Time tracking your team will actually use!
June 20, 2018
Time tracking your team will actually use!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Toggl
I researched a number of time-tracking options in an effort to find a simple, but robust enough solution to meet our needs. My goal was to gain a better sense of where the hours in my day went and, eventually, to ask my team to do the same. As a department that practices agile marketing, it was important that we try to combat our tendency of indulging in the planning fallacy/optimism bias. We needed to understand exactly how much projects, email, meetings, etc. consumed our days so we could better plan for sprints. At the end of my search, Toggl stood out as the option that would best give me the data I was hoping to corral and, perhaps even more importantly, would encourage compliance.
- Notifications—when you've stopped tracking time or forgot to switch from one task to another after a significant amount of time, Toggl will alert you and ask if you want to continue tracking
- Reporting—this is where the real magic happens! Toggl's reporting and organization features, like projects and tags, offers insight into the types of tasks that consume the most time
- While I love the fact that the Chrome extension exists and can be enabled on so many sites, it can sometimes be a little buggy. When you go to track a new task, and you have a large number of projects organized in the web app, the extension doesn't always allow you to scroll down to see all the available projects. Same for tags. I also wish there was a way to delete an erroneous task from directly within the extension.
- The desktop app is a little clunky. The design could definitely be improved.
- This is minor, but when I go to toggl.com to see reporting, the location of the "Go to timer" vs. "Log out" always gets me. I think it's because I'm used to seeing "Log in" in the upper right corner so I automatically assume that "Log out" actually says "Log in" and I mistakingly click it, which annoyingly (and obviously, if I took the time to read it) logs me out.
- Toggl provides insight into the activities that consume our working ours, allowing us to better plan for the projects and tasks that matter most.
- We found there was a bit of a habit curve, where we needed to intentionally practice using Toggl and maintaining compliance. At least initially, that probably slowed down our normal productivity.
- Toggl provides transparency for me, as a manager, to easily understand how my hourly employees are tracking against their allotted time.
Toggl is sleeker and so much more user-friendly than Time Doctor. The Chrome extension with the intuitive power button icon really does increase compliance, which I think is one of the most important, and sometimes overlooked, considerations when choosing a new software for your team. If people won't use it, it doesn't really matter if it's more affordable and even more highly recommended.