5 Best Agency Time Tracking Software for 2026

Time tracking sounds simple when you have one client and one project.

It gets much harder when your agency is juggling retainers, fixed-price projects, hourly work, freelancers, internal meetings, revisions, and last-minute client requests.

At that point, knowing where your team’s time actually went is more than an admin task. It affects what you invoice, whether projects stay profitable, and whether your team has room to take on more work.

Productive’s agency industry research found that 59% of agencies grew revenue, but only 31% improved their margins. That gap is a useful reminder that more work does not always mean a healthier agency.

Good agency time tracking software should do more than count hours. It should show where those hours went, which work was billable, how much budget is left, and whether a project is actually making money.

In this guide, we compare five agency time tracking software options that approach those needs in different ways, from all-in-one agency management to AI-ppowered automatic tracking and deeper profitability reporting.

What Is Agency Time Tracking Software?

Agency time tracking software records how much time employees and contractors spend on client projects, tasks, meetings, revisions, and internal work.

The useful part is what happens next. The time should feed into:

• Billable & non-billable hours
• Project budgets
• Timesheets
• Utilization
• Invoices
• Profitability reporting

For example, imagine a designer spends:

• 3 hours creating a homepage
• 45 minutes in a client meeting
• 1 hour handling revisions
• 30 minutes answering project-related emails

A basic timer tells you the person worked 5 hours and 15 minutes. An agency-focused system should also tell you which client and project those hours belong to, which hours are billable, whether the project is going over budget, and what should eventually be billed.

Illustrative example: A 10-person agency billing an average of $125 per hour would leave $68,750 of potential billable value unrecorded over 220 working days if every person missed just 15 billable minutes per day. This is a scenario, not an industry benchmark.

How We Evaluated the Best Time Tracking Software for Agencies

Choosing the right agency time tracking software is not just about finding a tool that records hours. The best platforms should help agencies understand where their time goes, improve project profitability, simplify billing, and make better decisions about resources.

We evaluated each tool based on how well it supports the daily workflow of an agency, from tracking individual tasks to managing budgets, reporting performance, and scaling operations.

Ease of Time Tracking

The first requirement of any time tracking software is adoption. If tracking time feels complicated, team members are more likely to forget entries or update them inaccurately at the end of the week.

We looked for tools that make time tracking simple and flexible through:

• Start/stop timers for real-time tracking
• Manual time entry for missed hours
• Weekly timesheets for reviewing work
• Calendar-based tracking for meetings and scheduled tasks
• Automatic or AI-assisted tracking to reduce manual effort

A good time tracking tool should fit naturally into an employee’s workflow rather than become another administrative task.

Billable and Non-Billable Time

For agencies, every hour has a cost and a potential value. Understanding the difference between revenue-generating work and internal activities is essential for accurate billing and profitability analysis.

We evaluated whether each tool helps agencies separate:

• Billable client work
• Internal meetings
• Sales activities
• Training
• Administrative tasks
• Other non-billable activities

The right software should make it easy to apply different billing rates based on clients, projects, services, or team roles.

Project and Client Time Tracking

Tracking total working hours is not enough for an agency. Managers need to know where those hours were spent and whether they align with the original project scope.

We looked at whether each tool allows teams to connect time entries with:

• Specific clients
• Projects
• Tasks
• Services
• Team members
• Project budgets

For example, if a website project was estimated at 100 hours but the design phase alone consumes 70 hours, project-level tracking helps identify potential issues before they affect profitability.

Timesheets and Approvals

As agencies grow, reviewing and approving timesheets becomes an important part of maintaining accurate data.

We considered whether platforms provide:

• Manager review workflows
• Timesheet approval processes
• Submission deadlines
• Correction requests
• Locked approved periods

Approval workflows help prevent inaccurate billing, incorrect project reporting, and missing time entries before they impact client invoices or internal decisions.

Project Budget Tracking

Time tracking becomes much more valuable when connected with project budgets. Instead of only seeing how many hours were spent, agencies can understand whether they are staying within scope.

We looked for features such as:

• Planned project hours
• Actual hours used
• Remaining budget
• Budget alerts
• Fixed-fee project monitoring

This is especially important for agencies working on fixed-price projects, where spending more time than planned directly reduces profit margins.

