Overseer for the Freelancer: Choose a Time Tracking System

A little over a hundred years ago, engineer Frederick Taylor stood behind the factory workers with a stopwatch and began to measure how much time they spent on routine operations. Soon it became clear that they could be “optimized” – to increase productivity through the system of scientific organization of labor. It is from it that modern mass production has grown. But could the then workers imagine that their great-grandchildren will be able to measure their productivity not on the orders of the capitalist, but on their own initiative? Modern workers of intellectual work have to plan their activities independently, and Taylor’s stopwatch is replaced by special programs for recording working – time tracking with screenshots.

Typically, launching the application for the first time, we know what to expect from it. For example, text editors and postal workers are all somewhat similar. But time-trackers have almost nothing in common. Their interfaces, oddities and drawbacks differ radically.

Nevertheless, the basis of most of the tools for recording working hours is the same: almost every time-tracker is equipped with a built-in timer. And in especially severe cases, the timer is the only thing it is equipped with. Time-tracker, from which we will begin, refers to this category.

Simple Time Track

Simple Time Track is an extension for Chrome. After installation, it adds its icon to the right edge of the browser toolbar. Clicking on it invokes the time tracker interface: on top of the button for creating, exporting and deleting tasks, below is a list of tasks created earlier.

To start recording the time, you need to add a new task and start the timer. The countdown will continue until the timer stops. In the future, you can return to any of the stopped tasks and start the timer again. Additional time will add to what was calculated earlier. This can be necessary in the event that the task can not be performed in one sitting and must be interrupted to do something else.

SCREENish Time Tracking with Screenshots.

It is pretty easy to start tracking your time with SCREENish. You have to log in, then select a project and employer, and you are ready! It is so simple. On every 9-10 minutes a screenshot will be made. SCREENish time tracking with screenshots runs as software on your desktop or as a mobile app making it easy to track time, screenshots, activity levels, programs used even more.

TimeEdition

The reason for the dissimilarity of the means for recording working hours, apparently, is that in this market there has never been an absolute winner, which could serve as a benchmark. As a result, developers study the needs of customers and come to completely different answers.

The creators of the German time-based tracker TimeEdition, apparently, knew exactly what their users needed. This program is adapted to a strictly defined work process, which fits within a strictly defined framework, and within this framework is probably convenient. The people for whom it is developed seem to have to deal with several customers. At the same time, the projects that they implement for them are of the same type and consist of the same stages. If at least one of these conditions is not met, the use of TimeEdition begins to resemble running along the obstacle course.

All in all, choosing reliable and easy to use time tracking with screenshots software is not easy, but at least you have a choice! Don’t hesitate to test different time trackers till you find the right one for you!