Tracking billable hours can be a serious pain, especially when you’re using subpar software to do it. Maybe you want to get invoices out quickly so you can get paid faster. Or perhaps you’re tired of constantly having to explain to clients why their invoice doesn’t match what they agreed to pay. Whatever the case, this blog will help you find QuickBooks alternatives for time tracking and invoicing so you can get back to business.
One tool to help you achieve your goals is Tackle’s automatic time tracking software. This simple tool can integrate with your existing workflow to make tracking billable hours effortless. With Tackle, you won’t have to worry about remembering to start or stop a timer. Instead, Tackle does it for you so you can focus on delivering great work.
Why Consider A QuickBooks Alternative For Time Tracking And Invoicing?
QuickBooks Time has a lot going for it, but for many businesses, the price is too high. Plans start at $15 per month for one user plus $2 per month for each employee or contractor. This tier only includes basic time tracking features.
To get the best tools for managing payroll and job costs, you’ll need to upgrade to the next tier at $24 per month (again for one user), which only covers the essentials. You’ll also have to pay for each additional user, which can quickly add up to a hefty sum. If you’re looking for a way to save money without sacrificing quality, exploring QuickBooks Time alternatives will help you find a tool that fits your budget and your needs.
Outdated User Experience
If you’re using QuickBooks Time, you’re probably aware that it’s a powerful tool for tracking time and managing payroll. But it’s also no secret that the user interface isn’t the most intuitive. Time tracking software should help your team get organized and improve workflow, not get in the way with clunky features and an outdated design.
Though QuickBooks Time has made some updates to the dashboard over the years, the layout can still feel overwhelming and disorganized. Many users report a steep learning curve to get to grips with the software, and this can be frustrating for teams that need to hit the ground running.
Limited Customer Support
When managing time tracking for your business, you need a tool that you can rely on, especially regarding payroll. If there’s an error or glitch with the software, you want to fix the issue immediately.
Many QuickBooks Time users are unhappy with the tool’s customer support. Reviews on G2 mention inconsistent and slow responses, which can be detrimental when you’re dealing with time-sensitive payroll issues. You’re not alone if you’re looking for a more reliable alternative for tracking billable hours. You can also find user experiences on Capterra.
Related Reading
- What Are Billable Hours
- Invoice for Hours Worked
- Billable Hours vs Actual Hours
- How to Bill a Client
- Bill Rate vs Pay Rate
15 Best QuickBooks Alternatives For Time Tracking and Invoicing
1. Tackle: The Automatic Time Tracking Revolution
Tackle revolutionizes time tracking through seamless calendar integration, eliminating the need for manual logging. Our platform automatically captures and categorizes your time, providing actionable insights through intuitive dashboards and reports. We’ve built everything you need into one seamless package:
- An innovative tagging system that works its way
- AI-powered automation to handle the tedious stuff
- Flexible reporting tools to track what matters
- Intelligent time capture right in your browser
Trusted by Roblox, Deel, and Lightspeed Ventures teams, Tackle helps executives, team leaders, and customer-facing professionals understand and optimize their time allocation.
Effortless Time Tracking, Powerful Insights
Simply connect your Google or Outlook calendar, set up custom tags and automations, and gain valuable insights into how your team spends their time. Whether you’re tracking strategic initiatives, measuring team efficiency, or ensuring resource optimization, Tackle transforms time monitoring from a chore into a powerful decision-making tool.
Start using our automatic time tracking software for free with one click today!
2. Everhour: Free QuickBooks Time Alternatives for Small Teams
Everhour can be the best solution for small teams, freelancers, and agencies looking for free QuickBooks Time alternatives. It processes error-free timesheets for billing and invoicing. Besides time tracking, it offers project and team management so that any organization can seamlessly carry out the basic functionalities with Everhour.
Key features:
- Timecard, timesheet, timer, manual entry, time off
- Estimates, reminders, billing, budgets, alerts
- Labor cost tracking, project, and task management
- Log time editing, summary charts, and expense tracking
Pricing:
- Free: Up to 5 users
- Lite: $6 per user per month
- Team: $10 per user per month
3. DeskTime: Advanced Automatic Time Tracking
DeskTime can ensure maximum productivity and workforce management with advanced automatic time tracking, employee monitoring, scheduling, and instant reporting. It generates insightful reports that show the scope for improvement. The absence calendar, shift scheduling, and more arsenal features make DeskTime the perfect tool for hybrid team management.
