Time Tracking Program For Mac - formulaall’s blog

Project Time Tracking Program

Free Mac time tracking app. It’s the only time tracking program that’s truly free, no matter how many projects you have or how big your team is. Clockify is primarily a browser app, but you can also install it on your Mac OS X as a native desktop app to make time tracking more convenient. 8 Excellent Time Tracking Utilities for Mac Ruben Santiago on July 30th 2009. Billings, time, tracking; Check out the best Business Apps on GetApp. Time management is a constant battle for most people in their day-to-day lives. It is a vital part of any workflow, even more so those in which billing is dependent on time worked.

There are a handful of decent time tracking applications for the Mac. While none of them are perfect, our favorite is Klok thanks to its straightforward time tracking and entry, flexibility, and easily-understood interface.

Klok

Platform: Mac OS X (and Windows)
Price: Free ($16 for Pro Version)
Download Page

Features

Track any project, billable or otherwise
Drag and drop time entry
Provides a simple dashboard overview of how you've used your time
Define multiple projects
Automatic updates
Can export time sheets to Microsoft Excel

Additional features in the pro version:

More information in the dashboard
Import data from Microsoft Exchange, Google Calendar, and more
Export time sheets to CSV, HTML, and Google Docs
Automated backups
Additional skins/themes

Where It Excels

What's great about Klok is that you can start using it in about a minute. You just define a project in the project section, provide a little information about the project (if you want—you can add it later, too), and start tracking your time. You can add projects as needed and track them as well. Klok will display them all in a nice calendar view. You can then export your time sheets to Microsoft Excel if you want, or just reference the information in Klok to put together an invoice in whatever application you choose.

Where It Falls Short

Klok was written in Adobe Air, so if you prefer an app that feels native to OS X you may struggle a bit with its interface. It can take some getting used to if you fall into that camp, but it's mainly an issue of not using the menu bar. What's most annoying about Klok is how the free version hides little hints to upgrade. Every feature of the pro version is available to click in the interface, but when you do actually click on any of those features you'll be reminded that you need to upgrade to the pro version. You're getting a good time tracking app for free, so it's a reasonable trade-off, but it could be dialed back a bit. Klok's settings also get fairly complicated. The good news is that you can do basic time tracking without ever getting into the details, but Klok can get pretty detailed and it can be a little overwhelming.

The Competition

Time Edition (Free) is the way to go if you're looking for simple and free. Even though it's a tiny little app, it can track your projects with a lot of helpful detail. It's designed to track projects for billing purposes, but like any time tracking app you could use it for other projects as well.

RescueTime (Free and Paid) will track everything you do on your computer and analyze it so you can reclaim wasted time. It's not meant for billing clients but becoming more productive, and it's really smart. Whitson wrote a guide on using RescueTime so check that out for additional details. It's free to use but you can pay yearly fees for additional features.

Project Time Tracking Program

Time Track (Free or Pro) tracks your application usage. The pro version will track documents as well. It's a lot like a simplified version of RescueTime, but runs solely on your Mac's desktop and provides limited statistics. If you just want an overview of how long you use specific applications, it's worth a look.

Freshbooks Time Tracker (Free) is a widget you can install for OS X's Dashboard that will simply track the time you spend on a specific project and send it to the Freshbooks invoicing service. Harvest and other invoicing services generally provide time tracking widgets and apps as well for your time tracking needs. If you use one of those services already, be sure to check out their add-ons page for handy ways to track your time.

Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

Hi, at the moment in our office we have an antiquated system of filling out Excel timesheet documents, printing them off and then having the administrator plug the figures into another Excel document for reports.
Ideally we'd like some kind of web-browser-based time tracking system (local network only) that allows people to fill in their times (on a project basis) and have it automatically produce up to the minute reports.
I've had a look around but really can't find anything that fits the bill. Does anyone know of anything like this that's compatible with a fully Mac OS X environment?

Mac OS X (10.4.5)

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