Time-tracking apps offer contractors an easy, accurate, and productive way of monitoring work hours. Automatic time tracking makes it easier for independent contractors to calculate billable hours and helps with client billing.
As a contractor, keeping track of your team’s productivity is essential to deliver projects on time and within budget. With the right tools, it is a simple task; otherwise, you will be wasting valuable time manually managing timesheets and losing money to time theft, buddy punching, and repeated payroll mistakes.
This is why we handpicked the best time-tracking app for contractors that are software solutions tested to create 100% accurate timesheets.
Let’s review the best contractor timesheet software in detail.
Table of Contents
Top 5 time tracking apps for contractors
Truein is at the top of the list for a reason. This cloud-based time tracking app for contractors is a tool to centralize and foolproof time tracking for your business. With Truein, independent contractors can manage timesheets and monitor their workers’ work hours and attendance easily and efficiently. Its hardwareless design supports multiple sites, providing freedom to monitor workers at any number of sites from a central location.
Furthermore, Truein’s face-based time and attendance procedure makes buddy punching impossible. It also offers a geofenced selfie-based clock-in. Simply put, workers need to be present at the designated job site to be able to clock in, which ensures there is no time theft. Apart from these features, it offers automated timesheets, over 70 customizable policies, leave and overtime management, and payroll integrations.
Features:
- GPS geofencing to manage multiple sites
- Real-time time tracking
- Offline attendance features ensure time tracking is accurate even if there are internet connectivity issues at remote sites.
- Automated timesheets log daily work hours, overtime, breaks, etc.
- Fast selfie-based onboarding allows contractors to include new workers in teams instantly
- Instantly generate reports and get real time analytics for any number of locations
- Payroll-ready reports with final calculations for accurate and faster payroll processing
- Robust shift scheduling with a flexible policy to automatically allocate shifts.
- Supports multiple points of access
Time Analytics Software is specifically crafted for consulting firms, contractors, engineers, architects, and similar professionals. It provides comprehensive time and cost tracking for construction workers and other team members on a project, client, or task basis.
This software empowers contractors by streamlining administrative tasks and optimizing time utilization, enabling them to focus on delivering projects punctually and within budgetary constraints.
With this construction timesheet app, you gain the ability to establish and monitor vital key performance indicators (KPIs). These include metrics like work time utilization, billable and non-billable hours per project, breakdown of time spent on various activities, employee productivity rates, client profitability analysis, invoicing accuracy, and more.
Features:
- Track time on specified tasks, projects, and clients
- Manual time entry and timer functionality
- Mark hours as billable with accompanying notes
- Automatic cost allocation to projects
- Daily and weekly timesheets display time entries per project, client, and task
- Manager can review and edit timesheets
- Flexible filtering and export options in Excel format
- Generate project time and cost reports
- Analyze revenue and profits
- Access actionable visual reports and performance dashboard
- Monitor total, billable, and non-billable hours
- Gain insights into time utilization patterns
- Track overtime hours for efficient team management
- Review billable hours for each client before invoicing
- Export invoices to Excel for final adjustments
Mainly an accounting and invoicing software tool, BQE Core is also a tremendous time-tracking app suitable for contractors. Its time management modules work on both web and mobile and its offers employee database management, billable hours calculation, and scheduling. However, its time-tracking and report generation are less robust than Truein. It is more suitable if a contractor wants expense management that also offers time tracking.
Features:
- Smart timecards and pre-populated timesheets with customizable date ranges
- Track time and expense and submit right from the mobile app
- GPS time tracking
- Copy timesheets to eliminate manual entry
- Set timesheet guidelines and policies
BQE Core is a contractor timesheet app more aligned with expense tracking and planning. Its time-tracking capabilities are good enough for any contractor to use for their business management.
If you require an independent contractor time-tracking app built around project management, you can try eSub. It is a time-tracking and project-management tool designed for contractors who employ many teams. This is why eSub might not be suitable for individual contractors, plus its pricing on the higher side.
That being said, it can efficiently track the time and progress of projects. This application allows contractors to easily monitor labor activities, site events, material costs, and other workforce information. eSub stores all this information in a searchable database which is updated in real-time. Unlike Truein, which has excellently detailed and user-friendly time-tracking features, this contractor timesheet software requires some learning.
Features:
- Real-time project visibility and insights
- Designed with commercial trade contractors
- Offers organization access to all documents related to a project
- Available on both web and mobile
- Works as a cloud-based SaaS service
- If you are a commercial contractor struggling to maintain multiple teams and looking for enterprise-level software, eSub is the right app.
Everhour markets itself as a free and easy-to-use time tracker. That sounds tempting, but it has its limitations. In an attempt to make its timesheets more detailed, the creators have opted for a complicated dashboard. Everhour thus requires a bit of training to get used to.
Features:
- Time-tracking app with project and team management features
- More suitable for IT companies that require integration to platforms like Asana, Trello, and GitHub
- Ability to add reminders and auto-stop timers
- Keep track of project budgets and schedule thresholds
- Forward resource planning feature for project management
- Report and invoicing feature
Contractors can use Everhour for time tracking as it has robust features on that front, but as previously mentioned, it will require some training. It is the best-suited app for contract workers in the IT industry.
How to choose the best timesheet app for contractors?
The choice can be challenging with dozens of time-tracking apps on the market. Here are the essential features a reliable contractor timesheet software must have.
- Real-time tracking: Contractors must be able to monitor their workers in real-time to ensure they are productive while on the job site. Real-time tracking minimizes the chances of time theft.
- Ability to edit timesheets: The best time-tracking apps will let you correct inaccuracies, if any, in timesheets for accurate payroll. Workers might need to remember to clock in or leave the timer running while they are off for lunch; such situations must be corrected as soon as identified. This is why a time-tracking app for contractors must offer options to edit time blocks manually.
- Reporting and analytics: Time-tracking apps must also offer an easy to use dashboard and generate reports allowing them to analyze their business based on time spent per project or person daily, weekly, or monthly. Analytics is a feature that provides business owners with data that helps drive business decisions and optimizes the workforce for higher productivity and profit.
- Data download and integration: Today, applications are required to offer integration to expand their functionality to other aspects of business operations. A time-tracking app must offer integration with payroll software to automate most of the admin tasks associated with payroll processing. Additionally, it should provide an option to download data and reports.
- Multiple points of access: The best time-tracking apps offers easy and convenient options to clock in and out from various interfaces. It can be through a web browser, mobile app, or a standalone kiosk. This feature ensures that contractors can use the same software across multiple locations and access points.
Conclusion
Choosing a time-tracking app for contractors gets easier when you know the features to look for. Time tracking is essential for your business as it helps plug any revenue leaks such as time theft and poor productivity.
Among the five listed applications, Truein offers the most value for both money and features and it is the most affordable cloud-based time tracking app for contractors. Request a demo today and try it for free!
