Our mission at Toggl Hire has always been to make hiring smarter, faster, and more seamless for businesses and the candidates they hire.
Over the years, we’ve developed our platform to help companies identify top talent through innovative candidate assessment features. This means you might know us for our skills assessments, but, hey, everybody needs to reinvent themselves from time to time, and that’s exactly what we’ve been hard at work doing. 🐦🔥
We knew we could push the boundaries of modern hiring even further, and that’s why we’re thrilled to announce that Toggl Hire has evolved into a full-cycle hiring tool — combining the best of an applicant tracking system with our signature assessment features, all in one easy-to-use platform.
Why we upgraded Toggl Hire
Hiring isn’t just about finding candidates; it’s about managing the entire recruitment process from start to finish.
A huge part of that lies in being able to effectively organize candidate information, assess the right skills, provide a stellar candidate experience, and make confident, data-driven hiring decisions.
Sounds simple, right?
You’d think so, but we listened to feedback from our users—busy hiring managers, recruiters, and HR professionals—and learned that having multiple tools can break the workflow (not to mention having to pay for several tools just to hire one candidate gets pretty costly, pretty fast).
This made us ask ourselves a simple question: Why not do it all in one place, and why not make that one place Toggl Hire?
With this in mind, we’ve expanded Toggl Hire into a full-cycle hiring platform, streamlining every step of your recruitment process. Now you can assess skills, organize candidates, collaborate with your hiring team, and make informed hiring decisions — all without leaving Toggl Hire.
It’s nothing revolutionary, but we’d argue that the sheer size of our skills test library alongside other essential hiring features is (seriously, go test the assessment capabilities of a few other popular ATS and let us know how they compare! 😏).
What’s new?
Not much has changed, yet everything has changed. Along with an upgraded UI and several improvements to our backend for improved stability and ease of use, here is what you can expect to enjoy alongside our new pricing plans.
🏆 All-in-one functionality
Toggl Hire now delivers all the key features of a robust ATS, from job descriptions and candidate scoring to analytics, combined with our industry-leading assessment tools to identify top talent faster.
🔋 Improved workflow integration
While you might have previously had to integrate a skills testing tool with a popular ATS, with Toggl Hire’s new and improved full-cycle functionality, your entire hiring team can work together more efficiently and focus on making better hiring decisions.
💰 More value with every plan
With our improvements comes an exciting shift in how we offer our software to you. We’ve reimagined our pricing plans to meet the varied needs of our users, from growing startups to larger enterprises.
What this means for you
Our new pricing structure reflects the versatility and expanded capabilities of Toggl Hire. Each plan is carefully designed to help you get more out of the platform, whether you’re testing the waters with candidate assessments or managing complex hiring pipelines at scale.
We understand that every team is different, which is why we’ve built our plans to cater to a wide range of recruiting needs. Don’t worry, though; we’ve kept our forever-free plan, which allows you to hire for one role at a time. You can also try advanced features with a 14-day free trial.
If you don’t have an account, you need to create one first. Then, you can start your free trial directly within the platform. Or, you can contact us at support@hire.toggl.com and we will set you up.
What’s included in the Starter plan?
The Starter plan is ideal for growing teams and includes:
3 active job openings
Unlimited skills tests
Unlimited users
Fully-custom tests
Async video interviews
Customizable hiring pipeline
Bulk actions
Automation & AI
More!
What’s included in the Premium plan?
The Premium plan is ideal for larger teams with ongoing hiring needs. It includes everything on the Starter plan plus:
Unlimited job openings
Expert-created homework assignments
Custom roles and permissions
API access
Dedicate CSM
And more!
Top tip:
Compare features side-by-side and get answers to other pricing-related questions here!
Built for better hiring decisions
Ultimately, our goal with these updates is simple: to help you save time, reduce bias, and hire smarter. Whether you’re a rapidly growing startup hiring your first team or an established company fine-tuning your process, Toggl Hire is here to support you every step of the way.
Have questions? Interested in specific features?
Book a demo with one of our Customer Success Specialists to learn how Toggl Hire fits into your recruitment process.
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur, writer, and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses, including two of her own, and shares Toggl's mission of challenging traditional beliefs about what building a successful business looks like.
