The best time tracking app for small business In 2026

Small business owners often fall short of time to attend to every task or closely monitor their employees’ performance.

But with the right time tracking app at your disposal, you can skyrocket your productivity and profits!

From recording employee work hours to streamlining timesheet management, investing in the best time tracking app for small business can work wonders for you.

In this article, we’ll explore the 10 best time tracking apps in the market today. We’ll also highlight the four significant benefits of using an effective time tracking software and four factors to consider while choosing the tool.

Let’s get started!

11 best time tracking apps for small businesses
4 major benefits of time tracking apps for a small business
4 key considerations to pick the best time tracking software

11 best time tracking apps for small businesses

Here are some of the best time tracking apps that can help small businesses manage their time and get more things done:

1. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a workforce analytics platform that empowers managers with the visibility to lead with trust, not control. Mid-market companies and growing SMBs use it to gain real-time visibility into work, support employee well-being, and continuously improve productivity across remote, hybrid, and in-office teams.

The tool helps you track employee productivity and the total billable hours.

The Time Doctor app is available on several platforms and devices, like:

Desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Mobile app for Android mobile devices.

Using this time tracking software, you can get insights into where and how your employees spend their time on any typical workday.

This way, it makes employee management a total breeze so that you can focus more on your company’s growth strategies and long-term goals.

Let’s check out some other valuable features of Time Doctor:

Key features

Here are some notable features of this powerful time tracking app:

A. Time tracking

Time Doctor is a workforce analytics platform that gives you flexible time tracking so employees can record their hours in a way that fits how they work. The platform captures work activity in real time and transforms it into clear visibility for teams, helping leaders understand how work happens while keeping the experience simple for employees.

In manual/interactive mode, employees simply open the app, select their current task, and start the timer. Time Doctor runs in the background and tracks the apps and websites used during work. When they’re finished or want to take a break, they can stop the timer with a single click.

In automatic mode, Time Doctor can start tracking time when employees turn on or log into their work devices. This mode helps improve accuracy and reduces the need for manual edits or forgotten time entries.

Both modes are designed to provide clear visibility for managers and employees while minimizing disruption to the workday.

B. Idle time tracking

Time Doctor measures idle time (periods without keyboard or mouse activity) to help teams understand focus patterns and potential productivity blockers.

Idle time is measured in idle seconds and idle minutes
You can configure when idle time should start counting and set limits that make sense for different roles

Instead of silently recording behavior, Time Doctor can display a gentle idle time pop-up when someone has been inactive for too long—nudging them to either refocus or take a break. This helps reduce unintentional time drift and supports more accurate timesheets.

This design helps organizations balance accountability with privacy and trust.Moreover, you can set how long the timer can run without any activity. Once it reaches the limit, the tracker automatically stops tracking time and displays an idle time pop-up. This pop-up alerts employees to focus on their tasks.

Note: Time Doctor isn’t a keylogger. It only checks if the employee has clicked the mouse or any key without recording activity details.

These alert notifications can help improve employee focus and efficiency.

C. Work schedules

Work schedules allow you to create and edit employee schedules easily, so they know which tasks they should work on which days. It helps your employees stay on top of their priority tasks and never miss a deadline.

With this feature, you can:

Set work schedules for each employee, defining their work hours.
Distribute the workload amongst team members efficiently.
Automate timesheet generation.
Import and export employee shifts in a CSV file.

D. Productivity reports

Time Doctor tracks several data points related to employees activity. You can access a wide range of reports generated in real-time.

Here’s a quick look at these reports :

Activity summary report: See active seconds, minutes, unproductive, manual, and mobile time for each employee over a selected time period.
Attendance report: See if an employee is present, absent, partially absent, or late in real-time.
Hours tracked report: View the total number of hours tracked by employees for any date range.
Projects & tasks report: See the time spent on projects as well as individual tasks.
Timeline report: Look at the time spent on tasks and breaks in a day or the whole week.
Custom export report: Customize the fields you’d like to include in one single report.
Web and app usage report: View the time spent by an employee on each app and website during work hours.

E. Benchmark AI

Benchmarks AI helps you understand your team’s performance by comparing their work patterns to similar roles and workflows across Time Doctor’s extensive behavior-based dataset.

See how your team’s productivity, idle time, and tool usage compare to similar users across thousands of organizations.
Identify whether shifts in productive time reflect healthy focus, rising workload pressure, or early signs of burnout.
Spot unusual activity and changes in behavior before they affect performance or well-being.
Give managers clearer context during coaching by showing where teams fall across percentile rankings and behavior groups.
Make smarter decisions on resourcing, planning, and workload balancing using AI-matched comparisons instead of generic industry averages.

F. Meeting insight

Meeting Insights helps you understand how meetings affect productivity, focus time, and engagement across your team.

See total meeting hours, number of meetings, and which teams spend the highest or lowest percentage of their time in meetings.
Measure meeting quality by tracking average duration, idle minutes per meeting, and idle time during meetings versus regular work hours.
Identify low-value or ineffective meetings by spotting high idle time or unrelated app usage during calls.
Compare meeting habits across groups to find overload, spot bottlenecks, or highlight teams that collaborate effectively.
Decide which meetings to shorten, restructure, or move async using data instead of assumptions.
Protect focus hours by understanding how recurring calls impact productive time and daily workflow.
Support coaching and policy decisions with clear insights into meeting load, engagement patterns, and collaboration trends.

Pricing

Time Doctor gives users a 14-day free trial (no credit card details required). The tool’s basic plan starts as low as $6.70/user per month.

Customer ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (420+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (540+ reviews)

2. QuickBooks Time

QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is an employee time tracking app that allows users to clock in and out via text, tweet, web browser, or a simple dial-in.

Read this article to know everything about QuickBooks Time Tracking.