When you think of staff time tracking software, it’s easy to assume that these are just simplistic tools for logging hours worked and calculating payroll.
After all, how much innovation can there really be in something so seemingly straightforward? The industry may appear stagnant at times, but you’d be wrong to underestimate its evolution in recent years.
With the rapid advancement of technology and AI integration, staff time tracking software is becoming more sophisticated while remaining user-friendly.
In this article, we’ll take a look at nine tools that boast surprising and innovative characteristics that can truly transform your approach to time management.
Staff Time Tracking Software with Unique Features
actiTIME: Multidimensional Budgeting
In a world where every minute is translated into dollars and cents, time tracking goes hand in hand with billing and invoicing. These processes hinge on one crucial element: a well-defined budget for each project or task.
Imagine a scenario where your project is running over its time budget. You might think that a couple of extra hours here and there are manageable. However, if those hours are spent by an employee with a rare skill set, the associated costs will escalate quickly. What seems like a minor overrun could lead to significant financial implications—not just for your organization but also for your client.
Or let’s consider the billing budget: a small overrun in this area can lead to unpleasant disputes that tarnish your relationships with clients. If you exceed the agreed-upon billing amount without prior communication, it can damage trust and jeopardize future collaborations.
actiTIME’s multi-dimensional budgeting feature allows you to create comprehensive project budgets that account for multiple factors simultaneously.
Rather than simply monitoring spending against a single budget line, the tool enables users to assess time, cost, and billing budgets concurrently, turning employee timesheets into powerful tools for financial control and resource utilization monitoring.
- Billing budgets help you monitor project revenues and ensure that you adhere to the agreed-upon payment amounts from your clients, preventing any trust issues from arising due to unexpected charges.
- Time budgets assist in keeping your project on schedule by tracking time estimates at both the project and customer levels, thus avoiding costly delays.
- Cost budgets are used to ensure you labor costs don’t exceed planned amounts and your projects remain profitable.
You can choose between two primary approaches for budget allocation: assign your total budget to a customer or project and then break it down into individual tasks, or assign budgets to each planned task. Then, actiTIME will automatically update all three budgets as you and your staff log time spent on tasks.
Thus you’ll get a clear visual representation of your resource usage through progress bars. If a budget overrun occurs, actiTIME will highlight it in red, prompting you to take action.
WebWork: Unusual Activity Tracking
Most businesses implement staff time tracking software not to just log hours worked, but to ensure that the time recorded is genuinely spent on productive work. And of course, the tools offer various methods to assess it. However, screenshots, keylogging, and detailed monitoring raise both ethical and data security concerns.
This brings us to the concept of unusual activity monitoring, a feature that goes beyond mere time tracking to provide deeper insights into employee engagement and productivity without invading personal privacy and causing distrust.
Unusual activity monitoring is designed to identify patterns that deviate from an individual employee’s typical activity metrics, such as unusually consistent work levels, abnormally low activity, or atypical keyboard behavior.
WebWork’s AI-powered solution, for example, flags the following events:
- An activity level above 95% for more than 45 minutes,
- Significant keyboard activity but minimal mouse interaction over an hour,
- Input rate that fluctuates by less than 4% over an hour or remains constant for 30 minutes or more,
- Four or more hours of work without dipping below 10% activity,
- Minimal keyboard activity over extended periods (60 minutes or more).
This aggregated data offers a clear view of individual and team behavior and helps managers spot signs of disengagement, automation, or even burnout before they adversely affect performance.
TMetric: The Bird’s Eye View of Your Time… Literally
As for our next tool in our stack seems to rahter basic, but it isn’t. TMetric distinguishes itself as a very interesting staff time tracking tool, particularly thanks to its standout feature: the innovative timeline view, which offers a detailed perspective on work sessions, activity levels, and team progress throughout the day.
TMetric automatically captures and displays time entries as colored segments along a 24-hour horizontal timeline. Each segment represents a specific task or activity.
The tool also includes vertical grey bars that reflect user activity levels. The height of these bars indicates the volume of keyboard and mouse usage in each 10-minute interval.
Users can effortlessly add time entries or breaks by clicking on an empty section of the timeline with their mouse, ensuring that all time spent on tasks is accurately documented, even if it wasn’t tracked in real-time.
For supervisors and team leaders, TMetric provides a comprehensive Team View that enables administrators to observe the timelines of all team members simultaneously, facilitating better workload management and task redistribution when needed.
Rize: New Approach to Focus Time
Another way to ensure that an employee is staying productive and doesn’t suffer from stress is tracking to just time but also focus.
Focus time is period during which individuals concentrate on specific tasks without interruptions. Traditionally, it was managed using simple Pomodoro timers, which encouraged short bursts of focused work followed by brief breaks.
However, Rize.io has taken this concept to the next level by integrating AI and advanced analytics.
Rize combines a dedicated focus timer that allows users to set specific durations for their sessions and a distraction blocking feature that minimizes interruptions with a smart break-reminder, a curated library of dedicated focus music, and a focus quality score, that provides insights into how effectively the user is working during their focus sessions.