Key features:
- Automatic and manual time tracking, document title tracking
- Apps and URL tracking, productivity calculation
- Project tracking, shift scheduling, and absence calendar
- Admin and user dashboard, reporting, screenshots
Pricing:
- Pro: $7 per user per month
- Premium: $10 per user per month
- Enterprise: $20 per user per month
4. Hubstaff: Time Tracking for a High-Yielding Workforce
Hubstaff works to provide a high-yielding workforce by empowering and synchronizing your in-office, remote, and outdoor employees. It also helps you prioritize essential and non-important tasks and projects, identify the lagging factors, and control your men and money. It aims to improve employee efficiency and productivity by building trust, transparency, and accountability.
Key features:
- Timesheets, approvals, idle time tracking, and productivity tracking
- Apps and URLs tracking, screenshots, achievement badges
- Payroll, invoices, schedules, shifts, time off, holidays
- Expense tracking, work breaks, projects, and task management
Pricing:
- Starter: $7 per user per month
- Grow: $9 per user per month
- Team: $12 per user per month
- Enterprise: $25 per user per month
5. Time Doctor: Smart Insights for Productivity Improvement
Time Doctor provides smart and actionable insights to help individuals and teams manage their time, track work hours, and improve overall productivity. It is beautifully designed for HR and admins to automate their work.
It’s not only for the employer assistantship but also empowers the employees with flexibility, higher engagement, and better personal performance assessment.
Key features:
- Online and manual time tracking, silent tracking
- Project and task management, breaks, reports
- Web and app tracking, video screen recording
- Payroll, alerts, client login access, and activity tracking
Pricing:
- Basic: $7 per user per month
- Standard: $10 per user per month
- Premium: $20 per user per month
6. ClickTime: Time Tracking and Project Management in One Tool
ClickTime plays a vital role in line time tracking, planning, resource management, and project management systems. It helps you invest smart and hassle-free in one tool rather than combining several time trackers and project management tools.
You can get clear and accurate timesheets and project activities of your employees that give you a thorough overview of their performance, project status, cost estimation, and many more.
Key features:
- Quick time entry, timesheet, billable and non-billable hours
- Stopwatch, overtime tracking, time off management
- Resource planning and management, PTO
- Project insights, budgets
- Job estimation
- Business intelligence, analytics, reports
Pricing:
- Starter: $10 per user per month
- Team: $13 per user per month
- Premier: $24 per user per month
- Enterprise: contact vendor
7. ClockShark: Time Tracking for Office and Field Employees
If you want a complete tool for managing your office, field crews, and finances, ClockShark provides time and expense management. In particular, the field site employees can accurately account for their working hours.
You can easily manage your job and assign outdoor work and geo-fencing to your employees. Advanced features like file attachment and adding notes, instructions, photos, etc., can enhance your work management process.
Key features:
- Clock-in, clock-out
- Kiosk, time, and attendance tracking
- Schedules, GPS, geo-fencing, customer management
- Timesheet, payroll, invoice, manager roles and approvals
- Job costing and management, time off
Pricing:
- Standard: $20 per month
- Pro: $40 per month
8. Deputy: Time Tracking and Scheduling for Growing Businesses
Deputy is time-tracking and scheduling software that eases employee scheduling and scales your business to the next level. Its nifty UI provides hassle-free daily scheduling, timesheet management, task allocation, employee communication, and administrative duties. The most interesting thing about Deputy is its insightful reports and dashboard that centralize your business trends, work status, and progress.
Key features:
- Timesheets, PTO, leave management, time clock
- Auto-scheduling, automatic wage calculation
- Tasking, reporting, payroll, and POS integrations
- Overtime and performance management
Pricing:
- Scheduling: $4.50 per user per month
- Time & Attendance: $4.50 per user per month
- Premium: $6 per user per month
- Enterprise: Contact vendor
9. Clockify: A Popular Free QuickBooks Time Alternative
Another fantastic free QuickBooks Time alternative is Clockify. The basic time tracking, reporting, and project management features come with a free service tier that makes this tool popular among freelancers and small and mid-level businesses.
