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7 Min. Read

What Is Productivity Tracking Software & 4 Best Software

What Is Productivity Tracking Software & 4 Best Software

No matter what business you work in, productivity and efficiency are key.

Every manager will want their team to be committed as possible and work as hard as they can. But with the rise of remote working, it’s become harder to know exactly how your employees are performing throughout the day.

One way to try and get a handle on productivity is through productivity tracking software.

But what exactly is productivity tracking software? We’ll take you through the definition, why it’s used and the best 4 software currently available.

Here’s What We’ll Cover:

What Is Productivity Tracking Software?

Why Do Managers Use Productivity Tracking Software?

What Does Productivity Tracking Software Track?

How Does Productivity Tracking Software Help?

4 Best Productivity Tracking Software

FreshBooks

Time Doctor

Todoist

Desk TIme

Key Takeaways

What Is Productivity Tracking Software?

Productivity tracking software is a popular business-based technology. It is used to monitor various metrics that affect an employee’s productivity.

It helps you to analyze behavior and allows you to keep track of the exact activities that workers carry out during their working hours. This goes some way to helping you understand how productive your employees are.

The reports generated through tracking software can help to identify potential productivity issues. They can also track employee performance and help to increase productivity in the workplace.

Why Do Managers Use Productivity Tracking Software?

The average American worker spends around seven hours a week working on activities that aren’t related to their job. That’s around 30% of their working time on non-work-related activities.

A recent study showed that if that work was given a monetary value, it would be around $15.5 billion of lost productivity every week.

By tracking your employee’s productivity with software, you can detect and analyze distractions.

What Does Productivity Tracking Software Track?

Different software has different features. However, most follow these real-time metrics:

  • Attendance
  • Login/Logouts
  • Active time/Idle time
  • Websites and URLs
  • Social network use
  • Software and documents use
  • Productive/unproductive times

How Does Productivity Tracking Software Help?

Using software can help managers to be in more than one place at a time. It can help them in a number of ways including:

  • Identifying Areas Causing Low Productivity

These areas could include being constantly absent. They could also include distractions and overuse of personal time.

  • Boosting Productivity Levels of Remote Teams

It is the perfect tool for keeping track of any employees who work remotely or from home. You can see who’s working on what and how the company’s device is being used.

  • Providing Detailed Reports on Productivity

Activity tracking tools can provide customized reports. These reports can show employers how employees work in real time. With this data, employers can decide whether or not individual employees need to improve based on their daily activities.

  • Showing Progress

You can compare historical data with recent data to see if your employees are improving. It can also show if they are regressing in their productivity.

  • Improving Employee Engagement

Improving your employee engagement can significantly impact productivity.

  • Helping to Avoid Micromanagement

Micromanagement often kills self-responsibility. No worker likes to be constantly observed and managed. It is also a waste of your manager’s time as they could be doing far more important things.

  • Helping to Reach Business Goals

A productive workforce is a successful workforce. By increasing your business’ productivity, you can reach your goals faster and more efficiently.

  • Helps to Prevent Understaffing

You can know that your employees are being productive and your goals still aren’t being met. This would clearly show that your employees are being overworked. These insights can help you to make the decision to hire more staff to prevent understaffing. This reduces the risk of potential burnout of your current employees.

  • Helps to Identify Key Workers

When you are able to see which employees have high productivity rates, you can reward their hard work. Whether that is a raise, a bonus or a promotion. Employees will be far more likely to work hard if they know that their work will be rewarded.

4 Best Productivity Tracking Software

1. FreshBooks

FreshBooks services are perfectly tailored for small business owners. It is smart, manageable software that is easy to use.

FreshBooks is software that provides accounting solutions for any type of small business owner.

With invoices, payments, credits, and other financial information in one place, it’s easy to keep track of your employees and your clients.

Their Time Tracking services allow you to maximize your productivity. So you can make sure that when you’re taking a project head-on, every second counts.

FreshBooks offers a free trial. This means you can try it out to see if it fits your business before putting any money down.

Once your trial is up, FreshBooks’ basic plan offers its ‘lite’ services for just $7.50 per month.

2. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a time management software that allows for team time tracking of tasks. It’s perfect for individuals and businesses who want to minimize wasted time and remotely track overall productivity.

It can record employees’ internet use and provide a simple report of the websites visited. It can also show you which applications were used during working hours.

Time Doctor takes a screenshot every three minutes. This can help you confirm that an employee is working.

There are multiple other features for improving employees’ productivity. These include removing multi-tasking, highlighting high-priority tasks and communication between employees and managers.

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial which has no credit card required and you can cancel anytime. Their basic plan then starts at $7 per user per month.

3. Todoist

Todoist is the top-ranked productivity app used by millions of people to organize their work and life schedule.

Todoist has helped millions of people to complete over 1.5 billion tasks in 150+ million complex projects making it a very popular choice.

You can hand out individual assignments, team tasks and custom-labeled projects. Each task can be given a deadline and productivity can be monitored against this time frame.

It is a fully integrated service that is cross-compatible with many other popular business software.

Todoist offers a free plan for starters. It allows you to have 5 active projects with up to 5 collaborators per project. Its paid plan then starts at just $3 per month when billed annually.

4. Desk Time

Desk TIme is a relatively simple yet powerful employee productivity tracking software. It provides real-time automatic tracking capabilities that can be used on a desktop or from a mobile device.

The software allows management to categorize applications used during work. These applications can be labeled as either productive or unproductive. There is also an option for neutral applications.

You can also track billable hours amongst your employees which makes it a great all-in-one solution for any business.

Desk Time offers a free trial. Its Pro plan then starts at $7 per month per user.

Key Takeaways

There should be a fine balance when using tracking software. Any healthy business should be able to trust its employees to work diligently. But that trust must be earned and respected by both employees and employers.

However, having tracking software can be used for more reasons than just a lack of trust. Such as keeping track of billable hours or keeping an eye on the progress of a project.

Are you looking for more business advice on everything from starting a new business to new business practices?


Then check out the FreshBooks Resource Hub.


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