Suggestions for time tracking software

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Hi everyone,

I'm want to start tracking my time at work for various reasons and I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for time tracking software, particularly something that works on OSX. Although I'm considering switching to my ubuntu laptop as my primary machine so Linux suggestions would be useful too.

I've looked at a few including Slife (doesn't seem to work on OSX/Tiger) and Klok (okay, but doesn't track things automatically and is more geared to freelancers).

One thing I'm finding is that some of these are really geared to freelancers who need to bill clients. In my case I need to show my boss (and myself!) how much time I'm spending on partiuclar tasks.

I'd love to hear what works best for you when tracking time. I'm thinking it would be ideal to have an automatic tracker with the ability to manually note what I was doing.

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

At work, we use Harvest (http://www.getharvest.com/). Although this is a paid service and you are most likely wanting something free, try search for something like "free alternative to harvest time tracking"

It is a great system for tracking projects and their tasks, and very similar to something I have been writing for over a year when I have spare time (which WoW now takes over LOL).

-Greg

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

I am planning to switch to Ora Time for Adobe AIR - that should work on Mac OS, right?

I use TraxTime for Windows but it disappears from the menu... (free download at the bottom of the page, but has a nag screen - I used the free version for a long time, though)

Generally I copy my reports into OpenOffice Writer and export as PDF for that "professional" image...

You're right, it is really hard to find a simple time clock app - I never surveyed the Mac apps - I like TimeTrax a lot, it has memos for each task, multiple projects, fine grained reports (by date, billable, non-billable etc) but it's really a pain to go in Task Manager to kill it so I can restart it when it disappears (probably a Vista bug anyway - I don't think it did that on XP)

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Been using Karm/Ktimetracker (or whatever they're calling it this week), it's served me well, but occasionally it moves whole groups of sub-tasks up to the top-level for no reason.

Am going to test out Hamster now, it's nice looking and dirt simple. It's downloadable for Ubuntu/Debian, hopefully by the next release of Ubuntu it should be available through the normal software installer.

*** EDIT ***
I had to logout and log back in again to get Hamster to show up in Add to panel... selection window. Slightly irritating. Smiling

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Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Hamster seems like a good option - I'm trying it out now. It doesn't work too well with multiple displays. I'll have to submit a bug about that.

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