Reporting and Agency Profitability

The purpose of tracking time is not just collecting data — it is using that data to improve business decisions.

We evaluated reporting capabilities around:

• Team utilization
• Project performance
• Client profitability
• Budget variance
• Billable hours
• Service profitability
• Delivery efficiency

Strong reporting helps agency owners understand which clients, services, and projects generate the best returns and where improvements are needed.

Integrations and Agency Workflow

Most agencies already use multiple tools for managing clients, projects, communication, and finances. A good time tracking platform should connect with those existing systems instead of creating another disconnected workflow.

We considered integrations with:

• Project management tools
• CRM platforms
• Accounting software
• Calendars
• Communication tools
• Client portals

Pricing and Scalability

A tool that works well for a small agency may not be the right choice as the team grows.

We evaluated pricing based on:

• Starting cost
• Per-user pricing
• Minimum seat requirements
• Feature availability across plans
• Additional costs for advanced features

The best agency time tracking software should provide value not only today but also as the agency grows, adds more clients, and needs deeper reporting and management capabilities.

Quick Comparison of the Best Agency Time Tracking Software

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of the five tools, covering their tracking approach, invoicing support, project management, and starting price. 

5 Best Agency Time Tracking Software in 2026

Here are five agency time tracking software options worth considering in 2026, each suited to a different need from all-in-one agency workflows to AI tracking and profitability.

OneSuite — Best Overall Agency Time Tracking Software

Visit OneSuite →

OneSuite puts time tracking inside a broader agency workflow instead of treating it as a standalone stopwatch.

A team can connect tracked hours to clients, projects, tasks, timesheets, approvals, and invoicing while also using CRM, project management, contracts, files, email, and a client portal in the same workspace.

Typical workflow: Client → Project → Task → Time → Timesheet → Approval → Invoice

Key features

• Real-time timer
• Manual time entry
• Project-level time tracking
• Task-level time tracking
• Billable and non-billable time
• Hourly rates
• Team timesheets
• Time-based invoicing
• QuickBooks and Xero integration
• Project management
• CRM
• Advanced client portal
• Email inbox with custom SMTP support (Brevo, Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun, SMTP2Go)
• Proposals and contracts
• E-signatures
• File management
• Connected client communication

What we like

• Tracked time already has client and project context.
• Approved hours can move into the billing workflow.
• Agencies can consolidate several operational tools into one platform.
• One flat plan means no feature-gating or tool sprawl.

Limitations

• It may feel like more software than you need if you only want a simple timer.
• Teams used to dedicated time trackers may need a little time to adjust to the broader all-in-one workflow.

Pricing 

• Pro: $9/user/month, or ~$7/user/month billed annually (save 20%)
• Unlimited members, projects, clients, invoices, and documents
• Up to 10 GB storage and up to 5,000 CRM leads included
• Client portal included; domain white-label available as an add-on
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — unlimited storage and leads, white-label included
• Add-ons: White Label ($29/subdomain/mo), Extra storage ($29/500GB/mo), Extra leads ($29/10,000 leads/mo), Email inbox ($5/inbox/mo)
• 14-day free trial, no credit card required · 30-day money-back guarantee

Best for: OneSuite is best for harvesting productive teamwork.

Verdict: OneSuite is the strongest overall fit here when time tracking is only one part of a larger agency-management problem. If your main need is automatic capture or deep resource forecasting, Timely or Productive may be a better fit.

Related: Meet OneSuite: Client Portal Software for Agencies

Harvest — Best for Simple Time Tracking and Invoicing

Harvest has been around for years, but its biggest strength is still simplicity. It gives agencies an easy way to track time, understand where hours are going, and turn billable work into client invoices without introducing a complicated operating system.

Team members can start timers while they work, fill out daily or weekly timesheets, or pull calendar events into their timesheets. Harvest also provides desktop and mobile apps, which makes it practical for teams that work across different environments.

