The Best Free Online Timesheet Software

Timesheets are like the unsung heroes of the workweek, quietly keeping track of our productivity while we’re off daydreaming about weekend plans. They’re the Sherlock Holmes of the office, piecing together the clues of our time spent and occasionally uncovering mysteries like “Where did my Monday go?” or “Did I really spend three hours in that meeting?”

Only that they’re not, if you have to fill them manually. Did you know that, according to statistics, over 38% of US employees continue to use paper timesheets and punch cards? This form of timesheeting also doesn’t allow employees to log work hours efficiently.

Employees are exceptionally bad at filling out timesheets. Hence, the right timesheet app can save you a lot of time and money.

Why Use Timesheet Software?

Free timesheet and time tracking software allow many smaller organizations or individuals to track work hours in a simple way. Such a solution works fantastically as a time registration app.

Undoubtedly, online timesheets make it easy to log work hours. Employees don’t have to spend extra hours filling out spreadsheets but can focus on work that really matters. Additionally, it helps to eliminate paperwork and tedious administrative tasks.

Here are all the reasons why it’s worth using employee timesheet software:

• With online timesheets, you can keep track of all the work—tasks, projects and their progress, people’s working hours, leaves, attendance, and budget.
• Managers can quickly approve employee hours.
• Accurate client billing.
• Improved payroll process.
• Higher productivity—the right app will automate and optimize work and provide you with additional data on work.
• It’s easier to schedule hours when you have real-time data on employees’ availability.
• Tracking different types of hours including paid and unpaid breaks (PTO), time off, billable and non-billable hours, clock-ins and clock outs, total hours, overtime, and others.
• Easy attendance tracking and management—leaves, vacations, holidays, etc.
• Helps in project management—resource allocation, and precise forecasting.
• Logging time with timesheets prevents time theft and buddy-punching.
• Because it’s free, you can save money on expensive software that offers only paid versions
• Easy onboarding with no need to learn how to use the software.

Without a good timesheet app, keeping a hand on your business can be difficult. Staying organized and goal-oriented is much easier when you have everything under control.

Read also: 15 Best Timesheets Apps for Efficient Time Management in 2023

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What Are The Best Employee Timesheet Apps?

Deciding to use timesheet software is a good idea if you don’t want to switch between many apps, have a limited budget, or simply want to try various options.

There are several things worth looking for in a free timesheet app:

Automatic Time Tracker

So employees have their timesheets filled out automatically. Because the main purpose of time tracking tools is to automate work for two main reasons:

1. To automate repetitive activities that are simply time-consuming.
2. To reduce or even completely eliminate human error and prevent inaccurate numbers on timesheets. (Such inaccuracies may cost a lot of money and drain your budget).

Tracking Billable Time

Not everything should go into your timesheet. There are activities for which you won’t bill your clients (unless stated otherwise in the contract or agreement), e.g., team meetings, administrative work, time spent on invoicing, networking, marketing, and traveling.

You’ll need to track billable hours to accurately bill clients, pay employees for the actual work, and better manage a budget; this feature also helps to streamline payroll.

Timesheet Approvals

If you’re a manager, you’ll need timesheet management feature for smooth approval process to:

• Create a consistent timesheet submitting policy for unified standards for all employees in the company.
• Ensure accuracy and integrity in reporting work hours.
• Review timesheets quickly and easily.
• Track billable time, monitor resource allocation, and optimize project timelines.
• Comply with labor laws, union agreements, or client contracts.

Reporting and Analytics

Analytics and reporting features give you lots of data on work time. It helps to get the most important information about projects and make smarter business decisions.

Additionally, some time tracking apps offer employee monitoring that can give managers and team members insight into their performance. These tools, however, may exceed the basic time tracking and be perceived as intrusive. Still, they can provide helpful information on efficiency.

Note: When you choose time tracking software, it’s good to consider the pros and cons because it’ll help you determine what features you need.

Attendance Module

Time tracking solution can also work as an attendance software that helps to keep track of employee participation in work and its correlation with efficiency.