It has a wide range of device compatibility with desktop, mobile, and web extensions. Other than the free version, the paid one offers broad services.
Key features:
- Time tracker, Kiosk, timesheet, time off, expense tracking
- Pomodoro timer, idle detection, GPS tracking, rounding
- Time audit, attendance, overtime tracking, bulk editing
- Reporting, approvals, invoicing, and expense tracking
Pricing:
- Free: for unlimited users
- Basic: $4.99 per user per month
- Standard: $6.99 per user per month
- Pro: $9.99 per user per month
- Enterprise: $14.99 per user per month
10. TimeCamp: A Feature-Rich Time Tracking Tool
TimeCamp makes time management easy and efficient, with project management, employee attendance, team performance optimization, and more. Billing accuracy contributes to higher revenue and profits.
Another remarkable factor is its thoughtful and insightful reports and team collaboration. Regarding features and price, it can be one of the best choices as a QuickBooks Time alternative.
Key features:
- Billable hours, non-billable hours, timesheets, time off
- Keyword-based time tracking, project import, and alerts
- Time clock Kiosk, to-do list, Kanban boards
- Task management, resource management
Pricing:
- Free: for unlimited users
- Starter: $3.99 per user per month
- Premium: $6.99 per user per month
- Ultimate: $10 per user per month
11. Paymo: Time Tracking with Complete Workflow Management
The last QuickBooks Time alternative that we suggest is Paymo. This tool gives you complete workflow management with time tracking and project and file management. Small and mid-sized businesses, freelancers, and agencies can use this app for profitability and productivity.
It can be equally important for business owners, managers, and employees. Whether you need to build a prominent work framework, a transparent community, and a healthy working environment, Paymo can be the game changer for you.
Key features:
- Automatic time tracking, drag and drop, web timer
- Task management, Kanban board, Gantt chart
- Invoice, estimation, leave planner
- Team collaboration, scheduling
Pricing:
- Free: for unlimited users
- Starter: $9.9 per user per month
- Small Office: $15.9 per user per month
- Business: $23.9 per user per month
12. Toggl: A Popular Time Tracking Tool for Freelancers
Toggl is a productivity and time tracking app that offers Toggl Track for effortless time tracking, Toggl Plan for work planning and management, and Toggl Hire for skills-based hiring.
Freelancers can greatly benefit from Toggl Plan as it helps you get a birds eye view of all your work in one place, mapping your to-do-lists in a color-coded timeline, managing them with custom task statuses and deadlines to keep track of your progress and stay on top of your schedules.
Time Tracking & Invoicing for Freelancers
Toggl freelance time tracking also helps freelancers go deep into how much work is spent on each project, create invoices for hours logged, track projects that are done for each time logged, and send timely reminders for how long you’ve worked or when you might have forgotten to track!
Best features:
- Crystal clear reports for how many hours I’ve worked in a week
- Over 100+ app integrations, including:
- Native integrations
- Browser extensions
- Automation apps
- Create billing invoices for your clients easily
- Track what activity was done for which hour worked
13. Timeero: Time Tracking for Field Employees
Timeero is a time tracking app that’s built for companies with employees who work in the field. This includes construction and home maintenance businesses, traveling salespeople, and home healthcare workers. All of its features are built to accommodate those industries. Like QuickBooks Time, Timeero offers real-time GPS tracking, geofencing, and mileage tracking.
It also has a unique segmented tracking feature that combines real-time GPS tracking and geofences to track time to specific jobs without employees having to clock in and out. It uses real-time GPS data and your geofences to allocate time toward jobs automatically.
EVV & Time Tracking for Healthcare Teams
Timeero also offers Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) for home healthcare teams. It uses facial recognition to validate the identities of your caregivers and real-time GPS to document the location where the care was received. It also lets your caregivers leave notes on the care that was provided during the visit.
Pricing:
- Timeero’s base plan starts at $4/user per month and includes time, GPS, and mileage tracking for up to 10 employees.
- To get access to job costing for more than 10 users, you’ll need to be on the $8/user/month plan.
- Segmented tracking is available as an add-on to any plan for $5/user/month
- Pricing for the EVV feature is not publicly available.
14. FreshBooks: A Great Alternative to QuickBooks Products
FreshBooks is a great alternative if you’re looking to move away from all QuickBooks products. Unlike QuickBooks, which sells its accounting and time tracking tools separately, FreshBooks includes both in its product. It also has a payroll product you can add for an additional cost.