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A talent pool is a database of potential candidates who have, in some way, shown an interest in working for your organization. Sounds simple enough, right? You probably have their contacts somewhere in your email or recruitment software.
Sure. Maybe. Careful, though — a great talent pool isn’t just a list of names and phone numbers. A properly curated talent pool provides rich information on each potential candidate, including but not limited to their experience, skills, career goals, and cultural fit.
Those job candidates are primed and ready to be contacted if a role needs filling. While it’s unlikely they’ll already have been fully interviewed, they will at least be partially vetted to ensure they meet the core standards of your organization.
What is a talent pool, and how is it different from a talent pipeline?
A talent pool is a curated group of great candidates who likely have the skills to help your company grow and have, at some point, expressed interest in making that happen.
Talent pools vs. talent pipelines
Talent pools and talent pipelines are two different but complementary tools for recruiting and hiring top-notch talent.
Talent pipelines are filled with candidate profiles who are considered qualified for specific roles. These could be past applicants who aced the interviews but were not hired, candidates referred by your employees, or sourced talent that engaged with your recruiters in the past.
On the flip side, talent pools are more like your secret stash of future candidates. It’s a database of passive talent who have shown some interest in working for your organization.
These candidates might not have gone through the full interview process yet, but they’ve at least been partially qualified to make sure they meet your company’s standards.
How do talent pools work?
Say you’re looking for a Director of Marketing, and you’re down to the wire with two stellar candidates. You finally make your choice and send out the job offer.
What happens to the other candidate? They’re qualified, passionate, and promising.
Along the way, you also interviewed a handful of promising rising stars who weren’t the right fit for this specific position but might shine in other areas of your organization when the need arises.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could keep them engaged in some way with your company? So when you expand the team, you go to them first instead of starting from square one?
Passive candidates are people who are already employed and are not actively looking for a job but might be interested if the right opportunity presents itself. Talent pools are a great way to tap into these folks, who are usually high-quality candidates (and maybe even former employees).
Hiring isn’t just a question of right person, but also right time. How do you increase your chances of getting the best talent at a good time? You keep trying them, even if they aren’t looking.
By building and maintaining a database of skilled individuals, you can stay top of mind for them. Try sharing tailored content — think industry insights, company updates, and career growth opportunities. Newsletters are a great format for this. Play the long game, and all that relationship-building is bound to pay off.
Increased employer branding
90% of workers — irrespective of age or salary — would trade a percentage of lifetime earnings in exchange for more meaningful work. 82% say it is important for their company to have a purpose.
There has literally never been a better time to shout about your vision and mission to your talent pool. Brag about your company culture, values, and lofty aspirations.
Get creative with formats, too. Video interviews with current employees, for example, can feel way more personable than a standard landing page. Share the BTS of your company headshot photoshoots. Is there an unusual story behind your branding? Tell it!
Talent pools are full of vetted, qualified candidates. This means when you have a role to fill, you don’t have to shout into the void and hope for the best. You can strategically dip into your pool, find the best matches, and invite them to interview.
90% of hiring managers find it hard to source skilled candidates. Building a talent pool is literally a shortcut that immediately puts you in the top 10% of companies.
Companies with talent pools also report 30% lower hiring costs and a shorter time-to-hire. It pays to have a pipeline.
Benefits of using talent pools in recruitment
Having a list of pre-qualified, enthusiastic, and aligned candidates ready to go is a recruiter’s dream. While high-quality talent pools are by no means a walk in the park to set up, they offer a range of benefits, including the following.
Flexibility and agility
Imagine you’re halfway through hiring for a graphic designer, and suddenly, your head of design quits. Your priorities have suddenly shifted — you need to replace the head before you continue hiring the graphic designer.
With a talent pool, you’ll be able to manage this in a much more flexible and agile way than with conventional hiring. Chances are you’ll already have a qualified, willing candidate under your nose, ready to fill those shoes.
This is a recognized issue in talent acquisition — in fact, there’s been a 30% increase in skill similarity across recruiting roles in the last five years. 91% of recruiting experts say they’re focused on being agile to adapt to hiring needs. As LinkedIn’s 2024 The Future of Hiring Report states, “Recruiting teams want to do a better job helping organizations anticipate labor market ups and downs and ensure that they’re able to pivot quickly.”
