App for timing work done for clients hourly/daily?

[anonymous-user]

Morning all,

I work on different projects for different clients. Some days it's just one client for 8 hours or more, and other days I will have billable hours for 2 or 3 different clients during one day, plus some non-billable hours.

Can anyone recommend a phone app which can act as a timer and a log for recording hours spent on each client during a day? Something where I can quickly type a name or project name and set a stopwatch going and it will save all the different hours each day?

I have a spreadsheet we use for recording all these hours for billing at the end of the month, but it is sometimes not practical as I may be out and about on sites and not have my laptop with me, and a phone app would be easier.

Any suggestions welcome

[mmm-five]

There are apps that will let you record and invoice your time automatically (I used to have one on the Mac), but it still requires you to remember to go to it and switch it off, or switch to another client to record correctly...unless you know you'll only use one program (i.e. Illustrator or Quark) for one client and another program (i.e. MS Word) for another and you can assign timers to each of these programs. Unfortunately my clients tend to use the same core programs.

For example https://clockify.me/mac-time-tracking

I work in a similar manner, but just record the hours on a postit note as I go along. Just start-time, end-time, and breaks. Then I just tot them up at the end of the day/week.

If you're using an app, you need to remember to stop the stopwatch when you've finished?

If you have to do that amount of manual input for an simple app, then I'd just record your start & end times in the notes app on your phone. Probably takes no longer than you having to start a timer, type the note and then remember to stop the timer immediately.

Edited by mmm-five on Wednesday 29th September 10:02

[PistonRings]

One of my team uses clockify and raves about it.

[nought2sixty]

I use an app for Mac called Klokki Slim. You define tasks and then when you start one you just hit a play button, it starts recording the time. Really simple and great for tracking time that you then input somewhere else.

[anonymous-user]

Thanks both, I'll have a look at Clockify. Once I heard it mentioned I realised that a colleague uses it.

It's not that I will be timing things to the minute, it's just that I need something to keep a track of who I worked for each day and roughly how many hours each, so that I don't forget.

At the end of the week I usually fill in my billing spreadsheet and expenses.

It's not me doing the actual billing or invoices, the company I work for does that. I just supply the info of who I've been working for.

[anonymous-user]

nought2sixty said:

I use an app for Mac called Klokki Slim. You define tasks and then when you start one you just hit a play button, it starts recording the time. Really simple and great for tracking time that you then input somewhere else.

Thanks.

I do use Mac and iOS for everything so I'll look it up.

[Regbuser]

QuickBooks app has a billable time feature, might be worth exploring.

[mmm-five]

Regbuser said:

QuickBooks app has a billable time feature, might be worth exploring.

£10/month might be a bit expensive just to keep a simple note of time spent on a few jobs.

[anonymous-user]

mmm-five said:

Regbuser said:

QuickBooks app has a billable time feature, might be worth exploring.

£10/month might be a bit expensive just to keep a simple note of time spent on a few jobs.

I don't mind paying for an App, or a couple of quid a month if it helps me stay organised, but £10 a month for a software package and service that I don't really need 95% of is a bit too much.

[Regbuser]

It might be yes, but if it's conveniently workable from the phone app, then at 5 pence per hour billed (£10/200hr), it's hardly a huge overhead.

[jeremyc]

Why not just access your billing spreadsheet from your phone and enter the data only once?

Put the spreadsheet in the cloud or sharing service somewhere (iCloud, Google Drive, Google Docs etc.), and access it from your phone, desktop or anywhere else.

Now, how do I bill you the 5 minutes for that advice?

[Mr Pointy]

jeremyc said:

Why not just access your billing spreadsheet from your phone and enter the data only once?

Put the spreadsheet in the cloud or sharing service somewhere (iCloud, Google Drive, Google Docs etc.), and access it from your phone, desktop or anywhere else.

Now, how do I bill you the 5 minutes for that advice?

Does Excel have a timer function as requested?

You're a consultant aren't you? You swan into a project, spout advice that's not relevant & then ps off & send in an invoice.

[jeremyc]

Mr Pointy said:

Does Excel have a timer function as requested?

You're a consultant aren't you? You swan into a project, spout advice that's not relevant & then ps off & send in an invoice.

Yes, yes it does.

=now() will insert the current date and time.
Two cells, one start time, one end time, subtract the two for the task time

Which of course lends itself to the old joke about the consultant borrowing the client's watch to sell them information about the time ...

[anonymous-user]

Regbuser said:

It might be yes, but if it's conveniently workable from the phone app, then at 5 pence per hour billed (£10/200hr), it's hardly a huge overhead.

You are massively underestimating how tight I am

[anonymous-user]

Thanks all, I have gone with Clockify.

Downloaded the app and it seems great. You can save a list of clients and projects and then each time you start a session just click which one you want.

It also has a 'Billable Y/N' option on each timed session, and the desktop version easily shows how much per day or week was done for each client and so on.

Perfect.

[Regbuser]

Excellent, sorted

[Chris Type R]

For anyone else finding this thread, I've used toggl ( toggl.com ) for a number of years and it works well for us.

[Crasher242]

Chris Type R said:

For anyone else finding this thread, I've used toggl ( toggl.com ) for a number of years and it works well for us.

I'll chip in with another +1 for toggl - have used it for years, and works really well, especially when i've been juggling multiple projects across a number of clients - the ability to set them up and switch almost seamlessly was a real plus point for me.