As an accounting program, FreshBooks has all of the same features you’ll find in QuickBooks Online. You can track expenses and mileage, create estimates and proposals, generate invoices and accept payments, and access detailed financial reports.
Time Tracking for Knowledge Workers
FreshBooks is less focused on field teams as a time tracker than QuickBooks Time. You won’t find features like GPS tracking and geofencing, but you can connect it to your project management system to attach time to specific tasks and projects. This makes it a better option for teams of knowledge workers.
Pricing:
- FreshBooks plans start at $11/user per month plus a $21/month base fee (discounted to $6.30 for the first four months). That plan includes time tracking and an accounting program.
- Adding on FreshBooks Payroll costs an additional $6/user/month plus a $40/month base fee.
15. Apploye: A Fully Featured Time Tracking Tool
Apploye brings over 100 features, providing the best experience in time tracking, employee monitoring, productivity tracking, payroll, and other vital fields. It has advanced desktop and mobile apps.
All these intuitive features align your organization, whether you work with an in-office, remote, or hybrid team. Apploye itself is a complete and comprehensive tool that you can rely on. The details of this app may assure you more. It tracks the project or task time you work on.
Time Tracking with Flexible Plans & Features
You can accurately record real-time information with an effortless switch between projects and tasks. It presents all the information in the thoughtfully designed timesheets. The time tracking comes with:
- Start/stop timer with manual entry
- Clock-in and clock-out, idle time tracking
- Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly timesheet
- Pomodoro timer, billable, non-billable hours
Pricing:
- Standard: $5 per user per month
- Elite: $7 per user per month
Related Reading
- How to Track Virtual Assistant Hours
- Attorney Time Tracking Software
- Time Tracking and Invoicing for Freelancers
- Toggl vs Timely
- Clockify vs Harvest
- Project Management and Billing Software
Choosing the Best QuickBooks Alternative for Time Tracking and Invoicing
When searching for QuickBooks alternatives, it is critical to examine pricing. Most software platforms list detailed breakdowns of what’s included at each price point, often with more clarity than anywhere else on their website.
This is where you’ll quickly spot if a tool offers the core features you need (like automated time tracking, invoicing, or integrations) without paying for extras you don’t.
Don’t Skip the Demos and Trials
Demos and free trials let you get a feel for a tool before making a commitment. A live demo gives you a chance to ask the hard questions, like how well it handles multi-project workflows or integrates with your payroll system.
And a hands-on free trial? That’s your best chance to see how it feels in action. It’s smart to bring a few team members into the trial so you can test it from different perspectives and work styles.
Test Customer Support Early
Before committing to a new tool, send a question or two to their support team. See how quickly they respond and how helpful they are. Because when something breaks during payroll week, you’ll want a support team that’s fast and reliable.
Benefits of Time Tracking For Your Business
Time tracking is essential for a project manager to do basic employee monitoring. When you know where your team is spending their time, you can easily see if they’re over-committed or working on the right things.
A recent research by The Drum found that workers spend only 27% of their day on tasks that are directly related to their skills, the skills they were hired for and are expected to contribute to the team.
Top 10 Time Management Benefits for Organizations
Getting some of the ‘irrelevant’ processes automated is, therefore, a way to increase employee productivity, resource utilization, and overall business output. Here are the top 10 advantages of time management for your organization.
1. Enhanced employee productivity
68% of people say they don’t have enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday. Implementing effective time management systems allows employees to focus and complete one task at a time. Since interruptions are minimal, your business has more productive workers.
2. Increased profitability
Time tracking tools can help you determine how long each task should take to effectively allocate your budget and ensure you’re not overpaying (or underpaying) your workers. With this information, you can staff your teams appropriately without worrying about misallocating resources.
3. Strategic focus
As a leader in your company, you must spend time doing just that, leading. Poor time management makes it easy to use up your hours completing tasks you can delegate. Managing your time well means assigning duties so you can focus on moving your organization in the direction you want.
4. Adaptability and innovation
As a company leader, it’s essential to be adaptable and innovative to retain a competitive advantage in your market. When you can manage your time to plan for strategic goals, you can think creatively and make better decisions to overcome obstacles.