Doing so will be vital to future-proofing recruiting teams. Erin Scruggs, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Linkedin, shares her experience.
“Every recruiter needs to be able to be flexible and deploy into hotspots versus specializing in specific domains. We didn’t do that a year ago, two years ago, or three years ago. But it’s critical for staying agile.”
Having a vetted group of candidates ready to step into roles as they arise — as you would with a talent pool — minimizes downtime and maximizes efficiency. Now that’s a real advantage that’ll make recruiter’s lives easier coming into 2025.
Reduced time to hire
Talent pools are incredibly efficient. If you think about it, they’re kind of like having a line of people in front of your door waiting to interview for the positions before they even arise. They help streamline the recruitment process by lowering time-to-hire and, therefore, make the whole process less resource-intensive.
For example, Toggl Hire’s talent pool feature helps you fill unexpected vacancies and hard-to-fill roles with a reservoir of pre-qualified talent at your fingertips. This helps you avoid those business slow-downs from unforeseen circumstances or highly specialized open positions.
While time to hire remains a core recruitment metric, companies are increasingly also looking at the quality of hire. As Amy Schultz, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Canva, explains, “For years, Talent Acquisition has been focused on metrics like time-to-fill and acceptance rates. But today, leadership is asking us about the quality of our hires and how we are measuring that.”
Cost-effective hiring
Talent pools don’t just save time — they save money, too. You don’t need to spend so much on advertising when you already have a line of candidates out the door.
Companies with great talent pools don’t need to invest so much in sourcing or posting on external job boards, job openings, or recruitment agencies.
It also optimizes recruitment budgets over time, as you don’t experience so much variability in your spending as when you’re hiring from scratch every time. Costs kind of even out, making finances more predictable and stable.
Improved candidate experience
Keeping the old candidate data from your ATS can improve the candidate experience once they’re part of the talent pool. Use the information gathered during the recruitment process to personalize the communications you send these previously “unsuccessful” candidates.
It can be tempting to outsource this kind of work to AI — indeed, 73% of HR professionals already use AI in some capacity to help with recruitment and hiring. But as John Vlastelica, CEO of Recruiting Toolbox highlights, maintaining a human touch is key.
“The best recruiters must be great at building relationships and creating high-touch candidate experiences that will help them rise above the bots,” he says.
Setting up these communications will help your organization stand out as a company that values people and puts effort into nurturing relationships. This can lighten the blow of rejection for candidates while boosting satisfaction and loyalty among potential hires.
Strong loyalty can help your bottom line, too — companies with a strong employer brand experience a 50% decrease in cost per hire.
Enhanced diversity and inclusion
If used intentionally, talent pools can help diversity and inclusion bloom. By actively sourcing talent from diverse communities, underrepresented groups, and varied backgrounds, you can build a more representative candidate pipeline.
According to a 2024 report from Hunt Scanlon Media, over 55% of recruitment leaders surveyed listed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as their focus, only second in priority to AI.
In the same report, Saul Gomez, director of IDEA at TI Verbatim Consulting, makes it clear — getting diverse talent through the door is only the first step. Active measures have to be taken to build an environment of psychological safety where everyone trusts it is safe for them to be heard.
“If we’re not being inclusive of diversity, then how are we leveraging it? How are you capitalizing on it? It’s worth asking, ‘Are we maximizing what our talent pool has to offer?’ At the end of the day, people want to feel included…and in order to leverage the diversity that organizations have, you need individuals to feel they are valued for themselves,” he says.
Another key trend driving increasing diversity is the shift to skills, rather than degrees, when evaluating candidates for positions. In a recent survey conducted by Intelligent.com, 70% of companies reported already having eliminated bachelor’s degree requirements to create a more diverse workforce.
A shift towards judging candidates based on their skills rather than higher education can increase your talent pool 10x while also addressing critical skills gaps and boosting diversity.
How to build a talent pool
There are four parts to building a talent pool: source, segment, engage, and recruit.
Keeping those parts in mind, below are some effective strategies and best practices for creating and maintaining a robust talent pool filled with qualified and engaged job candidates.
