Time tracking for freelancers
You have multiple clients on roster, it’s time to get to work and start juggling your projects as usual. Working multiple hours daily without knowing what you’re spending the most time on. You know you’ve watched a couple Netflix shows and scrolled through but you’re not sure how long that took and how much time was spent doing the actual work you were paid for.
It’s situations like these that calls for time tracking, to understand what your time is spent on. That way, you improve productivity and deliver projects according to deadlines.
What is time tracking?
Time tracking refers to the practice of recording time spent on projects to ensure productivity.
Benefits of time tracking
Focus: When you know your activity is timed it creates a sense of focus. You become dedicated to your tasks and eliminate any kind of distractions that can pop up. Focus is key to improving clarity on a project. When you’re in tune with your work, it becomes easy to increase speed, efficiency and spot irregularities.
Increased earnings: Knowing the time spent on tasks gives you a better understanding of what task you spend the most time doing. Take for instance, a freelance writer, Kate spends a chunk of time finding and interviewing SMEs. If a new project that requires interviewing SMEs comes up, She can make changes to her rates.
Project estimation: With time tracking you get insights into the time spent on different projects. Knowing this, you’ll be able to estimate how long a project will take. That way you can properly estimate how much time is needed for your work and communicate that to your clients.
Accurate invoicing: Keeping a track of how much time you spend on tasks makes it easy for you to invoice properly. When you know how much time is spent on working, you're able to fill you invoice accurately and this goes on to improve your relationship with clients.
Key factors to consider
Integration
A good time tracking tool should integrate seamlessly with your existing project management and accounting software. This makes it easier to manage projects, switch between apps, and accurately record how much time you spend using each tool.
Simplicity
An easy to use time tracking tool takes less time to adopt and understand. There’s no confusion while using it and you’re able to utilize it to its full potential and get the results you need.
Reporting
The goal of a time tracking tool is to improve productivity. A reports section will show you how much time is spent, on different apps, tasks, and projects. Reports tell you what tasks take the longest or shortest.
Analytics can inform decisions on projects you take on, budget and billings.
Time tracking tools
Clockify
Clockify is a time tracking software made for companies looking to get a sense of where and how time is spent on a day to day basis.
There’s a mobile app, Mac and Windows software as well. As a freelancer, all you need is the mobile app to get the job done. It’s free to use and easy to navigate.
Step by step guide
Create account: You open the app, the first page that pops up is a sign up/login page. You input your email address to which you’ll get a code for sign up. Once you enter the code, the sign up is complete and your account is created.
Projects: At the top left of the screen there’s a button for the menu. Click the menu and select project to create your first project.
Track time: After creating your project, you go back to the menu and select the time tracker. Two options will pop up at the bottom left of the screen. Timer and Manual. The timer option just starts recording right away but for the manual option, you set the time limit and include information on the project, here you can create a new project or select the one you made earlier.
Reporting: Finished the work? Now it's time to check the reports. The report section is a simple summary of the total time tracked, and billable hours in a graph sheet. It also shows you time tracked according to projects on a pie chart.
Invoicing: Turn tracked time for projects into ready to send invoices and mail them to your clients.
Other time tracking tools
Harvest
Harvest is a time tracking tool that lets you track hours around projects and be productive. It has a mobile and desktop app.
Best harvest features
- Customizable Projects feature
- Time tracker
- Simple Calendar interface
- Detailed report section
- Multiple integrations
Limitations
- Multiple views like timesheet not available on mobile app
Timely
Timely makes tasks planning more efficient with the automatic scheduling feature. It ensures tasks gets completed on time without getting any input from you. This tool has detailed analytics that determines which activities take up more time and effort. That way you can make better decisions about your tasks and resources.
Timely makes task management for individuals easy by providing an intuitive interface with powerful features that allow users to stay organized and be more productive everyday.
Timely best features
- Automatic time tracking
- Standard time reporting
Timely limitations
- Issues with AI performance cause more work for the users to troubleshoot
Rescue time
Rescuetime is an automated time tracking app that works in your phone background, tracking the apps and websites visited. It provides detailed reports on the time spent on different tasks.
With rescuetime you're going to get insights about your time usage, distractions and time wasting activities to improve your productivity.
This app provides a feature called the Focus Work Goal, it learns your work style and schedule to give you a daily focus goal. You can set goals and get alerts when you spend too much time on non productive activities like Instagram or Netflix shows.
Rescuetime best features
- Integrations with calendar softwares like Google Calendar
- Smart coaching throughout the day to keep you on track with tasks
- Focus Sessions block sites that can distract you
Limitations
- Falls short in project and task management
All tools mentioned are free for users, very efficient and guaranteed to improve productivity on a day to day basis.
