How to Choose the Best Timesheet Software for Your Business?
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Maksymilian Kujawa
- March 4, 2025
- 9 min read
Filling out timesheets, calculating hours, calendar events, tracking time spent and chasing down missing time cards shouldn’t feel like a full-time job. Doing all these tasks manually is time-consuming, draining, and prone to errors that can affect payroll, billing, and project budgets.
The good news is that all of the above can be solved with software solutions that enable automated time tracking.
With the right timesheet software, you get a tool that can automatically track time and help with all the chores associated with manual time tracking so that, in the end, what used to be a daily struggle becomes a part of your workflow that you barely notice.
Switch to automated timesheet software
Let TimeCamp do the timesheet filling and and enjoy the daily savings on time reporting
How Does Manual Time Tracking with Online Timesheet Software Impact Your Business?
Before implementing new technology, it’s necessary to first understand where current processes fall short and why simple time-tracking apps are often not enough. The assessment should identify specific operational challenges that need addressing. Only then can organizations prioritize key features that will deliver measurable improvements.
Research shows that 38% of US companies still rely on paper timesheets, and around 80% of these timesheets need corrections in some form.
Way too often, manual time tracking leads to unpleasant mistakes, from incorrect employee hours to lost records and calculation errors. These inaccuracies, however small they seem, can lead to more serious errors related to payroll, project management, client billing, and budget planning.
How Can Timesheet Software Help Your Business?
Timesheet software automates the tracking and analysis of work hours across your business while providing insights into work patterns and project timelines. With such tools, organizations can better understand their resource allocation and identify areas for improvement through systematic data collection and detailed reporting.
If you make a smart choice and pick software that aligns with your specific business needs while being simple enough for your team to use consistently, you can reduce administrative work and provide managers with reliable data to make informed decisions about staffing, project planning, and resource distribution.
In simple terms, timesheet software helps companies know:
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When people are working
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How long do tasks really take
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Where time might be wasted
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Who might need extra support
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How to plan future work better
Key Capabilities Your Project Timesheet Software Should Deliver
Before exploring some of the more specific time tracking features, let’s narrow down what you should expect from the best time-tracking software in 2025.
These core functionalities are by now established as “must-have” for any competitive time management solution because they enable accurate time tracking regardless of your business size or industry:
Accurate Time Logging
First, any time or attendance tracking solution needs to reliably capture when work starts and stops, whether through manual entries, automated timers, or background tracking. This baseline time entry functionality ensures an accurate time-tracking process that prevents errors that could affect billable hours and that you can rely on for payroll processing.
This system should also maintain consistent data even when team members work across different time zones or devices. It should handle common mishaps, such as forgetting to stop a timer or losing an internet connection, without compromising the accuracy of your records.
Task and Project Tracking
Another essential feature is the ability to track and assign hours to different tasks and projects. Since time tracking tools already collect valuable data about working patterns, with task and project tracking, they double down as project management tools that help understand how time is distributed across different work activities and monitor project progress. This data paints a clear picture of project timelines and makes task management easier for future projects.
Customizable Reporting
Time tracking data becomes truly valuable when it can be analyzed meaningfully. A good reporting system allows you to break down time data by teams, projects, or specific time periods to understand work patterns.
This helps identify where time is being spent effectively and where workflow bottlenecks might exist. The ability to customize these reports allows you to focus on metrics that matter most to your business, such as project profitability, team capacity, or billable hours.
Integration with Other Tools
Time tracking software shouldn’t exist in isolation – it needs to work smoothly with your other business systems.
Good time tracking software connects directly with your payroll system to process working hours, links to project management tools to track progress, and feeds data into invoicing systems for accurate payments.
This reduces the need to manually transfer data between different platforms and helps maintain consistency across all your business processes.
Easy-to-Use Interface
Employee timesheet software needs to be simple enough that your team barely notices they’re using it. This means having a clear, straightforward interface where everything is right where you expect it to be.
Features like one-click timers, automated and automatic time tracking and capture, and easy-to-navigate menus help make the time tracker blend naturally into the workday. When timesheet software is this seamless, teams maintain accurate records without needing reminders.
Understanding Your Business’s Timesheet Requirements
Choosing the right timesheet software starts with a clear picture of what your business actually needs. Best time tracking tools come packed with various features, and you have to think about how and if they help to solve real problems in your workflow.
