OfficeTime - Review 2022 - Perry Merhade80

A few years ago, when I came beyond OfficeTime, this time-tracking app for workers who beak past the hour impressed me with its simplicity, ease of utilise, and low toll. OfficeTime is nonetheless a wonderful selection for solo workers who want a reliable offline time tracker that includes uncomplicated expense-tracking and invoicing tools. However, information technology isn't ideal for collaboration and does not integrate with many other apps and services. For team utilise and more advanced invoicing options, Harvest is a better app and an Editors' Option. Another option for solo workers on a upkeep is Toggl's free version, which is besides an Editors' Choice.

Price and Availability

OfficeTime is a downloadable app for Windows and Mac, with mobile apps for iOS and Apple Watch, as well. The desktop apps price $47 each. Most other time-tracking apps are sold as subscriptions, but with OfficeTime you lot only pay a one-time purchase fee.

Considering you don't pay an ongoing charge per unit for OfficeTime, the cost is low. Other fourth dimension-tracking apps generally cost somewhere in the range of $8 to $12 per calendar month. Many of those apps, still, back up collaboration, significant yous tin rails and create invoices from not but your fourth dimension spent on projects merely your colleague's time, also. OfficeTime is for solo utilize only.

For sole proprietors, OfficeTime offers great value, but there are free versions of other apps that offer similar value. Toggl's free tier of service, for example, is adequate for many freelancers. Toggl doesn't include invoicing, but yous can connect information technology to only about any other invoicing and expensing service you might utilise.

Harvest, which otherwise costs $12 per person per calendar month, also offers a free version of the app, although it limits you lot to managing only ane project at a fourth dimension. Some other app called TopTracker is totally gratis, but information technology's light on features.

Setup and Getting Started

To get OfficeTime, yous download the Windows or Mac app, which comes with a gratuitous three-week trial menses before you have to enter whatever credit menu information. As you set up the account, OfficeTime asks whether you want to start with some dummy data to help you lot get oriented, or if yous want to bound into setting upwardly your own piece of work to track.

To use OfficeTime (and really most time-tracking apps for that matter) effectively, you must spend a few minutes making sure you have a clear agreement of how your concern projects are organized. Many professionals have this tacit knowledge at their fingertips, but sometimes information technology takes a petty trial-and-fault learning to correctly parse your work. OfficeTime is nimble enough to let yous correct your missteps rapidly as you become.

OfficeTime saves all your account data locally on your computer, or any storage repository you lot point during setup. If you choose to use both the desktop app and iOS app, you can sync your account amidst these devices, but only when they are connected to the aforementioned network (e.g., the same Wi-Fi). In that location is no pick to sync between a Windows desktop app of OfficeTime and a Mac version of the app. The syncing controls only appear in the iOS app, non the desktop apps.

Features

In OfficeTime, y'all have projects, line items, and categories. Line items are more or less the aforementioned matter as tasks, although here they can likewise be expenses. Each project contains line items, and each line item tin exist assigned to a category, such as marketing, design, research, or any others you create. Yous tin can assign projects to categories, too.

When you're ready to get to work, you create a line item and printing a play button on the far left side. Your timer will begin tracking fourth dimension by the minute, which yous can run across in real fourth dimension if you lot leave the window in view. In the Mac version, it also puts a brandish of the active timer in the status menu, then yous can glance up and see how long you've been working on a task. From that same status carte icon, y'all tin can besides pause and resume fourth dimension tracking, quickly commencement tracking fourth dimension on a new task, and create a reminder.

The reminder feature, which is unique to OfficeTime as far as I know, lets you enter any free-course text you lot desire. OfficeTime will then remind you of information technology via a pop-up message at a time you lot fix.

Seeing every bit OfficeTime is a desktop app, everything works offline. Some online time-trackers, such as Toggl, have offline capabilities, though not all do. When testing Toggl, I cut my internet off suddenly to see what would happen to the timer, and it kept ticking abroad. That wasn't the case with Everhour, which immediately stopped its timer the moment my figurer detected it was offline.

If you lot begin recording a new chore in OfficeTime when you already have a timer running, the app automatically pauses the active line item, rendering it impossible for you to accidentally bill ii clients or record time for two tasks simultaneously. There is a way to override this setting should you need to.

Line items can be expenses, too, such every bit stock photography you lot bought for a client's work or transportation to get to a meeting. You tape expenses as if they were any other line item, which means you see them listed right alongside all your tracked time for any given projection.

Although OfficeTime includes invoicing and expensing tools, it doesn't cover all situations and weather condition that sometimes arise for freelancers. For instance, OfficeTime'southward invoicing and project tools don't handle flat-rate projects. Let'southward say I charge a flat rate of $200 for a face-to-face consulting session, or $5,000 for a website build, regardless of the amount of time spent on the project. Other apps, such equally Harvest and Paydirt, provide ways for appropriately tracking projection work and billing for it, whereas OfficeTime just works for billable hours. The reason you might withal want to rail time on a project with a flat rate is to ensure you lot're non spending as well much time on it and thus rendering information technology less assisting.

Another missing feature in OfficeTime that shows upwards in several online fourth dimension-tracking apps is the ability to estimate how much time a task or project volition accept. That kind of information helps people better their time management skills, which can lead to appropriately taking on or rejecting new piece of work.

Reports and Invoices

The reporting and invoicing tools in OfficeTime work well and are clear. I'm always pleased with reporting tools don't crave me to have an advanced degree in business organisation jargon to empathize what they will show.

As mentioned, OfficeTime isn't ideal for team utilise, although it is possible to generate multi-person reports by uploading another person'due south data into your OfficeTime account. That's an unnecessarily clunky process that's decumbent to errors, particularly when compared with services that but support multiple people in 1 account. Harvest, Toggl, Paydirt, Everhour, Hours, and other apps all offer truthful team time-tracking services.

In any event, reports are easy to generate, equally are invoices. From the card, you lot can select a written report, such as Last Month, and encounter a summary of the work and time tracked appear aslope a pie nautical chart. Yous can conform what's shown in the report and, when fix, hitting a button at the bottom to create an invoice or consign the data.

When generating invoices, OfficeTime can automatically fill in details such as contact information for your visitor and the client, every bit well every bit other standard details. Information technology doesn't take an advanced system for tracking when payments are received, however, which Paydirt offers when y'all sign upwardly to enable your clients to pay through PayPal or Stripe.

Integrations

OfficeTime does not back up many integrations with other apps and services. You can connect the app to iCal, but that's about it. Other time-tracking apps, notably Toggl and Harvest, permit you connect them to other unremarkably used business organization services, such as QuickBooks, Basecamp, Trello, SmartSheet, and others.

For Tracking Billable Hours Offline

OfficeTime remains a strong time-tracking app if what you demand is a reliable tool that works offline to maintain records of billable hours and expenses. It isn't ideal if you are working with a team, or if you sometimes charge clients a project rate rather than an hourly one. If OfficeTime doesn't run into your needs, consider Harvest or Toggl, the Editors' Choices in this category.