Step 1: Source candidates for your talent pool
Social media: Use social media to create content showing why your business is a great place to work, and include a call to action that drives candidates to your career site. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for this, but don’t ignore “non-professional” social platforms, such as X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram, if you want to target a particular demographic.
Careers pages and job boards: Don’t miss the opportunity to capture the details of candidates actively searching on your career site or interacting with your job boards. Drive them to sign up for your talent pool by submitting a free application, so you can stay in touch with them and notify them when a good fit role becomes available. Many job boards also allow you to capture information from candidates who have viewed your vacancies.
Previous applicants and employees: Ask unsuccessful candidates and previous employees if they want to be added to your talent pool. This is a great way to keep in touch with job seekers and consider them for future roles.
Referrals: Employee referrals are a great way to source top talent. Incentivize your staff to refer the best people in their network to get more submissions.
Recruitment agencies: Work with recruitment agencies to source candidates for specific roles. This can be a great way to reach a wider pool of candidates and find top talent you may not be able to find on your own.
Step 2: Segment your talent pool by organizing candidates
By segmenting your talent pools, you can tailor your messages and job opportunities to specific groups of candidates. But how do you segment your talent pools in the most efficient way to speed up the hiring process?
Consider attributes like:
Job function
Skills
Experience level
Location
Interests
Sorting candidates by these factors will help you send targeted messages that resonate with each group. Don’t be one of the companies that send unsuitable openings to candidates due to poor segmentation (seriously, 3 in 10 candidates report this happening).
But segmentation isn’t just about who they are; it’s also about where they are in your recruitment process.
For example, you can keep track of people who completed skills assessments but weren’t selected for the next stage or have been engaging with your social media posts but haven’t applied yet. This way, you can make sure you’re reaching out to the right people at the right time with the right message, keeping everything organized and efficient.
Top tip:
Segment your talent pool before communicating with it. Doing so will make creating and sending personalized messages so much easier.
Step 3: Nurture and engage your talent pools
Building talent pools is like tending to a garden: nurturing and engaging them is where the real magic happens.
Simply collecting candidate details and storing them in a database won’t help you build strong relationships and keep candidates excited about the possibility of working with you. To stay connected with candidates in your talent pools, consider the following strategies:
Provide value by sharing high-quality content, such as commentary on the latest industry news, research insights, and professional resources.
Create networking opportunities by hosting free events and workshops for qualified candidates. These events will allow candidates to meet and engage with your employees, learn from peer-to-peer feedback, and enjoy free pizza (which is great but should never be all you offer actual employees).
Organize career days to give qualified candidates a glimpse into your company culture and career opportunities.
Don’t forget the power of personalization, either:
Reach out to candidates with tailored messages acknowledging their unique skill sets and interests.
Use their preferred communication channels, whether it’s email, social media, or even a good old-fashioned phone call.
Let them know they’re more than just another name on a list — they’re valued members of your talent community.
Top tip:
Leverage technology to make nurturing and engaging easier. You can use HR tools and applicant tracking systems to streamline your efforts. This way, you can reach a larger audience while still maintaining a personal touch.
Unsure which tools to use? Read through our complete breakdown of the 15 best recruiting tools this year.
Step 4: Recruit from your talent pools when a position opens
When it’s time to fill open roles, recruiting from your talent pools can feel like finding the perfect puzzle piece from a collection you’ve been carefully curating.
This is why it’s important not to burn any bridges with unsuccessful candidates — 49.5% of them would happily join your talent pool if offered!
Reach out to the candidates in your talent pools who have the skills and qualifications you’re seeking. Strong segmentation and AI tools can help streamline this task and ensure your passive candidates are always in the loop about upcoming opportunities.
Make it personal and craft messages that show genuine interest in their career goals and how they could contribute to your company. It’s about making them feel special and excited about the opportunity. And don’t forget to highlight any new developments or perks that might pique their interest. After all, you want them to be as enthusiastic about the job as you are.
Timing is everything, too. Monitor the ebb and flow of your talent pools. When a position opens up, strike while the iron is hot.