This feature set helps users understand their work habits and develop strategies to maintain optimal focus levels over time.
eBility: Gamification at Its Best
And now, lets shift gears a bit! Above we explored various software features that organizations use to maintain control over their operations and workforce. So, it’s time to discuss some, used highlight some that are designed to reward rather than regulate.
While many businesses have attempted to incorporate gamification into their time management solutions, eBility’s method has proven to be particularly effective. They didn’t just stop at offering virtual badges and praise in the team chat; instead, they created a system that delivers real, tangible rewards for employees’ achievements, whether it’s tackling challenging projects, accurately logging their hours, or consistently submitting their tracked time
eBility features a flexible reward system that empowers managers to offer a wide range of incentives. From gift cards to extra time off, the options are as diverse as the teams themselves.
Thus the make employee feel valued as individuals who deserve recognition for their hard work and contributions.
TickTime: When Your Mood Matters
And now, a really unique tool!
It’s not every day you see a physical timer on the timesheet software list, huh?
However, for those who utilize the Pomodoro technique we discussed above, TickTime may come in handy.
Besides tracking work sessions and breaks, it generates quite decent timesheet reports, and users are often pleasantly surprised by the insights these reports provide.
TickTime not only provides a comprehensive overview of how the time was spent and how effectively a specific user adhered to the planned work sessions, but it also allows them to log their mood throughout the day, creating a direct correlation between how they feel and how much they accomplish.
Thus, you can use TickTime to discover that your employees’ most productive days coincide with positive moods, while less productive periods align with feelings of stress or fatigue, and acknowledge that being productive isn’t just about managing time effectively; it’s also about understanding yourself and your emotional landscape.
Trackabi: More Than Just AI
While most applications of AI in staff time tracking primarily focus on data capturing and processing automation, there are really innovative tools that go beyond these basics to enhance productivity and user experience.
One such tool is Trackabi, which has harnessed the power of AI in quite an ingenious way.
They took a bold step forward by integrating advanced AI capabilities that allow users to create so-called AI agents based on natural language prompts and interact with the time tracking software in a more intuitive way, making it feel less like a monitoring solution and more like a collaborative partner in productivity.
Have you ever wished for someone else to fill out your timesheets for you? Your wish has come true! You can delegate time-consuming tasks such as filling out timesheets, logging hours, or even approaching deadline reminders to Trackabi AI agents, all through simple prompts.
LaborX: Time Tracking via Blockchain Technology
Unlike salaried employees who enjoy the protections of regular paychecks, freelancers take on the responsibility of ensuring their work time is tracked correctly and collecting payment after completing a job.
Unfortunately, once the work is done, many clients can be slow to settle up. This delay is rarely due to dishonesty; it’s simply that they’ve moved on to other priorities, and your payment falls lower on their list, especially if they have to deal with dozens of contractors at a time.
Recognizing this problem, ChronoBank has developed LaborX, a blockchain-based platform that streamlines the time tracking and consecutive payment process for both freelancers and their clients.
Before starting a job, both parties agree on the estimated time required and the payment amount, which is then encoded into a smart contract.
All contract actions, including time tracking data, are recorded to provide full transparency to both parties. The blockchain technology makes timesheets immutable and tamper-proof, which provides a high level of trust and accountability.
For every hour worked tracked within the platform, payment is instantly and automatically deducted from the client’s account and transferred directly to the freelancer.
To ensure fairness, clients set a withdrawal limit for the job. If the work takes longer than expected, freelancers will still receive payment for overtime.
Should the work time exceed this limit, payments will pause until the client decides whether to extend it.
Kimai: Savings for the Tech Savy
The last tool on our list was developed with the needs of small businesses in mind.
The core software is open-source and completely free, allowing its users to avoid recurring subscription fees if they choose to self-host their instance.
This also means they will maintain full control and ownership of their time-tracking data and be able modify the source code to tailor the software to their specific workflows.
Beyond basic time tracking, Kimai includes a range of professional-grade features that enhance its functionality:
- Project and customer management
- Detailed reporting and analytics
- Invoicing support with various export formats (PDF, CSV, XLSX, etc.)
- Multi-user support with role-based access controls
- An API for integration with external tools and services
- Lave management
Additionally, Kimai supports pre-made plugins (both free and paid) and custom invoice templates, allowing for further customization that reflects individual branding.
The Wrap Up
As technology continues to advance, we can expect even more surprising developments in the realm of staff time tracking and workforce management.
Analytics promise us systems able to use timesheet data to
- Optimize team structures and personalize project assignments;
- Assess employee well-being and flag the signs of burnout or disengagement:
- Ensure that talent is utilized effectively and every role is aligned with individual strengths and preferences;
- Create a more agile and responsive workplace, capable of adapting to changing needs and challenges;
- And more…
Embracing these advancements, while maintaining a balance between technology and human responsibility, will not only improve operational efficiency but also foster a healthier work environment where everyone can thrive.