What makes Harvest different

• Start and stop timers from desktop, mobile, or browser
• Enter time through daily or weekly timesheets
• Pull Google Calendar or Outlook events into timesheets
• Set project budgets and receive budget alerts
• Track billable and non-billable hours
• Convert tracked hours directly into invoices
• Add project expenses and receipts to invoices
• Accept payments through Stripe and PayPal
• Copy invoices and payments to QuickBooks Online or Xero
• Connect with tools such as Asana, Jira, Slack, Trello, ClickUp, monday.com, GitHub, and Linear

Harvest currently says more than 70,000 companies use the platform, and its integrations cover many of the tools agencies already use for projects, development, accounting, and communication.

Practical agency use case

Imagine a design agency billing a client hourly.

The designer tracks four hours of design work and one hour of revisions against the client project. At the end of the billing period, Harvest can use those billable hours to create the invoice rather than requiring someone to copy entries into another billing system manually.

That straightforward time → invoice → payment flow is where Harvest works particularly well.

What we like

• Easy for employees to learn and start using
• Strong time tracking and invoicing connection
• Mature integration ecosystem
• Budget alerts help teams catch projects approaching their limits
• Mobile and desktop apps make tracking accessible away from the browser

Limitations

• Free plan is limited to 1 seat and 2 projects — fine for solo freelancers, not for teams.
• Agencies needing deep CRM, client portals, or advanced project workflows may still need other tools alongside it.

Pricing 

• Free: $0 forever — 1 seat, 2 projects, time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking, Mac & iOS apps
• Teams: from $9/seat/month billed annually — unlimited seats, team reporting, accounting and payment integrations
• Enterprise: from $14/seat/month billed annually — unlimited custom reports, profitability reporting, timesheet approvals, activity log, SAML-based SSO, require notes
• Enterprise Plus: Custom pricing — custom integrations, product customization, dedicated Customer Success Manager, assisted data migration, white labelling
• 30-day free trial available for paid plans

Best for: Agencies that want straightforward time tracking and client invoicing without a complicated setup.

Verdict: Harvest is a strong choice when accurate time tracking and getting those hours billed are your main priorities, and its new Enterprise tiers extend it further up-market for larger teams. It is less suitable if you want one platform to manage the entire agency workflow.

Timely — Best AI Time Tracking Software for Agencies

Timely is built around a familiar problem: people forget to start timers.

Its automatic tracking system (called “Memory”) captures work activity in the background and uses AI to help turn that activity into timesheet entries. That can reduce the need to reconstruct an entire week from memory.

Key features

• Automatic activity capture (Memory tracker)
• AI-assisted timesheet categorization
• Manual time entry
• Billable-hour tracking
• Project budgets and recurring project budgets
• Planned time and capacity views
• Project health reporting
• App and website activity tracking
• Team dashboards and reporting
• Calendar-connected workflows

What we like

• Strong fit for teams that dislike manual timesheets.
• Automatic capture can help when people switch constantly between apps and meetings.
• The product stays focused on time and capacity rather than becoming an overly broad CRM.

Limitations

• It is not a complete accounting platform.
• Its invoicing workflow relies on integration rather than replacing accounting software.
• The entry plan requires a minimum of 3 users.
• Teams that already log time reliably may not need automatic capture.

Pricing

• Starter: $9/user/month billed yearly ($11/month billed monthly) — save up to 40%. Minimum 3 users.
• Premium: $16/user/month billed yearly ($20/month billed monthly) — save up to 20%
• Unlimited: $22/user/month billed yearly ($28/month billed monthly)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — tailored onboarding, premium team training, dashboard/reporting support
• Add-on: Tasks module from $6/person
• Free trial available

Best for: Agencies where the biggest problem is getting accurate timesheets from people who do not consistently start and stop timers.

Verdict: Timely is the clearest choice on this list when AI-assisted and automatic time capture is the priority.

Productive — Best for Agency Time Tracking and Profitability

Productive asks a more useful question than “How long did this take?”: Did we make money doing it?

It combines time tracking with budgeting, resource planning, projects, invoicing, CRM, cost rates, utilization, and profitability reporting.

Key features

• Timer and manual time entry
• Timesheets
• Project and service-level tracking
• Project budgets and recurring budgets
• Cost rates and billable rates, with rate cards
• Profitability reporting
• Utilization reporting
• Resource planning
• Advanced time off management
• Invoicing, with HRIS integrations on higher plans
• CRM and sales pipeline
• AI Assistant and AI time tracking

What we like

• Time is connected directly to budgets and services.
• Cost rates help distinguish client value from internal delivery cost.
• Strong visibility into profitability and remaining budget.
• Resource planning helps agencies decide whether they need more people or better allocation.