7 tips for keeping your talent pool full of high-quality candidates
Now that you know what a talent pool is and how to build one, it’s time to focus on the quality. A database is only as good as the quality of the candidates within it. Don’t fall into the trap of having a poor-quality talent pool by following these tips.
1. Focus on niche job boards
If you’re attracting talent pool applicants through job boards, it’s time to take a more targeted approach. Given building your talent pool isn’t based on volume but rather quality, the mainstream job boards such as Indeed and Monster may create too much noise.
Instead, focus your efforts on niche job sites targeted to the type of talent you are looking for. This isn’t just about skills either — ensure you also consider ways of working. While there are specific job boards for developers, salespeople, or legal professionals, job boards also exist for full-time remote workers and freelancers.
2. Test candidates during the initial application process
According to the SHRM 2024 Talent Trends Report, 54% of companies are now using some form of pre-employment assessment to gauge candidates’ skills, abilities, and knowledge. What’s more, 76% of hiring professionals see these test results as just as important, if not more important, than education level or years of experience.
One of the easiest ways to keep the quality of your talent pool high is to create a standard of entry. Why let anyone join when you can test candidates’ abilities and filter out the best?
Skills testing tools allow you to create bespoke tests, which can be used as the perfect benchmark for your talent pool. Tests are quick and easy to set up with a range of pre-set templates for popular job roles such as Account Executives, Data Scientists, Product Managers, and many more.
Almost 4 in 5 recruiters say that using pre-employment assessments has improved their quality of hire, but careful, some have reported experiencing longer time-to-fill as a result.
With one-click candidate screening, Toggl Hire is designed to give you the best of both worlds — higher quality and faster hires.
Top tip:
If you need some more proof, you can check out how companies across the globe use Toggl Hire to simplify all aspects of their hiring.
3. Regularly engage with candidates
You’ve filled the auditorium seats — now you gotta grab the mic and hop on stage! What are you going to say?
The trick is to engage with your candidates little and often. This is not the time to shy away or play the humility card. Your goal should be to authentically showcase why your company is a great place to work, the things you’re achieving, and your vision for the future.
Approach it a bit like you would approach posting on social media. You want to be consistent, authentic, relatable, and as organic as possible. Here are some ideas of what you could share:
Targeted job offers based on the individual’s skills
Offer happy birthday greetings if you have that info
Send exclusive invites to trade fairs, events, or webinars
Ask for feedback on your own recruitment process — make the candidates feel like their voice matters
Highlight any recent big wins, product updates, and what you’re working toward next
Share pictures of company meet-ups if you’re a remote company!
Top tip:
Use these touch-points to show a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what life is like on your team.
4. Regularly cleanse your talent pool
Like all databases (or actual pools!), you should regularly cleanse data that are out of date. This should be a priority for every recruiting team.
If someone applied to your talent pool a long time ago, their situation may have changed, and their initial interest may no longer be valid.
If you can automate your processes, try a pre-cleanse email. That way, you also allow the future candidate to re-submit their interest or update their profile to reflect their most up-to-date information.
Ultimately, whether you remove candidates or get more up-to-date information, you know your talent pool is more current, and, by default, the quality is much higher!
5. Polish your employer branding
Boosting your employer brand efforts will go a long way with external recruiting. It’s not just about attracting candidates to the job itself but also creating an enticing company culture.
In today’s competitive job market, candidates are looking for more than just a paycheck. They want to be a part of a company that aligns with their values and offers opportunities for growth and development. By showcasing your unique company culture, values, and employee benefits, you can attract top talent who are not only highly skilled but also excited to work with you.
Invest in building a compelling employer brand through your website, social media presence, and other recruitment channels. Highlight your company’s mission, values, and employee testimonials to give candidates a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you.
Case Study example: Spotify
Spotify pulled off a 3-in-1 we absolutely love.
1) Their talent pool is open for anyone to join, right there on their website.
2) The process is super on-brand, elevating their employer brand and desirability. (The call to action is ”Join the band” I mean, come on!)
3) They’re targeting students, meaning they’re getting first dibs on the newest talent entering the market.
This is genius, as Spotify will be front of mind as a place to work for any young minds interested in music and/or code. Working and communicating with so many younger folks, they’ll also get a competitive advantage in hiring and retaining the next generation (which, as we’ve mentioned, has got recruiters worried).
