4 Cloud time tracking tools your team will love

Want to know how to effectively measure productivity within your business? Here are some tools that could help

How do you feel about asking your team to complete timesheets?

Now, this isn’t about checking up on them, it’s simply a way to make better business decisions. Let’s say your team spend a huge amount of time on admin tasks that could be easily automated. By keeping timesheets, you’ll instantly be able to see whether investing in automation is worth your money – and whether moving this task and giving your team more valuable, interesting work would help them too. When you start tracking time consistently, you’ll suddenly start seeing more opportunities to improve business performance and help your team feel happier and more motivated.

Here’s where online real-time tracking solutions that measure time spent at desks, productivity and clearly show task breakdowns can help.

But with so many to choose from, where do you start? Maybe that’s why a staggering 82% of professionals say they don’t use a dedicated time management system and 49% have never carried out a time audit. To make it easier, we’ve broken it down for you by selecting our top four cloud time-tracking solutions, each matched to a specific business sector or need.

Solution #1: Avaza

Ideal for businesses looking for a solution that’s easy to set up and use.

Pros:

• Free package available with limited use.

• Includes functionalities beyond time tracking, including project management and collaboration, resource scheduling, team chat and expense management. And you can use as many or few of these as you need.

• Easy to get going and run thanks to an almost non-existent learning curve and simple software.

Cons:

• Although the cost starts out quite reasonable, the pricing plan increases quite quickly

• The cheaper plans put strict limits on data storage, and the number of invoices you can send out per month.

• It’s online only, so employees won’t be able to make the most of any benefits offline.

As an all-in-one work management platform, Avaza has everything work-related in one place, and it offers cloud time-tracking at its simplest. Use its in-built timer from your laptop or phone for easy-to-operate hour tracking and make sure everything’s in one place by bulk importing old timesheets. You can also take advantage of the excellent analytics features, such as the staff utilisation report.

If just one person handles generating timesheets and recording expenses, Avaza offers a free-of-charge plan. However, it’s worth noting, storage is limited to 100MB in the free version. If you start out on the free package and realise you need more, you can always upgrade to a paid package.

Solution #2: BeeBole

Perfect for businesses that are reliant on Google or Microsoft Office.

Pros:

• Generous 30-day free trial and no set-up or cancellation fees.

• One-to-one customer support comes included.

• Supports multiple languages including Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.

Works offline for seamless mobile to desktop time tracking, anytime.

Cons:

• Not the most scalable of cloud timesheet solutions.

• User reviews suggest that it isn’t easily customisable.

If you’re looking for a time-tracking solution that works in tandem with the rest of your business’ processes, BeeBole might be the answer. Thanks to its Application Programming Interface (API) set-up, your time-tracking tool will work alongside your existing G-Suite and Microsoft Office programmes. It also boasts a fully customisable dashboard and impressive intelligence capabilities.

Its pricing is also simple. The tool offers one price point – £6.99 per user, per month, which gives you access to all its features as well as a full range of integrations with other business productivity software.

Solution #3: Scoro

Ideal for creative businesses.

Pros:

• The intuitive interface is engaging to use.

• It’s visually stimulating, so tends to help your creative workforce stay engaged.

• Highly versatile with features beneficial to businesses, such as budget management, CRM, calendar management, client management, and team collaboration.

Cons:

• Much pricier than other solutions and doesn’t offer a free plan.

• Customer feedback says the mobile app could benefit from improvements, like additional functionality and better integration opportunities.

Are you struggling to find a creative time keeping platform for your creative business? Look no further than one of the most fun solutions out there, Scoro. It has a vibrant ‘Kanban-style’ interface, where work items are represented visually on a board, allowing team members to see everything at once.

Offering project planning and task-tracking features as standard, Scoro is a project management tool as well as a time tracker, so you get the best of efficient planning with a creative touch.

Scoro is might be pricier than the other packages, but you can choose from Essential, Standard and Ultimate packages, depending on your needs.

Solution #4: Clockify

Most suitable for businesses on a tight budget.

Pros:

• A free service that tracks time, productivity and billable hours.

• ​A simple, intuitive interface, allowing you to track time spent on each task and check employee workload.

Cons:

• Invoicing is only offered with the ‘Enterprise’ package.

• Only supports six languages – English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Offers an extension add-on that can detect when you’re away from your computer, so you can’t log inactive time – and this has to be turned off manually.

Worried about spending money on a cloud-based timesheet tool? Clockify could be the solution for you. Although the look and feel of the interface is quite basic, its time-tracking and payroll-calculating features are very effective. What’s more, email and chat assistance are included free-of-charge.

In terms of pricing, not only are users unlimited in the no-cost plan, but you also get unlimited tracking, projects and reports for free! There are paid plans on offer too, if you would benefit from phone support, added security permissions or scheduled reports.


And once you’re on your way to deciding which cloud time-tracking tool to use, find out how to integrate automated technology into your business.