I admit, I used to have employees send me their billable hours via email, then I would aggregate their time into Excel spreadsheets. It was an inefficient process, to say the least.
Now our office is using Toggl. The free version is pretty good, while the paid version is just $5/person/month. [Update March 1, 2016: the fee is now $10/person/month billed monthly, or $9/person/month billed yearly.]
First, I appreciate that Toggl is cloud-based and is accessible through your browser, desktop widget or smartphone/tablet app. That means it’s easy to keep track of billable hours both in and out of the office.
If you’re using Basecamp for project management or Freshbooks for accounting/invoicing–those are two other apps I recommend–then you’ll be pleased to know Toggl integrates with those programs.
Entering time is easy. Each employee chooses a project (which is associated to a particular client), then types in what they’re doing (e.g. “writing press release”). They can either use a timer or manually enter the time spent on the project.
I can then create detailed reports and sort by client, project or employee. My only disappointment is that when you create reports, you can’t hide the individual times for every task performed under a project (I like to only list the aggregated time listed next to the project). I contacted the Toggl support team, and they said there’s no workaround on this.
On last thing, sometimes it’s good to just track how you spend your day. You may realize you spend too much time on trivial matters (e.g. reading articles, organizing email, etc.).