As Hung Lee, Curator at Recruiting Brainfood, puts it, “Gen Z isn’t interested in snazzy marketing collateral. Employer branding efforts need to go away from post-production towards revealing employees’ work and experience at the company to a wider audience.”
And that’s exactly what Spotify is doing.
6. Collect feedback to improve your processes
You don’t know what you don’t know. And there are two main ways to find out — directly, or indirectly.
Directly ask candidates about their experiences and feelings regarding your recruitment approach. This can be via email, surveys, or even gamified incentives with gift card prizes.
Another option is to indirectly collect feedback via platforms like Glassdoor. Here, you’ll be able to see exactly what candidates thought of your selection and interview processes — unfiltered.
Considering that 84% of job seekers consider a company’s reputation before applying, it’s a worthwhile investment of your time to see where candidates think you’re falling short. Set up systems to actively monitor and respond to reviews on Glassdoor and similar sites and take note of any comments that appear again and again. You might be surprised at how you’re being perceived (both in good and not-so-good ways!).
Building your employer brand in public like this is a great look — it shows transparency, ownership, and responsibility and that you care about the humans behind your candidate processes. A positive reputation not only attracts top talent but also reduces hiring costs, as candidates are more likely to apply directly rather than via an external agency or expensive recruitment marketing channels.
Top tip:
This is a positive feedback cycle. Giving candidates a positive experience strengthens your employer brand, which makes a more dedicated talent pool, and your future hiring easier!
7. Keep engaging passive candidates
While having an active talent pipeline is important, don’t overlook the potential of passive candidates. These individuals may not be actively looking for a job, but they could be open to new opportunities if approached in the right way.
Engaging with passive candidates requires a strategic approach. Look for professionals in your industry who demonstrate potential or align with your company’s values. Reach out to them through personalized messages that highlight the specific reasons why they would be a good fit for your organization.
Use your talent pool to nurture relationships with passive candidates over time. Share valuable industry insights, relevant articles, and updates about your organization that could pique their interest. By consistently staying on their radar and building a rapport, you increase the chances of them considering a future opportunity with your organization.
Is there one key to great talent pooling?
When it comes to getting talent pooling “right,” the biggest tip we can give is:
Take the time for effective planning.
While it isn’t the one and only key point to consider, it carries a lot of weight and, by being strategic, can make your life in recruitment much easier.
Building an effective talent pool starts with aligning it with your organization’s values and employment needs. It involves reviewing big-picture strategies, assessing in-house talent, and creating strategies to build competency and bridge skills gaps.
By continuously asking for feedback both internally and from candidates, you can constantly monitor the talent pool’s effectiveness and keep it tightly tied to your company’s goals and budgets.
Use Toggl Hire’s ATS to build a talent pool
Toggl Hire’s talent pool feature is built to help you seamlessly carry over your ATS into a pool of titan candidates. We support hiring managers handle the talent management process in three key ways:
Streamlined Candidate Management: With Toggl Hire, you have access to a centralized and organized database full of all your past test takers. You can easily add, update, or remove candidates as needed, making it simpler to manage your candidate records and streamline your recruitment process.
Pre-Qualified Talent: Unexpected vacancies and hard-to-fill roles can slow down your business operations. With Toggl Hire’s talent pool, you have a reservoir of pre-qualified talent readily available at your fingertips, enabling faster and more efficient hiring decisions.
Advanced Search Capabilities: Finding the right fit for a role involves considering various factors like skill, location, and role. Our advanced search capabilities allow you to easily sift through your talent pool based on these parameters, helping you find perfect-match candidates in seconds.
Never let a high-potential candidate slip through your fingers again. Create your Toggl Hire account today and get started for free!
Julia Masselos is a remote work expert and digital nomad with 5 years experience as a B2B SaaS writer. She holds two science degrees Edinburgh and Newcastle universities, and loves writing about STEM, productivity, and the future of work. When she's not working, you'll find her out with friends, solo in nature, or hanging out in a coffee shop.
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Insights into building businesses better, from hiring to profitability (and everything in between). New editions drop every two weeks.