Before you decide how to choose timesheet software for your business, there are three questions that you need to ask:
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What are the key features needed to support daily operations?
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How will the solution integrate with existing systems?
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What level of customization will different departments require?
It is often the case that the smallest features solve the biggest frustrations. For example, you might be able to quickly copy last week’s schedule or receive a notification when someone forgets to log their hours.
These little improvements can make a huge difference in project management and how smoothly your team tracks their time, which is why it’s always advisable to try a demo version of the software before making a purchase.
Given the complexity of workflows, many of the best timesheet software solutions now come packed with various advanced features that can be quite handy in specific situations. For example, some industries need precise tracking of breaks and overtime for compliance, while field teams require employee GPS tracking across different locations.
Advanced Time Tracking Features
Now, you might ask why there are dozens of apps for something as seemingly simple as time entry. The answer lies in how different businesses track and use their time data. Here’s what sets these tools apart and why it matters:
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Automation: Better tools eliminate manual work by automatically calculating overtime, managing breaks, and handling labor law compliance. This is very helpful in industries like healthcare or retail, where mistakes lead to fines. Basic tools simply can’t handle this complexity.
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Industry-Specific Features: Many tools excel at solving unique industry challenges. For example:
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GPS tracking: Field service teams need to verify location and time worked accurately.
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HIPAA compliance: Healthcare organizations must ensure secure data handling in ways generic tools can’t address.
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Integration: Advanced platforms can integrate with other platforms like accounting or project management software. Time tracking solutions like these can simplify complex workflows and eliminate extra steps of manual data transfer between systems.
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Scalability: A simple employee time tracking app might work for small teams, but larger organizations need more. Features like permission controls, detailed reporting, and resource planning become essential as project management grows more complex.
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Customer Support: The basic time entry functionalities are fine, but exceptional customer support can save you a lot of time if you want to use some of the advanced features, such as integration with other platforms.
TimeCamp offers a full set of features that align with both basic and advanced business needs. It can support unlimited users across numerous apps and devices (including IOS and Android devices) with automatic time tracking based on application usage. The software includes detailed reporting, billable hours calculation, project budgeting, GPS location tracking, attendance monitoring, custom billing rates, expense tracking, and integrations with over 30 popular business tools like Trello, Asana, Monday, and many more.
Small Differences in Features Can Lead to Substantial Time Savings
Seemingly small differences between different solutions often end up having a big impact on the workflows. If one simple feature can save a couple of minutes of work each day, then it’s already worth consideration.
For example, a retail manager who has to ensure all employees take their legally required breaks would usually need to manually review timesheets or remind employees to clock out and back in. It can all be reduced to a simple process with timesheet software automatically tracking breaks, sending reminders, and flagging missed breaks.
TimeCamp’s “Copy Entries” functionality is another good example of this – instead of repeatedly entering the same timesheet data day after day, users can duplicate previous entries with a single click. This seemingly small convenience can add up to significant time savings for people working on consistent projects or routine tasks.
These quality-of-life improvements are what distinguish the best timesheet software; they make tasks that once took several minutes be done in seconds.
How Does Employee Time Tracking Software Drive Business Success?
People often don’t realize what a profound impact can be made on an organization with a time tracking app. By connecting time tracker with project management, businesses transform their daily operations – from accurately tracking task completion to streamlined administrative tasks and smarter resource allocation. Companies can save time for their employees while getting much better insight into how they actually spend it.
Timesheet management systems with advanced project management features are well beyond tools that simply track time.
They can:
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Ensure accurate billing
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Streamline employee scheduling
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Maintain precise records automatically.
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Set up advanced reporting capabilities
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Increase employee productivity
Automation eliminates typical timesheet errors that affect employee work hours, project deadlines, and budgeting.
This kind of project management integration reveals exactly where time goes in your organization – from spotting overloaded teams to identifying which projects consume unexpected resources. Most importantly, it empowers project managers with the data they need to make accurate decisions.
Selecting Cost-Effective Timesheet Solutions for Your Business
When selecting cost-effective timesheet solutions for your business, a common first question is whether free timesheet software can adequately meet organizational needs. While free timesheet tools exist and might work for basic tracking, the limitations become apparent as soon as organizations need more than simple time logging.
