Flexible time and task tracker needed
July 7, 2014 8:05 AM Subscribe
I need to track my time and activity at work, and I suspect there may be ways that my computer could help me with this.
My ideal tool would have a set of configurable counters to track discrete events or actions (i.e. I can click a button that registers "____ type of email sent" or "____ type of request filled") and a timer that can be quickly switched between several tasks--imagine a chess clock. In general the interface should be fairly transparent and shouldn't interrupt what I'm doing much more than making ticks on a piece of paper, which is what I'm doing now.
I'm aware that there are tools like this intended for freelancers, but I've never freelanced and don't have connections in a freelancing community so I don't know what is used and loved, or not.
What's out there?
My ideal tool would have a set of configurable counters to track discrete events or actions (i.e. I can click a button that registers "____ type of email sent" or "____ type of request filled") and a timer that can be quickly switched between several tasks--imagine a chess clock. In general the interface should be fairly transparent and shouldn't interrupt what I'm doing much more than making ticks on a piece of paper, which is what I'm doing now.
I'm aware that there are tools like this intended for freelancers, but I've never freelanced and don't have connections in a freelancing community so I don't know what is used and loved, or not.
What's out there?
This is very very simple and is literally the only thing that keeps our billing person from killing me for missing deadline every week: Task Timer.
You enter your tasks, you can set it to ding every 15 minutes or not (unfortunately 15 minutes is the increment you get, non-configurable), you tick a bubble. You can indicate if a task should repeat every day (when you're done having the task repeat just uncheck the box and it won't show up the next day), you can download your file as a csv, it's very lightweight. I don't expect any further major development on it, so you get what you get. But it works for me like nothing else has.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:16 AM on July 7, 2014
You enter your tasks, you can set it to ding every 15 minutes or not (unfortunately 15 minutes is the increment you get, non-configurable), you tick a bubble. You can indicate if a task should repeat every day (when you're done having the task repeat just uncheck the box and it won't show up the next day), you can download your file as a csv, it's very lightweight. I don't expect any further major development on it, so you get what you get. But it works for me like nothing else has.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:16 AM on July 7, 2014
Response by poster: I guess I should point out that I use Windows and Android and don't have a Mac or an iOS device.
posted by pullayup at 8:17 AM on July 7, 2014
posted by pullayup at 8:17 AM on July 7, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
Harvest is a web app that can help with this. It has a monthly fee, but they have associated Mac apps that feed directly in. It has invoicing but you don't have to use that.
Billings Pro is similar to Harvest but is a locally-run app.
Also look at Eon, which is only focused on time tracking.
posted by unionsquarepark at 8:13 AM on July 7, 2014