mostly at a better level of professional.

If you want fully professional, then engage a partner (yes, like my company and my offshore dev partner company that specialize in nothing but Power Platform).

devongabrielpena
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Thank you! Setting this thread on a reminder and will look into it. :)



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