Attendance tracking is important so you can precisely establish work hours policies, comply with federal standards, allocate work and resources so your projects run smoothly and are profitable.

Measuring Productivity

Although it’s not a must-have feature, it can help your employees spot bottlenecks, avoid distractions, and improve work.

Integrations With Other Apps

If you want to extend the system with your favorite tools, integrations and add-ons will be helpful. They’ll allow you to connect with project management software and productivity apps. That way, you’ll have a unified system for tracking time without the need of switching between different apps.

Online Timesheet Tracking

Easy access to timesheets from the web or mobile app is a must. Good online timesheet software is available for all platforms.

It’s especially helpful for remote or hybrid teams, contractors, and freelancers who often work for different companies from different places.

Top Picks for Best Time Tracking Software with Timesheets

These days, the market is oversaturated with project time tracking software that often goes beyond basic functions. And it’s okay if you need an advanced project management tool. But if you need a tool to help you with timesheets, sometimes it may be too much.

If you’re looking for a list of the best online timesheet software for free, you’re in the right place. We chose tools that offer a free plan and are most suitable for small teams and freelancers.

1. TimeCamp

Automatic time tracking with measuring project profitability in a user-friendly way

TimeCamp is a free time tracking software. It tracks everything for you—your and your team’s work, types of activities, budget, tasks and projects, and more. Thanks to the time reporting system, you can easily see the progress of work and the general workflow in one place.

TimeCamp helps to automate work, streamline business processes, bill clients for worked hours, and save time and money on timesheeting.

Some of the key features include the following:

• Automatic time tracker available in 5 forms—as a desktop app, built-in web timer, mobile app, Google Chrome extension, geofencing.
• Tracking billable and non-billable time.
• Timesheets with approvals.
• Extensive reports about all company employees’ work with distinction to departments and teams. Reports include data on tracked activities and time by projects, tasks, people, days, time entries, budgeting reports, billable, unbillable time, invoiced, cost calculation, computer time reports, and more. You can also customize reports.
• Analytics allows you to view the breakdown of your activities with graphs and statistics.
• Attendance module to track and manage holidays, sick leave, business trips, parental leave, vacation leave, remote work, and more.
• Graphical timesheet integrated with the calendar (also with Google Calendar). You can fill out your timesheets automatically with data from your calendar.
• You can create invoices based on billable hours worked.
• You can monitor productive and nonproductive work (including activities, websites, and applications).
• Automatic reminders when you forget to turn your timer on or off.
• Expense tracking.
• TimeCamp integrates with various tools and apps for a smooth work. You can import your project structure from PM tools like Jira, Trello, Monday.com, ClickUp and much more.

TimeCamp is one of the few timesheet software free for unlimited users with unlimited tracking for work hours.

2. actiTIME

Online timesheet app with tracking costs and profits

actiTIME is an online timesheet free app for up to 3 users. It’s most suitable for freelancers and small teams. This time tracker lets you create project scope, assign work to your team, record work hours and keep everything on track with the insightful data.

With actiTIME, you can track time for hourly rates, billable tasks, overtime and custom PTO, and more.

In actiTIME, you can also customize features so they correspond to your business needs. These features give you the ability to control processes by monitoring and managing timesheets. It is a good tool for organizing work and making sure it is well tracked so that you can later analyze and review it to improve efficiency.

actiTIME free plan has limited functionalities, so if you need to record overtime or integrate the tool via Zapier, you’ll need a paid plan.

3. Everhour

Online employee timesheets with task management

Everhour free plan is available for up to 5 users. It’s an automatic time tracking software that includes functionalities of a task manager app.

Some of its main time tracking features include one-click online time tracking, timesheets with approvals, summary charts, project budgeting, and productivity analytics. It’s a free timesheet online app best for freelancers or small teams.

Everhour online free timesheet has all the data necessary to manage tasks in a small team—employees’ clock-ins and outs, time log, tracking paid time off, vacations, sick days and leave types, and labor costs. You can also approve time spent for each team member.

Everhour can help you monitor the progress of work in real-time and visualize data in a simple way.

