Freelancers are generally paid by the hour. However, it is not always obvious to know how much time a job will take, especially when you are starting out.
To help you better manage your time and above all fine-tune your rates, there are tools to track the time spent on a project.
These tools will allow you to:
- measure precisely the duration of your tasks to bill by the hour with your invoicing tool
- track your productivity throughout the day
- Evaluate the cost of unproductive tasks (accounting, outreach, etc.)
- Identify time-wasting activities and correct them to improve your productivity
And if you want to create your own custom time-tracking software for your business, find out now the budget to plan for this type of software with our price simulator.
Some tools in this article are sponsored. They are marked "Sponsored". Find out how to sponsor your tool.
Factorial, reinvent timekeeping
With its time-tracking software, Factorial it offers an effective solution for tracking employees' working time.
Available on desktop, mobile app, or via QR code, the tool makes it easy to clock your hours no matter where you are. Data is automatically centralized, which reduces payroll errors and lightens administrative management.
Compliant with legal requirements, it also includes features such as real-time tracking, synchronization with leave and payroll, and the ability to configure clocking rules by location.
Connected to other management modules (schedules, projects, absences), Factorial offers a comprehensive and reliable view of working time for both managers and HR teams.
Finally, the platform also offers other HR features such as recruitment, performance management, and document management.
Timely, to visualize time spent in your calendar, thanks to AI
Timely is a time-tracking software that relies on artificial intelligence to automate the collection of your activities and eliminate manual entry. The tool records your work time in the background and uses AI to automatically suggest and structure your timesheets.
You can then easily assign your hours to your different projects from a clear, visual interface. Timely also provides an overview of your team's workload, with precise analytics to better allocate tasks and optimize productivity.
Thanks to its many integrations (calendars, project management tools, etc.), the software centralizes your data and helps you more effectively manage the profitability of your assignments.
RescueTime, to automatically analyze and improve your productivity
RescueTime is a time-tracking application that runs in the background to automatically record your activity on apps and websites, without manual intervention. The tool is built around two main features:
- RescueTime Focus, which helps you improve your concentration by limiting distractions and automatically tracking the time spent on your digital tools.
- RescueTime Timesheets, which automates time tracking by client, project, or task to generate accurate timesheets without manual entry.
Thanks to this dual approach, RescueTime enables you to both better understand your work habits and optimize day-to-day time management.
Toggl, to track and analyze your working time
Toggl Track is a time-tracking tool designed to help freelancers and teams better understand and manage their activity. It allows you to record time spent on each task, project, or client via a timer or manual entry, from web, mobile, or desktop.
The tool offers a flexible approach to time tracking with a calendar view, detailed reports, and productivity and profitability analyses. It helps identify the most time-consuming projects and optimize work organization.
Toggl Track also facilitates project management through budget, estimate, and task tracking, while offering more than 100 integrations with tools like Jira, Asana, and Slack to centralize work data.
Tick, to check that your time aligns with your budget
Tick is a time-tracking software designed to help teams better manage their projects by tracking time spent per client, project, or task. The tool lets you use a timer or manual entry to record working hours and compare them against defined budgets.
Each entry updates project progress in real time, allowing you to know immediately if deadlines and budgets are being met. Tick is particularly focused on profitability management, with detailed reports to analyze time spent and optimize team performance.
The tool also integrates with many applications like Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and QuickBooks to centralize time tracking within the management tools you already use.
Paymo, project management software offering time tracking
Paymo is a project management software that allows you to schedule tasks, organize projects, and track time spent on each assignment to better manage workload and profitability.
The tool offers flexible time tracking (timer, manual entry, or automatic tracking via a desktop app) as well as a clear visualization of tasks through boards, lists, or Gantt charts.
Paymo also includes advanced project management features such as task assignment, team collaboration, budget tracking, and invoice creation directly from timesheets.
Thanks to this centralized approach, Paymo allows you to track project progress in real time, better allocate resources, and simplify client billing.
Nozbe, to organize your projects and track time spent
Nozbe is a task and project management tool that also lets you track the time spent on each assignment. You can time your tasks or record time manually to better understand where your activity goes.
It helps teams and freelancers structure their work by project while offering a clear view of the time spent on each task. This improves productivity, evens out workloads, and makes it easier to monitor project progress more effectively.
Hours TimeLord, time-tracking software with a pleasant interface
Hours TimeLord is a time-tracking app that makes it easy to track the time spent on your tasks, projects, and clients to better manage your work and billable hours. The tool combines time tracking with a day view timeline so you can see at a glance what you did and how long each task took.
It also offers customizable reports to analyze your productivity and share your data with clients or your team.
Hours TimeLord also helps organize work better with tags, notes, and reminders, and simplifies project management by making time tracking more accurate and actionable.
Easy Time Tracking, the time-tracking software for Windows
Easy Time Tracking is a time-tracking software for Windows that lets you record time spent on your tasks, projects, and clients, either automatically via a timer or manually.
It offers complete timesheet management with a clear view of hours worked, billable and non-billable time, as well as statistics to analyze how your activity is distributed.
The tool also simplifies project management and billing by linking tracked time directly to clients and tasks to better control profitability and monitor assignments.
TrackingTime, to segment your time by clients
TrackingTime is a time-tracking tool designed to help teams and freelancers record, organize, and analyze their work time across tasks, projects, or clients. It allows time tracking via a timer, manual entries, or automatic tracking, then centralizes all data into clear timesheets.
The tool also provides detailed reports to analyze productivity, workload distribution, and billable time.
TrackingTime goes beyond simple hour tracking by integrating project management, budget tracking, scheduling, and shared reports to improve team visibility and coordination.
88 miles, the app to measure the achievement of your goals
Very easy to use, this web and mobile app helps you estimate the time required for each task. You can set profitability targets and it then generates statistics to show how you compare to your goals.
Harvest, convenient with its Chrome time-tracking extension
Available on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, this tool helps you track every task and generates daily reports about your productivity. You also have a Chrome extension that lets you analyze time spent on online research.
Everhour, estimates the time for your upcoming projects
Everhour helps you manage your time better, especially for team work, although it works very well for solo work. It can generate comprehensive reports and time estimates for your future projects.
Gryzzly, integrates with its Slack bot
Gryzzly combines a bot and a dashboard to easily track work time and budgets. Ideal for teams, the Slack bot allows each team member to confirm their hours so they are automatically aggregated into a dashboard. This tool also lets you configure alerts for time overruns based on the budget allocated to tasks.
Tyme, the iOS app for elegant time tracking
Tyme is an iOS app with a very modern, elegant design. It lets you track and time your tasks for different projects and clients, all with great simplicity.
Find the best time management software
With these 15 time management tools, you now have many solutions to better understand your activity, measure the time spent on your projects and refine your estimates with greater accuracy. Over time, this not only boosts your productivity but also significantly improves your profitability!
