The Best Remote Time Tracking Software for Employees in 2023

In today’s digital age, remote work has become more prevalent. As a result, businesses are increasingly turning to remote employees to get work done. While remote work has benefits, it can also present some unique challenges. One such challenge is tracking the time and productivity of remote employees.

Time tracking apps are beneficial for tracking billable hours and gathering data on how and where workers spend their working hours.

In this article, we will explore some of the best remote employee time tracking software for employees available on the market, comparing their features, benefits, and drawbacks to help businesses decide which solution is best for their needs.

The 12 best remote employee time tracking software

1. Timeular

Timeular is the perfect tool for tracking team time and billable hours due to its user-friendly interface, enabling users to track time offline and online without distraction or needing to open the application. Several ways to track time include a calendar view, keyboard shortcuts, and a physical device. Using Timeular facilitates the development of a time tracking routine and provides an array of reporting insights that can be exported in PDF, XLSX, and CSV. Timeular helps teams to identify time-wasting activities and maximize billable hours.

Moreover, Timeular offers a physical time-tracking gadget that links to application tasks via Bluetooth. The device features eight sides, with each representing a different activity. The software also incorporates functionalities like billable time, adding notes to time entries, reporting, timesheets, budgets, and integration with other tools, including Zapier, Jira, and Toggl. It supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile devices. Timeular is ideal for both individual and collaborative work settings. Its intuitive software, exceptional customer support, and adaptable time entry options distinguish Timeular from others.

• Pricing:
  • Personal (8€ /month)
  • Personal Pro (12€ /month)
  • Team (18€ /month)
  • A discount if annual billing is chosen and a 30-day free trial is available.
• Rating: 4.6/5 on Capterra

2. Toggl Track

Toggl offers three tools: a tracking app, a planner, and a hiring section. Focusing on the core product, the time tracking app, it offers a web, mobile, and desktop tool.

Toggle Track allows for idle time detection, personal time tracking reminders, automated time tracking triggers, and team access level management. The free option is complete in this regard, to be used ideally by a freelancer, for example, or a small team with a maximum of five people. 

Toggl Track also allows the export of detailed reports (weekly, monthly) and data import via a CSV file. Paid Toggl plans include:

• More advanced team management tools.
• Team member audits.
• More advanced reporting features than the free version.

It also allows for more than one hundred integrations with browser extensions.

• Pricing:
  • All plans start with a free trial of 30 days
  • Free (0€ – limit of 5 users)
  • Starters (10€ /user/month)
  • Premium (20€ /user/month)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)

• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra 

Timeular vs Toggl: Which is better for you?

3. Monday.com

Monday.com is one of the best cross-functional tools. The highlight of this software is its customization capabilities, including drag and drop, to make the process easier for everyone. Monday.com provides project data visualizations, project automation, and integrations.
The software is efficient when it comes to keeping track of group projects. It provides templates and workflows from different areas, such as marketing, project management, design, software development, sales, and human resources.

• Pricing:
  • Individual (0€ – up to 2 users)
  • Basic (8€/user/month)
  • Standard (10€/user/month)
  • Pro (16€/user/month)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)

• Rating: 4.6/5 on Capterra

Get to know everything about remote work culture.

4. Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch promises to simplify employee scheduling and time tracking, no matter where the team works. The notifications feature allows managers to keep track of workers.
For instance, the manager is notified if someone clocks in or out or requests a time change. The worker also has access to notifications to handle these administrative issues without taking time off billable hours.
Buddy Punch allows remote workers to use a single login, for example, via Google, keeping everything in the same place. The reports issued are highly customizable and can be applied to each worker.
This software also allows the scheduling of automatic breaks, subtracting that time from the billable hours, among others.

• Pricing:
  • Standard (2.99$ /user/month billed annually)
  • Pro (3.99$ /user/month billed annually)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)
  • An extra 19$ dollars adds to every plan as a monthly base fee. There is a free trial for 14 days.
• Rating: 4.8/5 on Capterra

5. Paymo

Paymo is a helpful tool for managing complex projects, especially in its highest-tier plan. It presents a complete set of project-tracking features for remote employees.

For example, Paymo includes features focused on financial health indicators for projects, collaboration tools, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and a customizable interface.

It can be pretty helpful when monitoring the projects’ workflows. One of its most prominent and strongest points is that it is available in 23 languages. 

• Pricing:
  • Free (0$/user/month – maximum 1 user)
  • Starter (4.95$/user/month – maximum 1 user)
  • Small User (9.95$/user/month)
  • Business (20.79$/user/month)
  • Paymo offers a trial of 15 days.
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra

6. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a tool that gathers time tracking and visibility over how time is spent. The software includes time tracking, employee monitoring, project management and project budgeting, online timesheets, and payroll organization.

Depending on the chosen plan, it allows for consulting the history of tracking activities, video screen captures, and more than sixty possible integrations with other software. 

This tool claims to be employee friendly while offering managers the possibility of being more engaged in the projects at hand, all in complete transparency. It features solutions developed specifically with remote teams in mind. 

• Pricing: 
  • Basic (70$ user/year)
  • Standard (100$ user/year)
  • Premium (200$ user/year)
  • It offers a free trial for 15 days, after which a planned purchase is mandatory.
• Rating: 4.5/5 on Capterra

7. Wrike

Wrike is a remote employee time-tracking software exceptionally devoted to software development. It’s a visual tool with dashboards, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts available.
The platform’s workload charts help spot overloads, reallocate resources, and reduce the risk of burnout. It also allows tracking of marketing budgets and campaign performance.

