7 Best Time Tracking Software for Small Businesses [2024]

When it comes to time tracking software for small businesses, the following features matter:

• Simple but accurate time tracking
• Time billing and invoicing
• Time reporting
• Time tracking on mobile devices
• Integrations

These features help small businesses function efficiently without spending hours on employee training and onboarding.

But with so many time tracking tools available, how do you choose the best one for your business?

In this article, I compared popular time tracking apps available today to create a list of the best time tracking software for small businesses. This comparison was based on 23 parameters, including user reviews, features, integrations, and pricing.

Here are my findings based on the comparison.

Best time tracking apps for small businesses

1. Toggl Track: simple, accurate time tracking and reporting
2. Clockify: timecard software for small business
3. Harvest: time tracking and invoicing software
4. Everhour: time tracking and workforce management
5. My Hours: project time tracking tool
6. ClickTime: timesheet management software
7. Time Doctor: employee monitoring software

Let’s dive into a detailed review of each tool.

1. Toggl Track

Price: FREE. Paid plans start at $9/user/month.

Toggl Track is best for small business owners who want a simple, accurate time tracking software with time billing and customizable reporting features.

It has earned quite a reputation, with over 1,500 reviews on G2 alone; it’s one of the best time tracking apps for small businesses. 

This easy-to-use tool makes it a breeze to track time and manage projectse. Built for small businesses and agencies, this time tracking app will help ensure your projects remain profitable while your team stays productive.

What’s unique about Toggl Track?

• Toggl Track is simple enough for your team to enjoy using every day. At the same time, managers will find its flexible reporting features helpful in making insightful decisions.
• It helps with multiple core use cases that small businesses find with timekeeping — project time tracking, employee timesheet tracking, and billing/invoicing.

Top features

• Flexible time tracking: Track time using a start/stop timer, automated timekeeper, or add/edit manual time entries.
• Billing and invoicing: Set billable rates, track billable hours, generate simple invoices, and share them with your clients as PDFs.
• Reporting: Generate timesheets based on tracked time data, track project progress with estimated vs. actual reports, manage project budgets with income vs. expense reports, or create custom charts and reports to gain insights from your time data.
• Project time tracking: Monitor project profitability and keep workloads in check by ensuring your team is not overworked or underworked. 
• Payroll time tracking: Assign labor rates to each team member and generate detailed or summary time logs based on tracked time to ensure everyone gets paid accurately.
• Mobile and desktop apps: Use Toggl Track on the go, offline or online, with native Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows apps.

Integrations

Toggl Track supports 145+ integrations. Here are the popular ones among small businesses:

• Project management software: Asana, Jira, Trello, ClickUp, Monday, Toggl Plan, etc.
• Accounting and payroll software: QuickBooks, Xero, Freshbooks, Zoho Books, etc.
• Calendars: Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCal, etc.
• Communication tools: Gmail, Outlook, Slack, etc.
• CRM and customer support apps: Salesforce, Capsule CRM, Zendesk, Freshbooks, etc.

Pricing

Toggl Track offers four pricing plans:

• Free: $0/month for freelancers and teams of up to 5 users.
• Starter: $9/user/month for small teams looking to manage their time and tasks.
• Premium: $19/user/month if you want to scale your projects and need advanced features like time tracking reminders, single sign-on (SSO) authentication, or project forecasts.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing is available upon request. The plan is best suited for large teams where you need to manage multiple workspaces or if you need customizable solutions added on top of the app.

Annual subscriptions will get you a 10% discount.

Toggl Track pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Flexible time tracking with automated, timer, and manual modes	❌ Free plan is limited to five users
✅ Track billable and non-billable hours
✅ Generate timesheets and invoices based in tracked time data
✅ 145+ integrations
✅ Employee and project time reports along with custom reporting

Sign up for a free plan, and optionally opt-in for 30-day free trial to try premium features.

2. Clockify

Price: Has a free plan while paid ones start at $4.99/user/month.

Clockify works best for small businesses who need clock-in/clock-out timecard features. For example, factory floors or other brick and mortar businesses. It also has employee monitoring features including GPS tracking for field-based teams.

It also lets you track billable hours and hourly rates.

Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar business, consultant, freelancer, or independent contractor, Clockfy has something for everyone.

