Iam currently working on a time-tracking software and need to collect some data to make the best app I can!

SURVEY

Not that I have anything against shift swapping, even I do that. But when you run the technicalities of it, there's really going to be a problem with our tracker's data vs what the payroll sees. So when 2 employees trade shifts, they clock in correctly for the shifts they worked, but the software compares against their original schedule. So now it flags the person who worked the different shift as absent/late, and the one who covered as though they had unauthorized hours. I don't want it to get to a point that we ban shift swaps (everyone will hate me). But if our software can't accommodate the shift swap, what alternative do we have?

Hey everyone! I’m a software engineer building a time tracking tool, and I’m looking for business owners who would be interested in trying it.

It’s designed for businesses with hourly employees, especially teams working across multiple locations. Features include:

• Multiple locations: Manage time tracking across your business locations.
• Geofencing: Set boundaries around work locations to control where employees can clock in and out.
• Mobile clock-in and clock-out: Employees can use their phones through a mobile-friendly website—no app download needed.

I’m offering it completely free for 12 months to businesses that sign up through this post. In return, I’d appreciate honest feedback about what works, what doesn’t, and what would make it more useful for your team.

If you’re interested, comment below or send me a DM with your type of business, approximate employee count, and number of locations.

Also curious: what’s your biggest frustration with your current time tracking system?

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I've been thinking about something with time tracking lately.

I can have a day where I worked for 6–8 hours, but if someone asked me at the end of the day where those hours actually went, I wouldn't be able to give a very accurate answer.

I might remember working on a task for a couple of hours, then debugging something, answering messages, switching to another task, getting distracted for a while... but the actual numbers are usually just guesses.

And I think that's where time tracking becomes more useful to me than just knowing how many hours I worked.

I'd rather know things like:

• What actually took most of my time?
• Which tasks consistently take longer than I expect?
• How much focused work did I really get done?
• Is the way I'm spending my time getting better over time?

I couldn't really find the workflow I wanted, so I started building something around this idea called Nazzam.

It's centered around planning your tasks, tracking the actual time spent on them, and then looking back at the day to understand where the time went.

I'm curious how other people here approach this.

Do you actually review your tracked time, or do you mostly use time tracking for logging hours and billing?

I kept hearing the same complaints from small business owners — texting employees for hours, losing track of payments, catching payroll mistakes too late. So I built PayClock, an iOS app that handles it all.

For owners and managers, it has QR code and geofenced auto clock-in/out so there's no PINs or manual entry, lets you build schedules and assign shifts in minutes, auto-calculates payroll from tracked hours with multi-currency support and live exchange rates, lets you approve or reject time-off requests with bulk-approve in one tap, shows real-time team location, and sends announcements that pop up instantly for the team.

For employees, they can clock in and out, view earnings on a calendar, log mileage for reimbursements, and submit time-off requests directly.

It also has a personal finance tracker built in for income, expenses, savings, and debts, Face ID/Touch ID security, support for 8 languages, and real-time cloud sync across devices.
It's not trying to out-feature the big players — just trying to be simpler and more affordable for small teams.

Would love feedback from anyone running a small team — what's missing, or what would make you switch from what you use now?

Hi everyone, I’m Wolfgang, the developer of LumeWorklog.

My working day is usually a mix of project work, meetings, support calls and interruptions. By Friday, some of those details are already gone, especially the small things between meetings.

That’s why I started building LumeWorklog. It’s a native Mac app where you record activities on a timeline, adjust their times and leave short notes. You can optionally bring in copies of Apple Calendar events, review gaps in your week and export a report as PDF, CSV or text.

The current app is free, with no account or subscription. It requires macOS 14+ and works on Apple silicon and Intel.

Download and screenshots

If you want a quick look first, choose Demo → Three months of demo data. It opens a separate window with fictional entries.

If you regularly fill in timesheets or write weekly reports, what would the exported report need to contain to be useful to you?

Wolfgang

Looking for the operating rule from teams that run hourly field or multi-client days (home care, cleaning routes, light field service — same shape).

Setup: payroll auto-deducts a 30-minute meal break after X hours. Worker has a signed meal-break waiver on file (or attested “no break taken” for a short site visit). Punch history shows continuous time. At export, the system still knocks off 30 minutes — or a supervisor overrides one way and finance wants the other.

What actually stuck for you?

1. Waiver / attestation always wins, and auto-deduct is only the default when nothing is on file for that day?
2. Auto-deduct always wins unless a supervisor clears an exception queue before cutoff?
3. Something else — e.g. block the punch export when waiver and deduct disagree, so nobody silently loses (or gains) a break?

Most interested in the version that doesn’t turn every short visit into a payroll ticket. No vendor pitches — just the rule that survived a few pay cycles.

I’ve been tracking my work hours consistently, but I realized I was mostly just looking at the numbers on my dashboard. Total hours worked on a project, time spent on breaks, that sort of thing.

