Time tracking tools to track billable hours have become indispensable assets for operations and finance managers seeking to optimize profitability and maintain precise project cost control. By accurately capturing the time spent on various tasks and projects, these applications provide helpful information for workflow efficiency, resource allocation, and billing accuracy.
Also, they eliminate the guesswork and potential errors associated with manual time tracking methods, like spreadsheets, ensuring that every billable hour of your teams’ projects is accounted for and appropriately charged to clients.
Why is it key to use a billable hours tracker?
This question is easy to answer: Companies and organizations thrive on billable hours. But as anyone in operations or finance well knows, managing billable vs. non-billable hours is a delicate balance. That balancing act is precisely why having a tool to help you understand and manage your billable hours is crucial.
For operations managers, these tools offer a bird’s-eye view of project and team performance, helping to identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and make data-driven decisions about resource allocation. Finance managers, on the other hand, benefit from the ability to forecast project costs and analyze profitability with greater confidence.
The best time tracking tools go beyond simple timekeeping, offering features such as project budgeting, customizable reports and integrations with business intelligence tools. This comprehensive approach allows for seamless data flow across different departments.
The tools we’ve selected below not only easily track billable vs. non-billable hours, but they allow for advanced reporting and insight to help you make strategic decisions on where your team should be spending their time.
Top 7 time tracking tools to track billable hours
1. Beebole
Beebole is a project time tracking and budgeting tool used by thousands of companies worldwide. You can set up your project time tracking to exactly fit your team’s needs, with complete control over who has data access, the team structure, and approval workflows. After inputting costs and rates, you can easily access detailed reports on your team’s time, costs, and billable vs. non-billable hours. The completely customizable interface and powerful reporting abilities make Beebole an easy choice when it comes to choosing the best tool for tracking billable hours on projects and optimizing your team’s time, resources, and profits.
Pros:
Rounding rules and time increments: Regardless of how you record time, with Beebole the duration will always be automatically rounded to the nearest increment of the “minimum quantity of time accepted” as defined in your organization’s timesheet settings. Proper rounding rules ensure that time tracking is both accurate and fair to employees and employers. When implemented correctly, rounding can:
Simplify payroll calculations without consistently underpaying employees
Provide a grace period for minor clock-in/out discrepancies, improving employee morale
Ensure compliance with labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
Approval workflow: Approval workflows in billable hour trackers like Beebole ensure accuracy, accountability, and financial control. You or the users you grant permission can approve or reject employee time entries and catch billing errors early.
Multiple billing rates: With Beebole, you can change the billing rates, and it will keep the data of those changes. This way you can generate reports that provide a historical overview of your billing rates for better future decisions. You can also adjust rates in real-time.
Multiple currencies: Easily set up costs and rates with the peace of mind of knowing that Beebole also offers tracking billing rates with multiple currencies. This type of flexibility simplifies the billing process, allowing you and your team to focus on the actual work at hand.
Advanced reporting: Beebole offers custom employee time reports on billable and non-billable hours, budgets, profitability, variance, and more. You can also easily export your data for deeper analysis using the Excel add-in and Google Sheets add-on.
Integrations: Reduce administrative overhead and maximize data insights with time tracking integrations. Beebole not only allows organizations to integrate their current existing business intelligence stack with our time tracking tool through low code integrations via Zapier and Pipedream, but we also provide custom integration services via API and consulting.
Reminders: With Beebole, you can set automated timesheet reminders to ensure consistent time tracking across the team and promote employee diligence.
Offline tracking: Peace of mind. It doesn’t matter if there’s no coverage—your employees can still track time, and the system will sync when there is connection to internet.
Compliance and security first: Beebole has always prioritized security and compliance, which is why since 2008, thousands of customers from more than 60 countries have chosen them for their project time tracking needs. Beebole uses data encryption, secure backups, and offers complete network security with firewalls, antivirus, and an SSL/TLS secured connection. It’s also compliant with GDPR and DCAA.
Customer service: No bots or long wait times here. Beebole’s users get their questions and concerns answered by real people who provide helpful insight and troubleshooting tips.
Cons:
Invoicing: While many users integrate Beebole with their invoicing systems, it’s not an invoicing tool in and of itself.
Mobile version: Beebole’s mobile app is a limited version for just tracking time. The admin settings can only be adjusted currently via desktop.
Pricing: $8.99 per user per month, volume discounts. Also discounts for NGOs and educational organizations.
Ready to Try Beebole?
Schedule a 15-minute call with our sales team so we can learn about your exact needs, or sign up for free today.
My Hours is a project time tracking software designed to give teams and managers insight into how time is spent on projects, improving productivity and speeding up payroll processes. The app is ideal for teams that want an easy-to-use time tracker that can be quickly implemented into their workflow.