For example, people often use Google Sheets as a DIY solution that can be customized to track time and Google Calendar to record activities, but they lack automated time capture and reporting.
Limitations of Free Timesheet Software
Free timesheet solutions come with significant constraints:
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User restrictions – Free versions limit access to three to five team members
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Integration gaps – Limited connectivity with tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira
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Security risks – Providers may monetize user data in ways that compromise security
Another challenge is the support model. Free versions typically offer minimal technical assistance, leaving organizations to resolve issues independently.
Unlike most free timesheet tools, TimeCamp’s Free Plan doesn’t hold you back. It offers unlimited users and projects, full timesheets, web, desktop, and mobile apps, a Time Clock Kiosk, geofencing all safe and secure. A solid choice for freelancers and small businesses that proves that free time tracking doesn’t have to hold you back.
Free
$
0.00
billed annually
Free plan includes all the essentials (accurate time tracking, unlimited
projects, a time clock kiosk, desktop, and mobile apps, idle time
detection, and many more).
Starter
$
2.99
billed annually
Starter plan includes unlimited tasks, excel reports export, attendance,
time-off, overtime tracking.
Premium
$
4.99
billed annually
Premium plan includes one integration, billable time, budget and
estimates, apps and websites tracking, project archiving, and more.
Ultimate
$
7.99
billed annually
Ultimate plan includes unlimited integrations, billable rates, labor
costs, invoicing, timesheet approvals, custom user roles, and more.
Enterprise
$
11.99
billed annually
Enterprise Plan, designed for companies with 50+ employees, includes
priority support with SLA, self-hosted and private cloud instances,
custom integrations, and more.
Premium Solution Benefits:
Paid solutions offer advanced features that meet more complex business needs. These include:
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Reporting features and performance analytics
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Integration with multiple tools and systems
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Dedicated support with rapid response
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Automated workflows
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Security features
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Unlimited users
The value extends beyond basic time tracking. Premium versions provide remote team monitoring, expense tracking, and project budgeting capabilities. These solutions offer extensive customization options to match specific workflow requirements without restrictions on user numbers or feature access.
For larger organizations, this isn’t even a question. While free solutions might work for very small teams or simple tracking needs, growing businesses often find that premium features become essential as their operations become more complex.
TimeCamp offers flexible pricing tiers, from a feature-rich free plan to advanced paid options. For enterprises, TimeCamp provides custom integration development and creates specialized API connections between TimeCamp and any organization-specific software, ensuring seamless data flow while maintaining security and compliance requirements.
Choosing The Best Timesheet Solution for Your Business
Choosing the right timesheet software for your organization begins with understanding its potential to add value to your business. Automated time tracking alone can be a great addition to your workflows and save you a lot of time, but with advanced features available today, timesheet software can extend far beyond its basic functionality and provide strategic value to your business.
Contrary to what some people think, modern time tracking software doesn’t add another layer of complexity to your workday. It automatically captures time spent on different applications, documents, and websites, which are all the tasks that you would have to do manually in a traditional timesheet
The best solutions let you decide which features you need with flexible pricing plans. TimeCamp runs quietly in the background with the ability to automatically track time spent on different applications, websites, and documents. The software offers automatic project detection and task categorization, generates customizable reports, manages budgets and billable hours, processes timesheet approvals, and seamlessly integrates with popular business tools.
Experience firsthand how TimeCamp can streamline your workflows. Choose your plan, start your free trial today, and discover the difference automated time tracking makes for your team’s productivity.
Timesheet software that suits your workflow
Spend less time filling timesheets, save more time for what brings you profit
Sources:
https://www.contractormag.com/management/best-practices/article/55092970/how-time-tracking-has-evolved-in-25-years-and-how-many-contractors-havent
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/time-tracking/resources/time-attendance-stats/
https://www.officeclip.com/web/timesheet/time-tracking-statistics.html
https://www.bls.gov/
https://straitsresearch.com/report/time-tracking-software-market
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Maksymilian Kujawa Seasoned marketer with 5+ years of experience working with SaaS products, B2B audiences, and market research. Passionate about data-driven strategies, storytelling, and bridging the gap between product and market needs. Always on the lookout for automation opportunities, recently deeply interested in the possibilities offered by AI. When not crafting marketing strategies, he enjoys exploring the worlds of business psychology, history, and sports.