Top 11 time tracking software for small businesses in 2026

As a small business owner, it’s important for you to understand how your employees spend their work hours. You may also need help managing employee timesheets, scheduling shifts, etc.

That’s where advanced time trackers come in handy. With features like accurate time tracking, productivity monitoring, and payroll automation, these tools can definitely make your life a little easy.

But with tons of time tracking software for small businesses on offer, which one should you opt for?

In this article, we’ll look at the best time tracking software for small businesses, along with the benefits of using one.

Let’s get started.

11 best time tracking software for small businesses
Why does your small business need time tracking software?
5 things to consider before choosing a time tracking software

11 best time tracking software for small businesses

Businesses need to ensure they stay compliant with local timekeeping regulations and that their employees stay productive. But for small businesses, time tracking is all the more critical to keep a close eye on your bottom line.

As a result, a time tracking software solution is the need of the hour.

So here are the top time tracking apps perfect for small businesses to track their team’s work hours and boost productivity:

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.

Time Doctor has advanced time tracking and employee monitoring features, making it the perfect productivity tool for small businesses. The tool is available as a mobile and desktop app.

Key features

Let’s explore some of Time Doctor’s key features that make it a valuable tool for small businesses:

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 keystroke logger. The software will only check if a user pressed any keys or mouse buttons to determine idle time.

C. Screencasts (Optional)

Time Doctor’s screencasts feature helps you see whether your team members are working on a particular task or not. It takes screenshots of a user’s computer screen at regular intervals.

When your employees are aware that their screen activities are being monitored, they will avoid engaging in non-work-related activities.

Note: Screenshots are only taken when a team member indicates they’re working, and the admin can delete or blur them to maintain privacy. This feature is optional and can be enabled or disabled for each user.

C. 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. Payroll management

Along with time tracking, Time Doctor provides powerful payroll management features.

Additionally, you can integrate Time Doctor with a payment gateway of your choice to pay your employees via Gusto, Paypal, ADP, or Wise.

You can also customize payroll details, such as:

Pay period.
Payment method.
Payment currency.

F. Productivity ratings

The app lets you set productivity ratings for different websites and apps, depending on the type of work.

The different productivity ratings are:

Productive.
Unproductive.
Neutral.
Unrated.

For example, if your team uses LinkedIn to run social media campaigns, you can mark the website as productive.

G. 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.

H. 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.

I. Chrome extension and integrations

Time Doctor’s powerful Chrome Extension integrates with 60+ tools that include project management, helpdesk, accounting software, and more.

For example, Time Doctor integrates easily with tools like Asana and Jira.

You can even add time tracking to tasks you’ve created on tools like ClickUp. As a result, you can help your team avoid wasting time and work more efficiently.

Pricing

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial (no credit card info required). Paid plan starts at $6.70/user per month.

Customer ratings

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

Check out Time Doctor’s features page for more details.