Pros:
Flexible billable rates: Set rates by user, task, or project, allowing precise billing based on different factors.
Labor rate customization: You can track user-based labor rates for payroll, or override them per project, making it easy to manage diverse pay structures.
Real-time cost and profit analysis: My Hours automatically calculates both billable amounts for clients and labor costs for internal payroll, providing instant insight into project profitability.
Cons:
Difficult to customize: Current users say that it’s difficult to customize the tool to fit their exact needs
Less focus on invoicing: You can send simple invoices with limited customization options. The invoicing functionality is limited compared to specialized invoicing apps, lacking advanced options like tax handling or payment integration
Pricing: Starting at $8 per user per month
3. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is a project time tracking tool that helps create accurate timesheets and detailed reports. With TimeCamp, users can improve project profitability, track employee performance, and encourage team collaboration and client communication. TimeCamp is a centralized project management solution that offers more than 50 out-of-the-box integrations with other key tools. They make it easy to track billable and non-billable hours, which provides key insight into the most effective employees and most profitable projects. TimeCamp also has expense tracking, productivity analytics, and geofencing capabilities.
Pros:
Varied time tracking: Employees can use a timer to track their time in real-time, or input it per day or week. This kind of flexibility is appreciated, depending on the nature of the work at hand.
Integrations: There are more than 50 ready-to-go integrations to choose from, including with Trello, Asana, Monday, Github, Gitlab, Quickbooks, Xero, Google Calendar, Outlook and more.
Robust reporting: TimeCamp takes its internal time tracking data and turns it into crucial business reports. You can build what you need, or choose from more than 20 built-in reporting options.
Cons:
Invoicing issues: Currently, invoices can’t be personalized or formatted with a company’s branding.
Bug-prone: TimeCamp can be buggy, which results in frustrated users and discrepancies in time tracking.
Invasive features: The employee monitoring features like documenting idle time can feel a bit intrusive to employees.
Pricing: Starting at $2.99 per user per month
4. Timeneye
Timeneye is a simple time tracking tool designed for teams of all sizes, especially those using Microsoft 365. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, allowing users to track time, manage projects, and monitor billable hours without leaving the app. This helps teams centralize their work by keeping time, tasks, and projects in one place. Timeneye helps businesses to accurately track billable and non-billable hours, with different hourly rates for projects or individual users, ensuring that every minute of work is accounted for and billed appropriately. Timeneye is ideal for project-based and client-focused teams.
Pros:
Hourly rates: You can set hourly rates for different projects and users, as well as time and monetary budgets.
A few clicks: Mark entries as billable or non-billable in just a few clicks.
Easy to view: Easily see the billed and unbilled amounts at a glance on the project recap page.
Cons:
Integrations: Timeneye doesn’t offer any native integrations with invoicing services.
Limited rates: Hourly rates are available for projects and users, but not for entities like tags.
Limitations on overtime tracing: Overtime tracking is on the roadmap but not yet available.
5. Flowace
Flowace is a time tracking software that offers automatic time tracking, detailed project and task management, real-time analytics, and productivity insights. Flowace leverages artificial intelligence to provide accurate tracking and categorization of work hours, distinguishing between billable and non-billable activities seamlessly. Flowace is a valuable choice for businesses aiming to enhance productivity, maintain accurate financial records, and improve overall operational efficiency.
Pros:
Reporting: Run advanced reports after tracking time that’s both billable and non-billable, including net profit/loss and profitability.
Invoice lifecycles: Flowace allows you to track invoices from the moment they start until they’re paid, and the app makes it easy to streamline future invoice cycles by looking at previous ones.
Real-time analytics: The platform offers comprehensive analytics and real-time insights into productivity and time allocation. This can help with making data-driven decisions and improving overall efficiency.
Cons:
Complex: The advanced features and AI-powered capabilities might present a learning curve for new users, particularly those who are not tech-savvy.
Cost: Depending on the pricing model, Flowace might be on the higher end of the cost spectrum. Their premium plan comes to $10 per user per month.
Potential over-reliance on AI: While AI-powered automation is an advantage, there is a potential risk of over-reliance on AI, which could lead to occasional inaccuracies or data misinterpretation.
Pricing: Starting at $3 per user per month
6. Bonsai
Bonsai offers comprehensive time tracking that can help streamline your entire organization and better understand your billable and non-billable hours. Their tool offers everything from time tracking and client relations management to invoicing and payments. With Bonsai you can track your team’s hours and use the generated timesheets to run insightful reports that integrate seamlessly with other project management and billing features.
The time reports offered in Bonsai provide insight into where your team is spending their time and how to optimize billable hours. With this real time insight, you can understand costs while ensuring you keep projects within budget. From there, it’s easy to turn the tracked billable hours into actual invoices in just a few clicks.