Limitations

• There is more setup than in a simple timer.
• Someone needs to own rates, budgets, services, billing types, and approvals.
• Expense approvals, rate cards, and advanced reporting require the Professional plan or higher.

Pricing

• Essential: $10/user/month billed yearly (e.g. $100/month total for 10 users)
• Professional: $25/user/month billed yearly (e.g. $250/month total for 10 users) — Productive’s recommended plan
• Ultimate: Custom pricing — revenue forecasting, multiple subsidiaries, advanced custom fields, enforced SSO/2FA
• Save up to 17% by billing yearly instead of monthly
• Try for free (Essential/Professional) or book a demo (Ultimate)

Best for: Agencies that already track time but need better budgeting, utilization, resource planning, and profitability visibility.

Verdict: Productive is a strong choice for agencies that want time data to drive financial and resourcing decisions, not just timesheets.

Example: A fixed-fee design project sold as 100 hours at $120/hour produces $12,000 of revenue. If delivery takes 125 hours, effective revenue per worked hour falls from $120 to $96 before payroll and overhead.

Scoro — Best for Agency Time Tracking and Business Management

Scoro is closer to a professional-services operating system than a simple time tracker.

Its modular structure covers time, tasks, projects, resources, sales, estimates, expenses, billing, and financial reporting, built from eight core apps you combine based on what you need.

Key features

• Real-time timer
• Manual time entry
• Weekly timesheets
• Billable and non-billable time
• Project management
• Resource and capacity planning
• Budget tracking
• Time billing
• Client-specific price lists
• CRM and sales pipeline management
• Estimates and invoicing
• Financial reporting and advanced financials
• Scoro AI

What we like

• Time can sit alongside project delivery, resources, quoting, costs, margins, and invoices.
• Flexible rate cards work well for agencies charging different clients differently.
• The modular, pick-your-apps structure lets teams pay only for what they use and expand over time.

Limitations

• The platform has a steeper learning curve than a focused time tracker.
• Setup requires more operational decisions, including which app combination fits your workflow.
• A five-user minimum can make it less attractive for very small agencies.

Pricing

• Time-billing (Track + Invoice): from $17/user/month
• Projects & Resources (Do + Deliver + Track + Resource): from $29/user/month
• Quote to Cash (Estimate + Deliver + Track + Invoice): from $29/user/month
• End-to-end (all core apps + Advanced Work/Financials — best value): from $57/user/month
• Or build your own combination from 8 core apps plus 35+ extras and integrations
• Five-user minimum applies · 14-day free trial, no credit card required

Best for: Established agencies and professional-services businesses that want time tracking plus broader operational and financial management.

Verdict: Scoro is powerful when you intend to use the broader system. It is less compelling if your only requirement is a lightweight timer.

What Features Should Agency Time Tracking Software Have?

The right features depend on how your agency works, but the goal is always the same: make time easy to record and useful for managing projects, billing clients, and protecting margins.

Simple Time Entry

If time tracking feels like extra admin, people will avoid it or fill it in later from memory.

Look for:

• Start/stop timers
• Manual time entry
• Weekly timesheets
• Calendar-based entry
• Automatic or AI-assisted capture

The easier it is to log time, the more accurate your data will be. For example, a designer should be able to start a timer from the task they are already working on rather than opening a separate app and searching for the correct project.

Billable Hours and Hourly Rates

Agencies need to separate the time they can charge clients for from internal work.

Useful features include:

• Billable vs non-billable classification
• Client-specific rates
• Project-specific rates
• Role or employee rates
• Cost rates

This becomes important when different people have different billing values. A senior strategist may be billed at $180/hour, while a junior designer is billed at $90/hour. Your software should calculate that automatically instead of forcing you to work it out in a spreadsheet.

Client and Project-Level Time Tracking

A weekly total like “40 hours worked” does not tell you much.

You should be able to see exactly where that time went:

• Client
• Project
• Task or service
• Team member
• Tags and notes
• Related budget

For example, if one client is using 35% more hours than expected every month, project-level tracking helps you spot the pattern and decide whether the scope or pricing needs to change.