What’s unique about Clockify?

• Clockify comes with clock-in/clock-out kiosks, making it the only timecard software for small businesses.
• It has a generous free plan that offers unlimited tracking for many users.

Top features

• Multiple apps: You can use Clockify’s desktop app and mobile apps, as they will sync all your data online. Additionally, you can track time automatically through their one-click timer or manually add time entries. 
• Reporting capabilities: Get a summary of your time stats or weekly reports to instantly calculate how much you should get paid based on the billable rates you’ve set. 
• Invoicing, expenses, and budgets: Know exactly how much you should earn to record and invoice fixed fees.
• Earnings tracker: See at a glance how much you’ve earned, starting from your billable rates and project ROI, so that you can analyze your productivity levels.
• Team approvals: Invite employees to track time and manually approve their entries.

Integrations

Clockify supports 25+ integrations, including:

• Project management software: Asana, Jira, Todoist, etc.
• Productivity tools: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, etc.
• Accounting and payroll: QuickBooks

Pricing

There are five plans to choose from. Features are scattered throughout these plans, so we’ve selected some of the highlights of each plan:

• Free: Offers basic time tracking and reporting capabilities at no cost. No user limits.
• Basic: At $4.99/user/month, this is the first plan that offers admin features like adding time for others or running time audits. 
• Standard: At $6.99/user/month, this plan will get you their invoicing feature and approvals, attendance management, and locked time options.
• Pro: At $9.99/user/month, you’re looking at advanced features like expense tracking, forecasting, and custom fields.
• Enterprise: At $14.99/user/month, you’ll only need this if you need extra security options like single sign-on (SSO) or control accounts.

Billing annually for the plans will get you a minimal $1 discount/per month (depending on the plan).

Clockify Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Clock-in/clock-out kiosks serve brick-and-mortar small businesses that need only a basic time clock software	❌ With so many features, you’ll need more time to set it up, learn, and onboard your employees
✅ GPS tracking helps on-field employees track their work hours from anywhere	❌ Only 25+ integrations — may not integrate with your existing systems
✅ Employee scheduling feature for small businesses that work in shifts

Read our in-depth comparison of Toggl Track vs Clockify, about how they match up feature-by-feature.

3. Harvest

Price: It has a free option. The paid plan costs $12/seat/month.

Harvest is a top time tracking solution for everything related to invoicing.

It offers the entire workflow — tracking billable hours, timesheet approvals, invoice generation, and getting paid via Stripe or Paypal. This makes it a very useful time tracking software for small businesses, saving valuable time spent on creating invoices and collection payments.

What’s unique about Harvest?

• It makes it extra easy for freelancers and small bussinesses to get paid through their PayPal and Stripe integrations.

Top features

• Custom reminders: Send your team automated reminders to ensure they won’t forget to track their time.
• Team reporting: Visualize your team’s capacity and analyze the time spent on a project and impacting costs.
• Accounting: Integrate with QuickBooks Online and Xero to instantly send your Harvest data and speed up bookkeeping.
• Invoicing and payments: Create and send invoices using recorded time and expenses and get paid faster through PayPal and Stripe integrations.

Integrations

Harvest comes with 50+ integration options, including:

• Project management software: Asana, ClickUp, Jira, etc.
• Finance and payments: Paypal, Stripe, QuickBooks, and Xero
• Productivity tools: Outlook, Google Calendar, Slack, etc.

Pricing

Harvest has the simplest plan choices:

• Free: Limited to only one user and two projects, so you can’t consider it for a team.
• Pro: At $12/seat/month, this is the choice with no limitations. 

You can save 10% with an annual plan purchase.

A 30-day free trial is available for the Pro features. You can also extend the trial with an extra 14 days if you’re inactive longer and then log into your account again. Your account will be deactivated, losing the data if you wait.

Harvest pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Simple timer-based time tracking	❌ Lowest G2 Crowd ratings among the top seven tools
✅ Invoice generation and payments via Stripe and Paypal	❌ Offers basic time reports
✅ 50+ integrations to integrate with your existing tools and systems

Read our in-depth comparison of Toggl Track and Harvest.

4. Everhour

Price: Free. Paid plans start at $6/user/month.

Everhour offers time tracking and workforce management software features, including timesheets, employee scheduling, invoicing, and task management.