5. Improved customer satisfaction
The average employee spends 57% of their time in meetings or responding to emails and chats. When knowledge workers are burdened by responding to emails and messages, they have less energy to focus on getting priority work done. Good time management helps remove this burden so your team can meet deadlines and hit metrics that result in happy clients.
6. Enhanced work-life balance
Effective time management helps maintain a healthy work-life balance. Working efficiently means you can complete your tasks on time and then sign off, which creates a clear separation between your job and your personal life. Remember to lead by example to show employees that they should disconnect after work.
7. Improved employee morale
Implementing effective time management strategies is a great way to improve employee morale. Employees reach their goals when they have time to focus on essential tasks. Employee morale and confidence grow if your team members do well in their roles. Happy employees build off of each other, building a productive and engaged workforce.
8. Higher employee engagement
Unfortunately, only 33% of employees are engaged at work. Since employee engagement affects productivity, strategies that lead to invested, motivated workers are essential for achieving company goals.
As a leader, communicate clear expectations so your team members can manage their time. You can keep your employees engaged by setting realistic goals, so they can properly relax during their time off.
9. Enhanced collaboration
Managing your time well can make room for brainstorming and creative thinking. When employees structure their days efficiently, they free up space to collaborate with their teammates, leading to innovative ideas and creative problem-solving. Better collaboration also results in closer relationships between co-workers and improved teamwork.
10. Competitive advantage
By freeing up time to focus on strategic priorities, such as setting the organization’s direction and exploring innovative approaches to achieve your goals, you enhance your ability to outpace competitors.
Moreover, a company known for delivering consistent results, fostering employee satisfaction, and embracing innovation builds a strong reputation that further solidifies its position in the marketplace.
Start Using Our Automatic Time Tracking Software for Free with One Click Today
Tackle’s automatic time tracking software is designed to help you track time with minimal effort. After you connect your Google or Outlook calendar to the app, Tackle scans your existing calendar events to build a comprehensive overview of your time allocation.
As you start tracking time on your projects, Tackle will automatically capture the time you spend on tasks and categorize them based on your calendar events. This means you won’t have to manually log your time or guess what you’ve been working on. Instead, you can focus on your work and let Tackle handle the time tracking.
Key Features of Tackle
Tackle comes packed with features to help you track billable hours with ease. Here are some of the most essential automatic time tracking features:
Smart tags
Tackle’s tagging system automatically categorizes your time based on existing calendar events. You can customize the tags to fit your workflow and even create automations that tell Tackle how to log your time.
For example, if you want to track time spent on a project for client X, you can create a tag with the client’s name and set up an automation to organize any time logged for the tag under the project in Tackle. This helps you quickly track time for reporting and create an organized system for future reference.
AI-powered automations
Tackle uses AI to help you with the boring parts of time tracking. For example, if you have an existing project in Tackle and an upcoming calendar event for that project, Tackle can automatically identify that your time spent on the upcoming event should be tracked under the project in Tackle and will retrieve it for you when you open the project in Tackle.
Flexible reporting tools
With Tackle, you can generate a variety of reports to help you track billable hours, understand your track record, and improve your time management over time. Reports can be customized to show the data you want and filtered to show the information for specific team members, projects, clients, and time periods. You can also create visual dashboards to help you easily identify time tracking trends at a glance.
Intelligent time capture
Tackle captures your time right from your browser as you work. This means you won’t have to open a separate app to track your time, and you can even access your time tracking features right from your calendar. This makes it easier to track time accurately and in real time, so you can avoid the frustrating process of trying to remember what you worked on after a project is complete.
Why Tackle Is A Great QuickBooks Alternative
If you’re looking for an automatic time tracking software to complement QuickBooks or replace it altogether, Tackle is a great choice. The software integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks, so you can track time to boost your accuracy in QuickBooks and avoid manual processes.
Tackle also works great on its own. Suppose you want to improve your time tracking processes before even thinking about invoicing and accounting. In that case, Tackle can help you get organized and uncover valuable insights about your time before you move on to the next steps.
Related Reading
- Timecamp vs Clockify
- Accelo Alternatives
- Hubstaff vs Timedoctor
- Clockify vs Harvest
- Freshbooks vs Quickbooks
- Freshbooks Alternatives
