You’ve probably noticed that remote work and freelancing are getting more and more widespread these days. Especially in the latter case – what was once a student job or a side gig is now becoming a valid and recognized career path. This is enabled and sustained largely by technology. And it’s not just basic tools that are necessary for doing the job, like for creating documents or communicating with clients.
Today, there are many tools that can help freelancers get the most out of their work by organizing their projects properly, managing their time and workload, and so on. One of the best among such tools is time tracker software.
Just in case this is your first time coming across this term, let’s quickly explain what it is and how it works. Track my time app is a lightweight piece of software that lets you measure your time on tasks with a simple click of a button and then allocate that time to a specific project. With it, you can easily organize your time, analyze your productivity, count billable hours and report to your clients.
In order to fully understand just how useful personal time tracking software really is, here are several things that every freelancer should know about it:
1. The Technical Requirements Are Minimal
In other words, you don’t need super powerful machines to be able to run time tracker software. And nearly all of the ones that you’ll find on the market let you store your data on their cloud, so there’s not even any need for providing your own servers to host it.
As for the operating system, you’ll be able to find a Windows app time tracker just as easily as you will Mac or even Linux versions. And, as we’ve said before, these apps are lightweight, so they’re very unlikely to slow down your system. The installation process is pretty easy and straightforward as well, so once you find your perfect Mac or Windows time management software, it’s a matter of minutes before you can start using it and collecting data.
2. There Is Such a Thing as Free Time Logging Software
As a freelancer, and especially if you’re just starting out, you might be reluctant to financially commit to a digital tool. Well, the good news is that there are a lot of free time tracker software options out there. They’re mostly free because they’re limited to only one person, but that’s not an obstacle in case of freelancing. So, you can save a bit of money this way and still get a functional solution.
However, sometimes you’ll find that these free apps are limited in other ways too. For example, they may only let you track a single project or they might not include all the features. This isn’t ideal if you happen to work for several clients or if you want a more in-depth performance analysis and reports.
3. It Can Help Both Your Time and Client Management
We touched briefly on what time tracker software can do at the beginning of this article, but now let’s go into a bit more detail.
First of all, this tool can help you better organize your time, which is pretty intuitive given its name. If you measure how long it takes you to do certain tasks, you’ll be able to optimize your performance and efficiency by pinpointing your biggest distractions or analyzing what the best way to do a task is.
However, time tracker software also allows you to better manage client expectations, either by helping you better estimate the amount of time a project will take or by giving your clients direct gated access to their project’s data and workflow.
4. There’s Also Automatic Time Tracking
Finally, one more thing worth noting in order to underscore the usefulness of this type of software is the fact that some companies offer automatic time tracking solutions. This means that you don’t have to click those buttons, but the software assigns different tasks to specific projects on its own. Therefore, your data will be even more accurate, easier to collect, and you don’t have to interrupt your flow in order to start a task or worry about forgetting to do so.
Conclusion
As freelancing becomes more popular, it’s important to keep up to date in terms of what tools there are that can help you be more efficient and successful. Time tracker software is certainly one of the most effective ones, but the extent to which it’ll help boost your career will ultimately depend on how you use it and whether you act on the data it provides.