These features make it an excellent solution for small businesses that want to streamline their workflows, monitor team activities, and effectively manage resources.

Its screenshot capabilities help you monitor team activities.

What’s unique about Everhour?

• It offers timeline-based employee scheduling and Kanban task management features.
• In addition, Everhour comes with custom reporting, although the customization is limited to filtering and grouping features.

Top features

• Seamless integration: Everhour syncs easily with your favorite tools, allowing you to effortlessly add time tracking to your workflow.
• Easy-to-use interface: The app’s user-friendly design makes time tracking a piece of cake for you and your team.
• Reporting functionalities: Everhour’s reporting features provide valuable insights into project progress, resource allocation, and team performance, helping you make data-driven decisions.
• Budget tracking: the app’s capabilities help you keep projects on track and within budget.
• Flexibility: Everhour fits various team sizes and industries, making it a versatile time tracking app for diverse needs and requirements.

Integrations

Everhour offers a limited 20+ integrations with tools like Asana, QuickBooks, Xero, etc.

Pricing

Everhour offers only two price plans.

• Free: Offers simple time tracking and reporting capabilities for small teams and freelancers.
• Team: At $10/user/month, this plan will get you all their integrations and features like time approval, time cards, expenses, and screenshots.

Billing annually for the plans will get you a minimal $1-1.50 discount/per month (depending on the plan).

Everhour pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Supports time tracking and employee scheduling features	❌ Supports only timer-based time tracking
✅ Has Kanban board for task management
✅ Limited custom reporting

Note: Considering Everhour or Toggl but don’t know which will work best for your needs? Check out our feature-by-feature comparison of Everhour vs Toggl!

5. My Hours

Price: FREE. Paid plans start at $8/user/month.

My Hours is best known as a user-friendly and cost-effective project time tracking tool. Its free plan makes it popular for freelancers and small teams of up to 5 members with limited budgets.

It is among the best free time tracking software for small businesses and freelancers. Combining a user-friendly interface with customizable reports and invoicing means you can track projects, collect timesheets, and stay on budget with real-time insights.

What’s unique about My Hours?

• A cost-effective free plan for freelancers and small teams with limited budgets.
• My Hours supports NLP time tracking, where you can record your time entries by providing inputs in natural language.

Top features

• Timesheet interface: The timesheet-like interface allows users to track time and manage projects with little to no learning curve. However, timer-based time tracking is even more simple.
• Customizable reports: create customized reports specifically for projects with different tasks/costs, allowing you to see each project’s profitability easily.
• Invoicing functionality: built-in invoicing features save you time and effort when billing clients.
• Mobile app: the mobile app enables users to track time and manage projects on the go.

Pricing

My Hours offers two pricing plans:

• Free: $0/month with unlimited projects, tasks, and clients.
• Pro: $9/user/month for freelancers and teams actively managing their time.

Annual subscriptions will get you $1 off per month/per user.

My Hours pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Simple project time tracking tool for small businesses	❌ Not as feature-rich for employee time tracking and payroll
✅ Generous free plan for teams of up to five users	❌ Does not support automated time tracking
✅ NLP-based time tracking makes it easy to record time entries using natural language

6.  ClickTime

Price: No free plan. Paid plans start at $13/user/month.

ClickTime is best for small businesses and teams looking to improve productivity, optimize project management, and enhance employee accountability.

It is designed to improve productivity, increase profitability, and enhance employee accountability. The app offers intuitive time tracking, robust project management, and powerful analytics to optimize team performance.

What’s unique about ClickTime

• Goal tracking and collaboration features make it a valuable tool for teams looking to improve their productivity.

Top features

• Expense tracking: Easily submit, approve, and monitor employee expenses.
• Time off management: whether you need to record PTO accruals or require an end-to-end leave management solution.
• Resource management tool: easily match employee capacity to project workloads
• Project insights and budgeting: gain insights into project and employee work performance, and optimize your business for maximum profitability.

Integrations

ClickTime only offers integrations via Zapier.

Zapier is a paid tool and adds to the cost of operating a small business software stack.

Pricing

ClickTime offers four pricing plans:

• Starter: $13/user/month for simple time tracking a reporting features.
• Team: $17/user/month for access to approval workflows, time off management, and advanced billing
• Premier: $28/user/month to get access to project budgeting, utilization goals, and resource planning
• Enterprise: Call for more info. Get access to SSO and custom integrations.

