Track employee hours effectively: 10 best apps in 2024!

Trying to track employee hours using Excel spreadsheets, paper timesheets, or biometric scanners is often a waste of time and exposes your company to various data security and privacy issues.

So how can you keep track of employee time securely and efficiently?

In this article, we’ll highlight the top tools for tracking employee hours—so you can find the ideal platform to do everything from monitoring your team’s work to automating timesheets and payroll processing.

What to look for in a tool for tracking employee time

Should you keep it simple or adopt an app with all the bells and whistles? Any time tracking tool you choose should have:

1. Manager-friendly features: To track employee hours seamlessly, you need an app that automates much of the process. Look for a tool that automatically starts and stops tracking and that prompts employees to focus when they appear to be idle.

2. Employee-friendly settings: To get employees on board, you need a platform that doesn’t feel intrusive or compromise privacy. Choose an app that doesn’t track keystrokes and that allows employees to protect sensitive information.

3. Multi-device support: Whether your team operates in the field, works from home, or takes a hybrid approach, you need a tool they can use anywhere. Seek out an app that works across desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile devices.

4. Time-saving integrations: Don’t let your time tracking data get stuck in an app. Prioritize a time tracking tool that integrates with the other platforms you use—so you can bill clients and process payroll faster.

5. Productivity tips: Data is great, but actionable information can help your employees work smarter. Make sure you choose an app that automatically alerts you to issues and recommends tips to make your team more productive.

10 best tools to track employee hours

With these must-have elements in mind, let’s look at the top 10 employee time tracking apps. We’ll start with our own, Time Doctor:

1. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a robust time tracking and productivity management software. Large corporations and SMBs alike use it to keep employees motivated and productive throughout their work hours.

With Time Doctor, you can:

Track how long employees spend on tasks down to the second.
Prevent staff members from idling during work.
Generate real-time productivity reports.
Export timesheets for easy payroll management.

Time Doctor also has a mobile app that helps manage employee productivity via Android devices.

Key features

Here are some of Time Doctor’s best features:

A. Time tracking

Time Doctor features simple time tracking so employees can easily keep a record of their hours.

With Time Doctor’s manual/interactive mode, all employees have to do is open the app, input their current task, and start the timer.

Time Doctor runs in the background and tracks the sites employees visit and the apps they use. Once they finish the task or opt to take a break, they can stop the timer with one click.

With Time Doctor’s automatic mode, the app can start tracking time automatically when employees turn on or log into their work devices. This mode is ideal for improving accuracy and reducing the need for manual edits.

B. Idle time tracking

Time Doctor tracks the idle time of employees throughout their workday. You can choose when to start counting idle time for each employee.

Idle time is measured in idle seconds and idle minutes.

An idle second is one second without keyboard and mouse activity. An idle minute is one full minute without keyboard and mouse activity.

With Time Doctor’s idle time measures, you can easily find out which employees work consistently throughout the day and which need help improving productivity.

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 is not a keylogger. It only tracks if any keys were pressed; it doesn’t record any keystrokes or mouse clicks.

Want to stop employees from wasting time at work?

Check out our guide on how to avoid common time-wasters at work.

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.
Web and app usage report: View the time spent by an employee on each app and website during work hours.
Custom export report: Customize the fields you’d like to include in one single report.

You can quickly identify high performers with these reports and decide how you can help struggling employees.

D. Shifts and schedules

Managers can use Time Doctor’s Work Schedules feature to create and edit employee shifts.

Here’s what you can do with schedules:

Save time by automating schedule creation and updates.
Easily adjust schedules to ensure round-the-clock availability.
Monitor and manage employee overtime.

E. Chrome extension and integrations

Time Doctor’s powerful Chrome Extension integrates with 50+ 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 has three affordable pricing plans, and you can quickly sign up for a 14-day free trial without a credit card.

Here’s an overview of the pricing plans:

Basic: $7/user per month – offers time tracking + task management + activity tracking + unlimited screenshots.
Standard: $10/user per month – includes “Basic” features + integrations + payroll and invoicing.
Premium: $20/user per month – includes “Standard” features + executive dashboard + client login access.

User ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (320+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (485+ reviews)

2. Connecteam

Connecteam is an online employee attendance tracker app. It also offers a customizable tracking app that enables business owners to manage their teams from anywhere.