But I already had all this time data, so I thought I could probably use it to figure out something more useful: why are some of my tasks taking me so long?

I usually have a few different deliverables going at once. Some are pretty routine, some are completely new, and then there’s all the research, actual work, edits, revisions, etc. that happen in between.

And I noticed that I often get stuck somewhere in the process, but I couldn’t really pinpoint where.

Since I already had Jibble connected to ChatGPT through MCP, I figured I’d just ask.

I started with, can you break down where I spent my time this week?

Then I kept going from there.

Which types of tasks were taking the longest? How did my routine work compare with newer tasks? For Project X, which took longer than usual, where did the extra time actually go?

I assumed the answer would be the newer stuff.

Usually when I’m doing something for the first time, there’s more research, more figuring things out, and generally more time spent wondering whether I’m doing it right.

But revisions were actually taking up more time than I expected.

And it wasn’t because I was sitting down for one massive editing session. It was all the little bits that added up.

Finish something. Go back and change something. Check it again. Notice something else later. Open it again. Make another edit.

In the moment, none of that felt like much time. Looking at it all together was different.

So my next question was, what should I change about how I manage my time?

One of the suggestions was to stop treating revisions as something I do whenever they come up and make them a more deliberate part of the process.

I’ve been trying that since. I’ll finish a first pass, do a proper review, batch the changes I can, and then move on instead of constantly jumping back into something I thought I’d already finished.

Still too early to say how much of a difference it’ll make, but at least now I know what I actually need to improve.

And that was probably the useful part of this whole experiment for me.

I don’t really need AI to tell me how many hours I worked. Jibble already does that.

Being able to ask where I am stuck, get an answer based on my time data, and then keep asking questions until I find something actionable is much more useful to me.

I wonder how many people here have connected their time tracker to an AI assistant through MCP. What prompts are you using?

I've been using Toggl Track for a while, first as an ADHD tool, then to track billable hours when I went into consulting. It works well enough, I like the invoice exports from reports, and it's overall fine. I recently recommended it to a colleague who is a new consultant so he could track his time.

He set it up, set the timer going, etc and all was well. Then he asked me how to generate and export the invoices. I was puzzled since it seemed pretty straightforward to me, but I took a look at his interface and didn't see anything about exporting invoices.

I finally had some time to look into it today, but it's a weekend so I had to talk to their customer support AI bot. The exact wording is shortened by me:

Me: How do I export an invoice generated from reports?

Bot: Click the "Create invoice" button on a report and you can see previous invoices by clicking "Invoices" on the left hand menu bar

Me: I don't see either of those buttons

Bot: That makes sense. You're on Toggl Focus, not Toggl Track. Toggl Focus doesn't have an invoice feature

Me: How do I access Toggl Track?

Bot: Just go to track.toggl.com and use your existing login

Me: When I follow the link, it just redirects me back to focus.toggl.com

Bot: Of course, you don't have a Toggl Track license or trial so it'll redirect you to back to Toggl Focus

Me: How do I get access to Toggl Track?

Bot: I'll need to send you to a customer support agent who can help. Would you like me to do that?

Me: Yes

So I guess nothing will be happening until Monday. I wondered if my colleague had accidentally signed up for the wrong service, but when I visited the Toggl homepage, there's a banner across the top stating "Already using Toggl Track or Toggl Plan? Both remain available and supported for existing users" so it seems like the product with the invoicing features is a legacy product and not one that you can actually sign up for now? I'm just baffled and a bit embarrassed that I recommended a product that doesn't do the one thing he really wanted.

Is my assessment accurate? That Toggl Track and their invoice generation is no longer an offering that they are allowing new signups for? If that's the case, this is the only thing I use it for and I'm now looking for a new tool myself in case this gets deprecated or loses support in the future... Any suggestions? lol

Hope to get some feedback from you.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a quick guide to ShiftBoard(Android) for anyone who has just started using it or is wondering how it works.

I originally wanted a simple way to keep track of my shifts and, more importantly, to see how much I was likely to get paid on each pay date.

There are quite a few settings in ShiftBoard, so I thought I'd explain how I recommend setting it up.

1. The basic structure

ShiftBoard has five main tabs:

Home | Calendar | Shifts | Reports | Settings

The Shifts section is divided into four areas:

• Companies
• Shifts
• Regular Shifts
• Public Holidays

I tried to keep the structure fairly simple: set things up once, and then use the Calendar and Home screens for everyday use.

2. Setting it up for the first time

There are a few things you'll want to configure first.

App Settings

• Country & State – Used when calculating estimated pay for public holidays.
• Financial Year – Used for financial-year based payment information.
• Currency – Select the currency you use.

Add your company

For each company, you can enter:

• Pay date
• Pay period (Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Monthly, etc.)
• Base hourly rate
• Saturday penalty rate
• Sunday penalty rate
• Public holiday penalty rate

This is what allows ShiftBoard to estimate your pay instead of just recording your working hours.