Billing annually for the plans will get you a minimum $3 discount/per month (depending on the plan).

ClickTime pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Complete suite of tools including time tracking, project management, resource management, etc.	❌ No free plan. Paid plans are on the expensive side
✅ Workforce management features like expense and time-off tracking	❌ Offers integrations only via Zapier, which adds to the cost of maintaining a small business software stack
✅ Project insights and budgeting reports

7. Time Doctor

Price: No free options. Paid plans start at $7/user/month.

Time Doctor is a time tracking and productivity management tool that helps users to monitor their work and manage time more effectively. Users like the app because of its ease of use, handy reporting features, and helpful add-ons like website and app monitoring.

What’s unique about Time Doctor?

• It helps with all productivity-measuring challenges. Besides extensive reporting, you can check your team’s productivity percentages and even take screenshots of your employees’ work.

Top features

• Payroll: Review and approve timesheets so you can pay your team through solutions like PayPal, Payoneer, TransferWise, or other payment methods
• Screenshots, screen recording, and activity levels: See exactly what your teams are working on, blur screenshots, and let team members remove certain shots beforehand to protect sensitive information.
• Offline time tracking: Let your team record their time entries even offline.
• Distraction alerts: Remind your team to stay focused through pop-up notifications.
• Reporting: See all reports in one place and get a closer look at how your team spends their time, what apps they use, which websites distract their attention, and more.

Integrations

Time Doctor comes with 70+ integrations, including:

• Project management software: Asana, ClickUp, Todoist, etc.
• Payment and invoicing tools: Freshbooks, Paypal, Wise, Gusto, etc.
• Communication and CRM apps: Slack, HubSpot, etc.

Pricing

Choose from three options based on how extensive you want the features to be:

• Basic: $7/user/month will get you the basic time tracking and screenshotting capabilities with only one month’s data history.
• Standard: For $10/user/month, you can add Payroll features and access over 70 integration options. Only six months of data history.
• Premium: For $20/user/month, you get unlimited data history and advanced capabilities such as video screen capture and an Internet Connectivity Report.

You get 2 months for free with annual plans.

A 14-day free trial is available. Subscribing before starting the trial will get you $100 off your first month’s bill, but we’d recommend trialing the tool at least with a different email address first.

Time Doctor pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Payroll processing via Paypal, Payoneer, Wise, etc.	❌ Not all employees appreciate the surveillance features
✅ Helps monitor and measure employee productivity	❌ Time Doctor has a stealth mode which allows you to install and run it in the background without employees ever knowing
✅ 70+ integration options

Comparison of the best time tracking tools for small businesses

To recap, here are our suggestions for the best time tracking apps for small businesses you should try this year:

Tool	Best as	Free plan	Price /user/mo
Toggl Track	Simple, accurate time tracking and reporting software	✅	$10-$20
Clockify	Clock-in/clock-out timecard software for small business	✅	$4.99-$9.99
Harvest	Time tracking, invoicing, and payments software	✅	$12
Everhour	Time tracking and workforce management software	✅	$10
My Hours	Project time tracking tool	✅	$9
ClickTime	Timesheet management software for small business	❌	$15-$31
Time Doctor	Employee monitoring software	❌	$7-$20

FAQs about small business time tracking tools

How to choose the best time tracking software for your small business?

When it comes to timekeeping software for small businesses, you have the seven options given above. What specific software you choose depends on your unique business needs.

Before choosing a time management app for your small business, ask:

• What features do you need? Simple time tracking, project and task management, invoicing capabilities, or detailed reporting?
• Does the software have a user-friendly interface you and your team can easily navigate? Will there be a significant learning curve?
• How well can the software integrate with other tools you currently use, such as project management platforms, payroll systems, and CRM software?
• Does the software support mobile and remote work? This is crucial for teams that work off-site or need to track time on the go.
• Does the software offer flexible price plans to add or remove features or users according to your needs?

Once you know the answers, try out a couple of software tools, and then make a decision.

Too busy to go through the above steps?

Sign up for a free Toggl Track account. It’s simple, accurate time tracking and reporting features are used by over 120,000 teams across the world.