Pros:
Budgeting: Bonsai allows you to set up cost rates per team member and projects, and it can be either fee-based or time-based.
Time tracking: The tool’s integrated time tracker makes it easy to capture billable and non-billable hours, which makes client billing a breeze.
Reporting: Easily monitor budgets across projects in real-time, and get access to profitability and forecast reports.
Cons:
Custom overtime calculation: If you need to calculate overtime or add a special rate for non-standard working hours, you might find Bonsai to have limited options.
Integrations: Bonsai integrates with various tools, but it lacks deep integration with specific payroll systems that could be crucial for larger teams.
Purchase orders: Bonsai doesn’t provide a specific feature for creating and managing purchase orders.
Pricing: Starting at $25 per user per month
7. DeskTime
DeskTime is time tracking and productivity monitoring software designed to help companies manage their workforce effectively. Its core features include automatic time tracking, project tracking, and detailed reporting, which provide insights into how employees spend their work hours. By distinguishing between billable and non-billable hours, DeskTime makes sure billing is both accurate and effective. DeskTime also offers features like screenshot monitoring, productivity analysis, and various integrations that enhance both transparency and workflow efficiency.
Pros:
User-friendly interface: DeskTime’s user interface is user friendly. It offers bite-size stats that are easy to digest and understand while providing deep insight into employees’ strengths and weaknesses.
Integrations: Ready-to-use integrations with Google Calendar, Outlook, Trello, Gitlab, Asana, Basecamp, Jira, and Zapier.
Automatic time tracking: No need to log in and track time manually if you choose to run it in the background. This means no more reminding employees to fill out their timesheets.
Cons:
Employee monitoring: Being tracked and recorded could leave a bad taste in employees’ mouths. Think about how you’ll communicate this to your employees before implementing this type of software.
Timer can be finicky: Current users say that if you’re logging a task when you’re a way from your desk and the computer goes idle, the timer stops working and this has to be adjusted manually later within the system. Users wish there was an easier way to handle these time gaps.
Easy to trick: DeskTime’s tracking features can be “tricked” easily by employees who wish to appear more productive. For example, if an employee creates a Google calendar event, the integration considers that to be a meeting, and once the time comes, that time is imported from the calendar as productive, even though the remote employee might not actually be working. This comes down to the user’s honesty and usage methods.
Pricing: Starting at $6 per user per month
Choosing the right tool to manage your billable hours
Find a service-based company that doesn’t have a handle on their billable hours, and we’ll show you one that’s leaking profits and regularly missing opportunities. Luckily, managing your billable and non-billable hours is neither evasive nor difficult. In fact, with the right time tracking tool in your tech stack, you might be surprised at how easy it is to track, optimize, and manage both your billable and non-billable hours.
When deciding on a billable hours tracker, operations and finance managers should consider several key factors to ensure they choose a solution that meets their organization’s needs and improves overall efficiency. Here are some important questions they should ask themselves:
Generic functionality and features
Does the billable hour tracker offer:
Real-time tracking capabilities?
Integration with other organizations’ tools?
Customizable reporting options?
Automated invoicing features?
Mobile app for on-the-go time entry?
Accuracy and compliance
How does the system ensure accurate time tracking?
Does it support rounding rules and minimum time increments?
Can it handle different billing rates for various projects or team members?
Does it comply with relevant labor laws and regulations?
User experience
Is the interface intuitive and easy to use for all team members?
How much training will be required for staff to adopt the new system?
Does it offer features like timer functionality and offline time entry?
Data analysis and reporting
What types of reports can be generated from the tracked data?
Can the system provide insights on billable vs. non-billable hours?
Does it offer customizable dashboards for different stakeholders?
Integration and scalability
Will the tracker integrate seamlessly with current accounting and payroll systems?
Can it handle the current workload and scale as our business grows?
Does it support multiple currencies and time zones for global operations?
Security and data protection
How is sensitive time and billing data protected?
What are the backup and recovery procedures?
Does the system comply with data protection regulations like GDPR?
Cost-effectiveness
What is the total cost of ownership, including implementation and ongoing support?
How does the pricing structure align with our budget and expected ROI?
Are there any hidden costs or additional fees for advanced features?
Support and maintenance
What level of customer support is provided?
How frequently is the tool updated?
Is there a dedicated account manager for our organization?
By thoroughly considering these questions, operations and finance managers can make an informed decision on selecting a billable hours tracker that will enhance their operational efficiency, improve financial accuracy, and contribute to the overall success of their organization.
Katie is a digital marketer who researches and writes about project management, leadership, and best practices in business operations. She's on a mission to spread the word about the value of accurate and easy project time tracking. Through her interviews, research, and articles, Katie hopes to help professionals on their journey to a happier, more efficient work day.
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