"We started using a time-tracking tool but switched within six months" — you hear this story a lot. Sometimes the tool itself is the problem, but more often it's a selection mismatch: it didn't fit how you actually work. Too many features to master, missing features you actually need, limits that bite once a team is involved — these switching stories are preventable by sorting out your selection criteria up front.
This article organizes five things to confirm before choosing a time-tracking tool.
Point 1: At what granularity do you want to manage hours?
The first thing to check in a time-tracking tool is "at which levels can hours be aggregated?"
Most tools have a two-level structure: project → task. You can record hours that way, but aggregations like "how many hours did we spend in the design phase?" or "how long did this particular deliverable take?" become difficult.
If you want visibility by phase and by deliverable, you need a tool that supports a hierarchical structure. This is also hard to walk back later: re-classifying a flat pile of logs by process after the fact isn't realistic. The granularity you can see is fixed the moment you start recording — so it's worth deciding before selecting, not as a realization after the fact.
Things to confirm:
- Can you create intermediate levels like phases and deliverables?
- Do task hours roll up automatically to higher levels (phase, project)?
- Can you compare estimated hours against actuals?
Point 2: Timer-based or manual entry?
There are two main ways to record hours: timer tracking and manual entry.
With timer tracking, you start a timer when you begin work and stop it when you finish. Precision is high — as long as you don't forget to start it, you get accurate actuals.
With manual entry, you type "this took 2 hours" after the fact. It's convenient, but because it relies on memory, accuracy tends to vary.
Which suits you depends on how you work. If you work in focused blocks, timer tracking fits naturally; if you're frequently out and about and mostly logging from a phone, manual entry may be easier to sustain.
If you go with timer tracking, there are finer points to check: "does switching tasks automatically stop the previous timer?", "does tracking continue if the browser is closed?" These details directly affect the accuracy of your records.
In practice, too, it's rarely "timer or manual" — being able to move smoothly between the two is what matters. Time the desk work with a timer, then add the off-site meetings and the minutes you forgot to start by hand. Can you do that correction cleanly? Can you edit and add to timer records after the fact, does it detect idle time away from the desk, how does rounding (to 15-minute blocks, say) behave? More than going all-in on one method, it's this ease of correction that decides the quality of your records over the long haul.
Point 3: Solo use or team use?
Before choosing, be clear about whether the tool is for you alone or for a team.
For individual use, a free plan is often plenty. For team use, you may need member management, permissions, and cross-member aggregation.
If the plan is "start solo, then roll out to the team," also check whether there's an upgrade path to team features.
For team use, "is it simple enough that every member will keep using it?" is another key lens. With complex tools, you often end up with only a few members actually using them.
Things to confirm:
- Can you invite members and configure permissions?
- Can you aggregate across members (who worked how many hours)?
- What's the member limit on the free plan?
Point 4: Can you get your data out?
The reason to adopt a time-tracking tool isn't just "to record" — it's to put the recorded data to work. And the place you put it to work is usually outside the tool: invoices, custom analysis in a spreadsheet, accounting software, reports for clients. That's why being able to get your data into your own hands is less one feature among many than a precondition.
A few things worth checking. Can you export your recorded hours as a whole in CSV or similar (not just a slice of the period, or a subset of fields)? Is the exported data in a format you can drop straight into invoicing or analysis? And — easily overlooked — can you take all your data with you when you leave?
That last point is your switching insurance. A tool you can't export from turns the cost of leaving into the very reason you stay. The thing people who "used it for six months and then switched" most often mention is how heavy that migration was. Conversely, knowing you can pull your entire dataset out anytime lets you trial with confidence.
Reports (spotting per-project and per-phase trends) and estimate-vs-actual comparison are pillars of usage too. But more features isn't better — what matters more is the balance of "the features you use exist" and "the ones you don't stay out of the way." On top of that, checking first that the exit is secured keeps you out of the "I can record, but my data is hostage" situation.
Point 5: See through pricing that "looks cheap"
Most tools advertise a free plan or a "from $X/month" price, but what you actually pay often doesn't match the sticker. Looking one layer deeper at how the pricing is built — before you choose — saves you the "this is more expensive than I thought" later.
The advertised price usually assumes annual billing. Switch to monthly and a 20–30% jump is common — "from $7/month" can become $9-something on monthly billing. Annual is cheaper, but remember it comes paired with the risk of being locked into a year if the tool turns out not to fit.
It scales as per-seat × headcount. A rate that's nothing for one person stacks up as a team grows. And when the model is "base fee + per seat," the smaller the team, the higher the effective per-seat cost.
And the features you use most, or longer data retention, are often placed one tier up. CSV export, detailed reports, API, long-term retention — when these are pulled out of the free or lower tiers, you hit a "upgrade just for this one thing" wall right about when you've gotten comfortable. One survey found roughly 40% of companies that adopted a SaaS tool ran into unexpected costs within six months (Software Advice, 2024).
What helps here is looking less at "what's free right now" and more at "where, as I keep using it, will I hit the first paid wall?" The specific free tiers of each tool are laid out in a separate article, Free Time-Tracking Tools: 2026 Roundup.
In the end, settle it with a one-to-two-week trial
Even with your conditions sorted, narrowing to the single best pick by deliberation alone is hard. Trial a few candidates on their free plans in parallel and check three things in practice, and the fit comes into focus fast.
First, does recording survive a busy day? Not an ideal day — a real one, with back-to-back meetings or deep work you lose yourself in. Does the record stay intact, or go full of holes? A tool whose recording is a heavy extra step usually drops out on exactly this day.
Second, can you pull the one number you most want to see? Whether it's "hours by phase" or "this month's total by engagement" — can you get the figure you actually care about without hunting for it?
Third, can you get your data out? Export once during the trial and check whether the file drops straight into invoicing or analysis. This is the "switching insurance" from earlier, tested before you buy.
In the end, something gets decided before the feature table
Lined up, every point here asks the same thing — not "which tool's features are better" but "what do you want to manage." How fine a granularity you want to see, timer or manual entry, solo or team, whether you can get your data out, where the pricing walls you in: different order, but every one of them is a condition on your side. A tool is a means to an end, so the more these are settled first, the smaller your regret after choosing.
Even so, these are all about reading your own conditions, and in the end you can't know without putting your hands on it. Sort out your conditions, then confirm those three things in a trial — it looks like the long way around, but having switched tools more than once myself, it's the approach least likely to miss.
Related articles
- Free Time-Tracking Tools: 2026 Roundup
- Building a Time-Tracking System That Eliminates Month-End Gaps
- Why I Made the Timer 'Force Start' — and What It Means for Tracking to Keep Going
- Who Actually Needs "Hierarchy" in a Time-Tracking Tool?
Viewed through the selection criteria in this article: LayerClock is designed so that the four-level WBS structure, timer tracking, and estimate-vs-actual comparison are available from the free plan (CSV export and detailed reports are on the Business plan).
Start by checking out the features on the free plan.