4. My Hours

Best timesheet app for freelancers to track expenses for online timekeeping

 

My Hours is a cloud-based timesheet software free tool best for freelancers. In the free version, you have access to unlimited projects and clients, tracking time on projects and tasks, setting billable rates, and generating detailed reports.

One of its main advantages is its easy integration with a plethora of other tools that are either cloud-based or running on something like a managed VPS hosting account.

My Hours is an easy time tracking software that lets you add time entries to online timesheets manually or track employee time automatically. You get daily timesheets and weekly timesheets that calculate work hours for you and show you all the data about your and your team’s work, budget, project progress, and expenses.

If you’re looking for a simple and intuitive solution to track projects and generate simple timesheets, try out My Hours.

The app, however, doesn’t give you an option to connect with your favorite payroll providers, so it’s not suitable for payroll management. It only integrates with QuickBooks and provides an option for Zapier integrations.

See the comparison between TimeCamp and MyHours: MyHours alternative

5. Sling

Free employee timesheet app with GPS tracking and planning

Sling is a free timesheet software best for employee scheduling and planning. It allows you for labor management, tracking employee hours, and controlling labor costs. Sling also includes basic communication features. It makes online timekeeping and shift management easier.

Because it’s available for mobile devices and offers GPS tracking and geofencing, it’s a great time clock and attendance tracker.

Here are the main features of Sling:

• Budget monitoring with the ability to set weekly labor budgets for locations, preferred hours, and overtime thresholds for employees.
• Reports for a day, week, or month, or for customizable periods.
• Tracking different labor costs: overtime and PTO (Paid Time Off), lunch breaks, scheduled hours for different pay period.
• Online timesheet tracking on web, iOS and Android, so you and your team are aligned wherever you are.
• Messages and newsfeed to communicate with the team
• Tasks with to-do lists, due dates, and reminders.
• You can provide the address for each location on Sling and employees will see it when viewing their schedules.
• Automatic time clock with geofencing prevents not logging missed clock outs or missed breaks

Sling provides employee timesheets and reports based on employee hours tracked and labor costs determined by you in the app.

It has a generous free plan with many features, but if you ever need more, pricing starts as low as $1.70 per user per month.

Check also our list of the best PTO tracking software

6. OfficeTimer

Lightweight timekeeping online app for payroll and client billing

OfficeTimer is a web-based time tracking software and an employee timesheet app. It helps in keeping track of employee time and labor costs.

OfficeTimer is a simple app that lets you track time for different projects, employee productivity, monitor expenses, and manage attendance. It’s an online free timesheet app for teams that need a simple solution for time and task management.

Here are the main features:

• Live dashboard with team’s availability.
• Projects with tasks, employee time costs, billing, and estimates.
• Exporting reports to Excel, PDFs.
• Leave management module to manage attendance, leaves, and time off.
• Available for the web and as a mobile app for iOS and Android.

OfficeTimer is a lightweight app for simple timesheet management.

7. Code Time

Best time tracking app with timesheets for developers

Code Time is a great timesheet app for developers and programmers. It’s a plugin that integrates directly with all of the most popular code editors and IDEs. It offers features that combine a time tracker and a distraction blocking tool.

The tool automatically detects when you’re in the flow of work and mutes notifications for you. You can configure the editor extensions to automatically enter Zen mode, hide your OS dock, or even set your Slack status to away when you’re in a flow. Also, you can set top code times for uninterrupted coding.

Based on your activities, Code Time generates detailed reports of your code time by project and sends weekly email reports. It also lets you visualize data with coding metrics, daily progress, and a work calendar.

Code Time helps to track time for monthly and hourly employees, stay productive and always achieve work goals. However, the free plan offers only basic insights for your GitHub organization and is not suitable for teams.

8. Toggl

Simple free timesheets online software with basic reports

Toggl is a very simple time tracking app. It’s easy-to-use with a friendly interface that offers timekeeping online for multiple tasks. It’ll be perfect for people who need to have timesheets as simple as possible in one, easily accessible place. The tool doesn’t offer timesheets as such in its free version but records of the tracked time.

