Freelancers: Track your time
February 1, 2008 by Oli · 19 Comments 
Its important to track your time accurately when working as a freelancer for your records and for invoicing clients – here we round up 10 handy tools to allow you to do just that…
Harvest – Time is the most valuable asset for your business. Track it easily and accurately with Harvest. Designed and built for small business
Slim Timer – Allows you to create tasks, time them and run reports
Tick – In the service industry your hours are your inventory. Lose track of them, they spoil. Hit your budget move more inventory
Toggl – Toggl provides you the most basic features needed for fast and effective time management, comes with a desktop widget
Punchy Time – PunchyTime is a simple time tracking tool for creatives (ad agencies, web-dev shops, etc). It makes it really easy for your team to enter time “as they work” instead of letting it all pile up till the end of the month
Timepost – Timepost is a project timer that automatically downloads projects and to-dos from various web project managers. Timepost saves you valuable time by allowing you to post accurate hours directly to popular web services like Basecamp, Blinksale, Cashboard, Harvest, and Tick
Function Fox – FunctionFox Systems is dedicated to providing simple web-based tools that help small creative companies improve their business
Intervals – Intervals is an online service that marries time tracking and task management, centralizing your projects in a personalized online space and providing valuable insight into your business
Fourteen Dayz – 14Dayz is hassle free online time tracking. It is easy to get into because there is nothing to install. All you need is a web browser and an Internet connection. That means you use it from almost anywhere in the world and use it whenever you need. Your data is kept secure and nicely backup-ed on a daily basis as part of the service
Time Assist – A daily time tracking solution designed to reduce the drudgery of recording, analyzing and reporting associated with everyday working routine
There’s also 1time (http://1timetracking.com/). It’s web-based with a limited version free plan for individual users, and is very useful.
Cheers Dave, looks good as well.
I track my freelance time using Freshbooks (www.freshbooks.com) this then allows me to create invoices using my timesheets to properly bill the client.
I can also add additional employees, set a billable rate per task, per employee, or per project.
Pretty sweet!
Excellent resource list. I am going to check into soome of these sites. I usually create ,my invoices in indesign, so possibly I am beind the times?
There is also www.tasktic.com, but it’s still in closed beta
And don’t forget http://www.88miles.net – it has an account specifically for freelaners and allows you to create invoices from your timesheets using Sassu.com
Hi guys, try also http://www.clockingit.com. I’m using it about 6 month, and has been very useful and reliable.
Good luck with your time tracking:-)
I really like http://www.xperttimer.com/ a little buggy from time to time but a great tool (PC only tho)
Slimtimer looks very good. Thanks for your list.
Odd you mention Timepost, but not Cashboard or Basecamp separately, both which offer great time tracking.
I personally love clockingit (www.clockingit.com) but for bigger projects I use BaseCamp.
Thank you for this tutorialblog !
Thanks you
I am passionate for time managemment and espeÑially soft related to it. Article is very informative and helpful. Unfortunately you didn’t cover my favorite time traker (http://www.actitime.com). It really could compete with all tools mention above
But any way thank you for this great tutorial!
I’m very fond of MyHours (http://www.myhours.com/). It’s no-frills, but offers everything I need to track multiple projects, bill for different levels of service and pull reports.
I can’t believe no one suggested Billings 2 (http://www.billings2.com/) by Market Circles. I’ve been using it now for over a year and it’s changed my work flow. It not only tracks times (like a stop watch) but it shows my clients, projects and tasks in one area. It can also produce several kinds of reports, weekly time, time in a month, time on a project as well as printing invoices. I would highly recommend it and I’m picky about my software.
I recommend Slimtimer. Been using it for a few years now and it has been brilliant.
Why is there no local solution? I don’t like the idea, that I store my data on a webserver, where I can’t be sure what exactly happens with my data`?
Does anyone know which options have the ’stop watch’ feature and can be integrated with Quickbooks?