Project Budgets

Time tracking becomes much more valuable when it is connected to the project budget.

Look for:

• Planned hours
• Actual hours
• Remaining budget
• Budget alerts
• Fixed-fee project monitoring

Suppose you sell a project for 100 hours. If your team has already logged 85 hours and only 60% of the work is complete, you have a problem. A good system should surface that before the project reaches 120 hours.

Timesheet Approvals

As the agency grows, managers need a way to check time before it affects billing or reporting.

Useful controls include:

• Manager review
• Approval status
• Timesheet deadlines
• Locked approved periods
• Correction workflows

This helps prevent simple mistakes, such as someone logging five hours to the wrong client or entering 10 hours instead of one.

Time Tracking and Invoicing

For hourly work, approved time should move into billing with as little manual work as possible.

Look for:

• Convert tracked hours into invoice lines
• Apply the correct rates automatically
• Include task notes or descriptions
• Support hourly billing, retainers, or milestones
• Sync with accounting software when needed

For example, if a development team logs 42 approved billable hours for a client, the software should be able to use those hours when preparing the invoice instead of making finance copy everything manually.

Resource Planning

Time tracking tells you what already happened. Resource planning helps you decide what happens next.

Useful features include:

• Capacity by employee
• Planned assignments
• Availability
• Overbooking warnings
• Future workload visibility

If one developer is booked for 45 hours next week while another has only 15 hours assigned, the manager can rebalance the work before the week begins.

Utilization and Profitability Reporting

The real value of time data is in the decisions you can make from it.

Look for reporting around:

• Billable utilization
• Project margin
• Client profitability
• Budget variance
• Team capacity
• Service profitability

For example, an agency may discover that website projects bring in more revenue than SEO retainers but produce lower margins because they consistently take longer than estimated.

That is the kind of insight that can improve future pricing and project scoping.

Agency Software Integrations

Your time tracker should fit into the tools your agency already uses.

Common integrations include:

• Accounting software
• CRM
• Project management tools
• Calendars
• Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Payroll
• Client portals

The goal is to reduce duplicate work. If an employee already has a task in your project management system, they should not have to recreate the same task just to track time against it.

Scalable Pricing

Do not compare tools only by their cheapest plan.

Check:

• Per-user pricing
• Minimum seat requirements
• Feature limits
• Paid add-ons
• Cost as your team grows

For example, a tool that costs $12 per user sounds inexpensive with five employees at $60/month. The same plan costs $600/month with 50 employees.

Also check whether features such as approvals, profitability reporting, invoicing, or resource planning require a higher plan. The cheapest starting price is not always the cheapest option for the features your agency actually needs.

Which Agency Time Tracking Software Is Best for Your Team?

If your priority is…	Start with…
All-in-one agency workflow	OneSuite
Simple time tracking and invoicing	Harvest
AI-powered automatic tracking	Timely
Profitability, utilization, and resource planning	Productive
Broader operational and financial management	Scoro

For most small and mid-sized agencies, the first question is not “Which timer is best?” It is whether you need a standalone time tracker or an agency operating system that includes time tracking.

Hire Us to Build Your Time Tracking Software

Sometimes none of the off-the-shelf options fits. That usually happens when time data is tied to a unique billing model, a custom client experience, specialized reporting, or integrations that are core to how the business operates.

Custom development may make sense when you need:

• A unique billing or rate model
• Custom client or admin dashboards
• CRM, ERP, payroll, or accounting integrations
• Role-based workflows that off-the-shelf products cannot match
• Ownership of your data model and product experience
• Time tracking as part of a SaaS product you plan to sell

Technext has hands-on experience building agency software. For one US marketing company, we developed a custom CRM and project-management platform to replace a fragmented workflow spread across separate tools.

The client had served more than 1,000 customers and had over 100 active clients. A five-person Technext team designed and developed the platform in four months, covering UI/UX, frontend, backend, CRM, project workflows, and dashboards.

Read the Technext digital agency CRM and project management case study

Related: Time Tracking Admin Dashboard Template

The goal should not be to rebuild a commercial tracker simply because you can. Custom development makes sense when the workflow, integrations, ownership, or product experience is important enough to justify owning the system.

Frequently Asked Questions