So, if you want your timesheets to be extremely transparent, Toggl will do the job. Also, you can see how much time you or your team has spent on different projects and you can export reports to create your own personal timesheet.

Toggl may also be a good timesheet software for hourly employees who begin their adventure with time tracking and need a simple tool as a kind of introduction. It’s good for freelancers, solopreneurs, or small teams.

Toggl is available for multiple platforms and syncs across devices, so it lets you easily access all the data.

Check our Toggl time tracking integration!

9. Homebase

Employee time tracking with time clock and timesheets

Homebase is an employee scheduling software with extensive features. It’s suitable for team supervision as it combines HR and project management functionalities.

Homebase timesheets allow you to track work hours, breaks, and overtime of your staff to calculate payroll easily. It automatically identifies missed breaks, missed shifts, or clock-outs so you can easily correct them. The app keeps records of all your timesheets, including edit history.

With Homebase, you can also track breaks and define pay a period for quick and easy payroll.

Homebase is available for mobile apps, so it is suitable for off-site teams.

Homebase can be integrated with top payroll software to automatically sync your hours to payroll. The free version of the app is available for 1 location and unlimited users.

10. Traqq

Time tracking with employee monitoring for remote team

Traqq is an employee productivity monitoring platform most suitable for remote teams that offers free timesheets online.

The app automatically tracks your activities, keystrokes and mouse movement, and monitors website and app usage. There is also an option to take video recordings of screen activity.

Timesheet data includes basic information about time tracked, projects, and dates. You can add or edit time manually in your timesheets.

Reports show you all the information about tracked activities. There are amounts earned reports that display the total amount earned for different people over a selected pay period so you can keep track of basic expenses.

Traqq doesn’t offer integrations, so you can’t connect it with your favorite payroll provider. Thus, it’s best as a simple app to manage time.

No mobile app is available, so you can only access your data from the web.

11. nTask

Team collaboration and project planning with timesheets

nTask is a complete project management platform used by businesses of all sizes to automatically track the time spent by all team members on each task. The platform creates a timesheet automatically when worked on projects and task with time entries.

There’s the timesheet management with approvals from project managers. And the ability to export timesheet to CSV or Excel.

Also, it gives users the ability to give estimated time (day and hours), and track actual time with a built-in time tracker. The application is available on web, iOS and Android devices. The tool is used even for meeting notes taking, and document sharing. 

The nTask application is free for 5 users. The paid plans with project tracking are at $4/user.

12. Quidlo Timesheets

Web time tracking software with timesheets

Quidlo is a lightweight web app that helps to replace Excel spreadsheets and easily log work hours. You can track time with built-in time tracker and generate time reports. Then, export them to PDF, Google Drive, Excel or CSV to share timesheets with your team and clients directly in the app.

You can control who has access to specific time tracking data with admin access and user roles.

Quidlo offers basic project management and time tracking so you can keep all projects on track.

It’s free for up to 10 users. If you want more advanced features, you can try them in the free trial.

13. Actually

Minimalistic time tracking tool for all company sizes

Actually is the best time tracking software for everyone who needs a simple online time tracking solution with timesheets.

This time tracking tool has basic features: it lets you easily track your project’s performance and progress online and access your data in simple reports. In addition, you may set a target time budget for each task and compare actuals to the set budget, or define your own approval steps for timesheet approval process.

Actually works as a standalone solution so you won’t be able to connect it with other tools. However, its simplicity shouldn’t disrupt your current workflow and you can use it as an additional resource in your work.

Conclusion: How Does Time Tracking Software Help You?

It’s always a good idea to track time with automatic online timesheets. They can provide you with valuable data and help to increase efficiency.

Online timesheets for free can also be a great alternative or addition to traditional Microsoft Excel templates and spreadsheets that are not easily accessible on a mobile app.

What is your favorite online app? How do you use time tracking software? Or maybe you have your own method for effective timesheeting? Let us know in the comments, we’ll be happy to hear from you!

Kate Borucka Kate is a freelance translator, copywriter, and a content writer specializing in time tracking software, time management, and productivity. When not researching new software, she's reading books, or spending time outdoors.

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