I want free time-tracking software. Windows or online.
July 28, 2022 6:33 AM Subscribe
I need to time-track. I don't need timers or such. I just want to at the end of the day enter A) How much I worked on each project. B) What kind of work it was from a set list (e.g. admin tasks, meeting, writing). The lists might vary by project. C) A place to briefly say what was done as free-entry text. e.g. "finalized spreadsheets." I want to be able to then format this in a table with each of those things (and the date for each entry) being a column, so I can paste into excel.
I love Toggl (now Toggl Track). Unbelievably simple, effective and FREE. Online and I can use on my laptop or phone. I can hit 'start' and 'stop' when I begin / end tasks, or add them in later. Can have different tasks that I assign different work to. And it generates really useful reports in various forms including downloadable CSV files. I am not affiliated with them -- I just really love the product.
posted by sonofsnark at 7:11 AM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by sonofsnark at 7:11 AM on July 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yeah if you are going to paste this into excel, just do it right in excel with dropdown lists!
posted by misanthropicsarah at 7:48 AM on July 28, 2022
posted by misanthropicsarah at 7:48 AM on July 28, 2022
n-thing Toggl, but I have a hell of a time trying to export properly out of the free version.
posted by porpoise at 8:54 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by porpoise at 8:54 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've used mefite flabdablet's nagme.cmd for the last five years.
It pops up once an hour (or whatever interval I want) and I bang in a job name, or what ever I'm going and at invoicing time I manually filter it in a text editor. My work (and working style) is rather fluid and this is the one tool that works for me.
posted by unearthed at 2:17 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
It pops up once an hour (or whatever interval I want) and I bang in a job name, or what ever I'm going and at invoicing time I manually filter it in a text editor. My work (and working style) is rather fluid and this is the one tool that works for me.
posted by unearthed at 2:17 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Do you need the set list of things to vary by each project, or can you have a long list of possible tasks and just pick the ones that apply to that project?
I love Toggl, but it may not be necessary for what you're doing, and the export format may or may not be what you want. If you were to use Toggl, you could use the tags for the "kinds of work", but it's one common list across the system I believe. You could alternatively use the "client" field for your projects, and the "project" field for the tasks.
Excel with dropdown lists would be great, but if you want dependent dropdowns (the tasks available matches the project selected), there's a bit more maintenance to be done in the spreadsheet.
MeMail me if you want more thoughts! I have been down the rabbit hole on this one, and I have an excel template for the dependent dropdowns if you decide to go that route.
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:18 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
I love Toggl, but it may not be necessary for what you're doing, and the export format may or may not be what you want. If you were to use Toggl, you could use the tags for the "kinds of work", but it's one common list across the system I believe. You could alternatively use the "client" field for your projects, and the "project" field for the tasks.
Excel with dropdown lists would be great, but if you want dependent dropdowns (the tasks available matches the project selected), there's a bit more maintenance to be done in the spreadsheet.
MeMail me if you want more thoughts! I have been down the rabbit hole on this one, and I have an excel template for the dependent dropdowns if you decide to go that route.
posted by lookoutbelow at 6:18 PM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I would love to use excel (or google sheets). But the dropdown list of categories will be different for each project and I will need to then "export" it by project. I imagine I could do this in excel by making a main worksheet where I enter things and then a separate worksheet for each project that will somehow be a filtered copy of the main worksheet?
Does anyone know the keywords I would want to google to setup different drop-down options per project and make the filtered worksheets?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:27 PM on July 28, 2022
Does anyone know the keywords I would want to google to setup different drop-down options per project and make the filtered worksheets?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:27 PM on July 28, 2022
Best answer: I will make it for you. I have memailed you.
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:03 PM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by lookoutbelow at 9:03 PM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
I used to have a job where I needed to document time in 15 minute increments (which I HATED and which was not characteristic for this kind of job, just incidentally. Why, no, I'm not bitter, why do you ask?).
Using Toggl turned my monthly time log from a nightmarishly miserable 4 hour process to a moderately miserable 1 hour process. I think I just left it with one client and renamed the various projects for the tasks I was doing (teaching, emails, etc) and exported it to Excel where I added a column when I needed to make it really granular.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 3:32 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
Using Toggl turned my monthly time log from a nightmarishly miserable 4 hour process to a moderately miserable 1 hour process. I think I just left it with one client and renamed the various projects for the tasks I was doing (teaching, emails, etc) and exported it to Excel where I added a column when I needed to make it really granular.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 3:32 PM on July 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jonathanhughes at 6:41 AM on July 28, 2022 [4 favorites]