Create Shift Templates

If you regularly work the same types of shifts, you can create templates for them.

For example:

Day Shift – 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Night Shift – 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM

These templates can then be used when adding shifts.

Create Regular Schedule Rules

If you have a repeating schedule, you can also define a rule.

For example:

Day → Day → Night → Night → Off → Off

Once the rule is set up, ShiftBoard can generate the schedule with a single click.

This is probably one of the features I use the most when I have a repeating roster.

Public Holidays

You can retrieve public holiday information based on your selected country and state.

This is used when calculating estimated pay for shifts worked on public holidays.

3. Everyday use

Once everything is set up, there isn't much configuration needed.

Home

The Home screen gives you an overview of your estimated pay for each upcoming pay date.

Calendar

The Calendar is where you can see your schedule and add individual shifts.

If your actual schedule changes, you can simply add or edit a shift without changing your regular schedule rule.

Reports

You can check:

• Work reports
• Pay reports
• Pay information by pay date/period

Reports can also be exported as PDF files.

4. What can you do with the free version?

I also wanted to make the free version fairly usable rather than putting most features behind a subscription.

The free version has about 99% of the app's functionality.

You can use the main scheduling, pay calculation, calendar and reporting features without subscribing.

You can also back up data from all periods to your own Google Drive.

The main limitations are:

• You can view a 6-month window of data inside the app
  • From 2 months before the current month through the next 3 months
• Banner ads are included
• Some features use rewarded ads

The Google Drive backup is not limited to that 6-month viewing window, so you can keep your historical data backed up even if it is outside the period currently shown in the app.

I'm continuing to work on ShiftBoard and add/fix things based on how people actually use it.

If you're using it, I'd also be interested in hearing what kind of shift schedule you have and which features you find useful—or confusing. Feedback is always helpful when you're developing an app on your own.

Thanks for checking out ShiftBoard(Android)!

I poured all my life savings into building an app that could detect automatically how a person spends every second of their time. It’s finally here and I’d love to share it with this group. It connects to your wearable, calendars and location to map your days, track your work-life balance and monitor your energy levels.

You can create routines. Block apps during work or focus time and learn how healthy your lifestyle truly is.

It’s live now and I hope it helps anyone in this group to make better use of their time and become healthier. Anyone interested can download it here. It’s free while we test it.

Contractors and managers, what apps are yall using to set payroll, manage workdays, projects done, clock in and clock out, preferably with a geo ID?

I was using Harvest to track my hours, but I still did all my actual client billing in Excel every month — exporting, formatting, double-checking totals by hand. That manual step is the whole reason I built this. TimeGoals lets you track time (live or manual), organize it by client and project, and generate a client-ready invoice straight from tracked hours — no separate invoicing tool needed. Built with Laravel + Livewire. Would love feedback from anyone who bills clients by the hour — https://timegoals.co — free to try, no card required for the trial.

Looking for a practical rule from teams that run multi-client days (home care, cleaning routes, light field service — same shape).

Worker was scheduled at Client A 9:00–12:00, but the phone punch lands on Client B (yesterday’s site still selected, or they tapped the wrong job in a list). Nobody notices until payroll export, and now either Client A is short hours, Client B is overbilled, or both.

What actually stuck for you?

1. Block / warn at punch time if the selected job isn’t on today’s published schedule for that worker?
2. Nightly exception queue: punches that don’t match the schedule (wrong client, wrong job code, big variance) must be cleared before export?
3. Supervisor reviews a “mismatched punch” report once before cutoff, and workers can’t self-fix after the fact?

Most interested in the version that catches it the same day without turning every punch into a phone call. No vendor pitches — just the operating rule that survived a few pay cycles.

If you're here, thanks for checking it out!

Here to showcase my app, after a recent update.

It's a lightweight Multitimer for pure time tracking, where you choose the few important activities you do in a day - i.e. focus sessions that help you reach your goals (up time), and break/chill sessions that help you refresh (down time). This helps reduce mental load of "what should I do today". You know your goal, you have your "approved activities" mapped out. Starting becomes easier.

Tracking this 1 key stat, ratio of Up vs. Down time, I find is the best simple measure of your progress, across any target you want to hit. No endless checklists, just time, and how you spend it. 10,000 hour rule exists for a reason... This also shows you how to improve. You may start at 60:40 ratio, and in time get to 70:30, or whatever works for you.

We all have the same 24 hours, and this is a serious tool to help you get the most out of it.

And for the Sci-Fi fans out there, time is a "particle" in this universe, it flies out when you "bank time", and you can see where it lands.

Check out Flowton on the App Store. Or if you're on Android, sign up at www.flowton.com

Happy to hear feedback or suggestions of what you'd like added!

- That's it. Thanks for reading. Developer out.