• Pricing
  • Free (0$ /user/month)
  • Team (9.80$ /user/month)
  • Business (24.80$ /user/month)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)
  • Pinnacle (custom pricing)
  • It offers a free trial.
• Rating: 4.3/5 on Capterra

8. Timely

Timely allows remote workers to categorize time spent based on tasks, websites accessed, and tools used. It can track billable and non-billable activities and issue reports on them and offers an advanced dashboard that can help teams collaborate through activity feeds.
The advanced report is one of its most highlighted features. It’s one of the most automated time-tracking tools on the market and can be integrated with other apps, but mostly only with their paid plans.

• Pricing:
  • Starter (11$ /user/month)
  • Premium (20$ /user/month)
  • Unlimited (28$ /user/month)
  • There are discounts if the plans are billed annually instead of monthly.
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra

9. Clockify

Clockify is a popular time tracking app known for its simple and easy-to-use dashboard. It’s a cloud-based employee time tracking app that has a stellar that can track employee time, attendance, and billable hours.
The more advanced paid plans allow you to register paid time off and vacation requests, including GPS tracking, expense tracking, progress alerts, invoicing, and the possibility of customizing several fields.
It features the Clockify Time Clock Kiosk that lets users turn any internet-connected device into an employee punch clock. Clockify is considered a friendly platform, allowing for more than 80 integrations.

• Pricing
  • Basic (4.99$ /user/month)
  • Standard (6.99$ /user/month)
  • Pro (9.99$ /user/month)
  • Enterprise (14.99$ /user/month)
  • When billed annually, a discount is applied. Clockify offers a free 7-day trial.
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra

Compare Timeular vs. Clockify.

10. TimeCamp

One of the strong suits of the TimeCap is being rich in features in all its plans. All of them come with several time tracking possibilities: time entries, automatic time tracking, idle time tracking, and daily and weekly timesheets.
The paid plan versions include productivity and time-budget reports, unlimited third-party integrations, and user role assignments.
TimeCamp has the advantage of providing a free plan with no user limit, which is not common. However, this level does not offer features such as team productivity tracking, invoicing, timesheet approvals, and integrations.
This software is mainly used for the team-oriented side of things, which makes a remote team manager’s job easier.

• Pricing
  • Free / Basic (7.99$ /user/month)
  • Pro (10.99$ /user/month)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)
  • You can start using the tool with a 14-day free trial
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra

11. ClockShark

ClockShark is a tool that was created to serve construction and field service businesses that need to track employee time and client projects.
Its features include GPS tracking, job and task tracking, timesheet attachments, overtime tracking, and job budgeting alerts.
It comes with the KioskClock Time Clock with facial recognition and CrewClock Team Time Tracking, which allows crew leaders to track time for their entire crew, wherever they may be.

• Pricing
  • Standard (16$ /user/month)
  • Pro (30$ / user/month
  • There are discounts when plans are billed annually, and there are often campaigns for lower fees if the software is bought without a trial. ClockShark provides a 14-day free trial.
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra

12. Deputy

Deputy differentiates itself from most tools because it helps to remain compliant with wage and hour laws, helping minimize legal risks associated with employee management.

For example, it includes employee break compliance tools and can create a record of schedule compliance, including late clock-ins, work conducted in unscheduled time blocks, and early clock-outs. It calculates over time, split-shift, and holiday/customized rates.

This software can be a great option if a business is starting and can’t yet spend money on a tool of this kind. 

• Pricing:
  • Deputy offers a free trial of up to 31 days
  • Scheduling (3.50$ /user/month)
  • Time & Attendance (3.50$ /user/month)
  • Premium (joins both past plans – 4.90$ /user/month)
  • Enterprise (custom pricing)
  • If annual billing is chosen, there is a discount.
• Rating: 4.6/5 on Capterra

How to choose the best remote employee time tracking software

When choosing a time-tracking software focused on the needs of remote workers, there are some core factors to consider. The manager’s primary goals in implementing time tracking software, especially for remote teams, are to increase employee accountability, more easily verify project hours, and deal with payroll, if necessary.

Project management features

Aside from time tracking, there’s an important but often forgotten issue to consider when making this decision: project management features. These often help a manager assign tasks, prioritize them and check them off when completed. Another one is overseeing where employees are using their time if they are making progress on them, and if that is traceable.

As a manager, “measure” the needs of your team/project. Assess your needs and determine how the time-tracking software will better help your remote team: do you need to improve effectiveness? Do you need to track billable hours and ensure payroll is streamlined? Also, what kind of projects do you work on? Is it easy to use? 

Compatibility

After this, it’s also crucial that when looking for time-tracking software, the chosen one is compatible with the existing tools currently used by the team. Otherwise, an investment in a tool may be wasted if it doesn’t work with the rest of what the remote workers already use. It’s also important to look for features that allow employee monitoring if the manager or company is looking for that. 

Data security

Regarding remote workers’ tracking time, data security must be a priority. Look for encryption software and other security features to protect confidential employee and work data.

Automation

Finally, automation is another factor that can make or break an effective time-tracking software that’ll contribute to the worker’s productivity.

It’s essential that the software can automatically capture accurate data from multiple sources and provide reports. If those reports are customizable, even better. With this kind of feature, it’s possible to keep team budgets on target, visualize team capacity, understand costs, analyze time spent, etc. 

Conclusion

The software or tool you choose has to contribute to a more effective way of working. Time tracking is meant to help businesses run better and reach better results while providing better worker process transparency.

There is a wide variety of time-tracking software tools, and the best choice is the one you can adjust to the ever-changing needs of everyday work.

Having to use time tracking software can be seen by some employees as control of micromanaging. But the team leader or manager should assure them it’s highly beneficial.

Assure them that it’s a non-invasive tool that will be used to simplify accountability processes, something that’ll help everyone.

You might be interested in the following:

• How to get your remote employees to track time?
• The best tools to manage remote employees
• The challenges of managing remote employees
• How to motivate a remote team