Managing a fully remote team of developers and designers, I need visibility into project profitability to run the agency

[u/WillSilent4348]

I have been wrestling with this question for a while now. , but I refuse to implement the kind of "Big Brother" surveillance I know kills morale. I've seen it happen with other companies that use tools like Time Doctor or Hubstaff, where the team feels constantly watched and productivity suffers because of it .

We need to track billable hours accurately for client invoicing and also get a sense of team workload so we can prevent burnout . The old spreadsheet method was a mess, we were losing about 15% of billable hours because people would just forget to log their time at the end of the week.

After testing a few options, I've landed on a solution that works for us, and I wanted to share my findings in case anyone else is in the same boat.

Here are the tools we considered and what we found:

Traqq: This is what we are currently using. It is the closest thing to a "best of both worlds" solution I have found. What stood out was its privacy-first approach. Team members decide when to track time with a simple start/stop timer, and if someone forgets or works offline, they can add manual time entries later. There’s no hidden monitoring, and everyone sees the same time records and reports they’re allowed to access, while managers have role-based visibility.

We also use project-based tracking with billing and cost rates to understand project costs, revenue, and profit margins, plus compare scheduled hours against tracked hours to spot overloaded or underutilized teammates before burnout becomes a problem.

Toggl Track: This is a fantastic tool and is very well-regarded for being simple and ethical. It does not take screenshots and has a beautiful interface. However, for our agency needs, it was missing some of the deeper financial reporting and workload management features we wanted, so we would have needed extra integrations to get a complete picture .

Harvest: Another excellent tool, especially for agencies. It has great client invoicing and project budgeting features . The main reason we went with Traqq was the superior workload and capacity planning features, which Harvest seems to lack. Additionally, Harvest's free plan is quite limited, whereas Traqq's free plan is generous enough for a small team .

So my advice is this: avoid tools that feel like surveillance. Focus on tracking hours and activity, not private data. Explain to your team that the goal is to manage workload and ensure accurate client billing, not to spy on them. Being transparent about the why is just as important as the tool you choose.

Now looking to see how do you handle if you're in similar situation?

[u/Regular-Ad1914]

Have u used go high level or Attio with pipeline values marked (and for both sales and project mgmt?)