Each day consists of 86,400 seconds or 1,440 minutes. That sounds like a lot of time, but once we remove sleep from the equation, much of that time goes by in a flash.
To improve our time management, we must first understand how we spend our time and then make changes to optimize our actions — like a doctor diagnosing an ailment before prescribing treatment.
Since you’re not (likely) a doctor, we’ll help you get started with this quick guide, which explains what time tracking involves, how easy it is, and the benefits you can expect once you fess up about how you spend each hour of the day.
TL;DR—Key Takeaways
Time tracking is exactly what it sounds like — recording and analyzing how you spend time on different tasks and activities.
It has many benefits, such as more accurate invoicing, a better understanding of project costs, the ability to create timesheets, improved project management, and others.
There are multiple ways to track time, such as manual, digital, and automated, as well as productivity techniques such as Pomodoro and time blocking.
Great time tracking software should have a great user experience, lots of integrations, customization options, detailed reporting, and data security, among other features.
To get your team excited about time tracking, explain why it’s important, show them the ropes, and lead by example to demonstrate your own commitment to optimizing time.
Time tracking is the process of recording and analyzing how you spend time on different tasks and activities. You can record these details individually or as part of a team. And it’s also suitable for analyzing what’s happening in both your personal and work hours.
For example, on Monday, you might spend 35 minutes eating lunch, 4 hours 15 minutes in meetings, 1 hour 15 minutes at the gym, 2 hours 10 minutes commuting to work, etc. Once you’ve tracked these insights, you’ll see the big picture of where every minute goes. Beware—there might be some shockers in there!
Top tip:
The main point: the purpose of time tracking is not to track time in itself but to use the information as a means to an end, whether improving your quality of life or becoming more efficient at work.
What are the benefits of time tracking?
When we commit to time tracking, the main benefit is increased productivity. Being presented with how we spend our time in black and white makes it impossible to ignore the minutes we waste on unproductive activities.
When we harness our personal time better, we can spend more quality time with our friends and families, doing things we love and care about. Sounds like a win to us.
In a professional context, you’ll also enjoy some of the following benefits of time tracking:
📄 Producing more accurate client invoices
Accurate time tracking is critical if you charge your clients by the hour. A minute here or there daily can stack up to thousands of dollars of damage every year.
In some cases, you might overcharge your clients and face their questions or lose them to a business rival. But equally, it’s just as easy to shoot yourself in the foot and forget to charge for all of the work time you’ve spent on a particular client.
Time tracking also helps when differentiating between billable hours and non-billable hours. This highlights the amount of time your employees spend on tasks that don’t improve your bottom line. The promise? Commit to time tracking, and you’ll enjoy better invoicing and increased revenue.
💰 Understanding project costs better
When you track time for projects, you’ll start to understand how long it takes to complete portions of the project and the final product. Most importantly, you’ll know how long you require to produce quality work without feeling rushed or burned out.
For example, a good developer can build a website in one month. If a new client approaches them and asks to build a website in ten days, the designer knows it’s not feasible.
The result is a better estimation of project costs. They’ll become better at resource allocation, budgeting, and predicting timelines for future projects.
Let’s say a prospective customer asks the developer to build that website for $5,000. Based on time tracking entries, they can determine if this means $20 or $80 per hour and whether the fee is worth their time.
⌛ Creating simple timesheets for hourly workers
HR teams use employee timesheets for non-salaried workers to determine:
Who worked
How long they worked for
How much to pay them
How much time off they’ve accumulated
While an important part of the working arrangement for hourly workers, time reports can be extremely tedious for the employees filling them in and the admin teams processing them. Ideally, you’ll use time tracking tools to manage time entries automatically. This ensures:
Each employee gets accurate and fair compensation
No one has to spend hours digging through spreadsheets in Excel and calculating time entries
Payroll is automated, and legal compliance becomes a breeze
Who spends their time on which task (and how much)
As a result, you can spot obstacles and inefficiencies without micromanagement. For example, you can determine that a particular client is taking double the time for task completion while paying the same as everyone else. Or you’ll become aware that certain employees purposely take longer to complete a task.
Ultimately, project time tracking gives you full visibility of your team’s activities, and you’re less likely to take on too much or work too little to be profitable.
🔓 Building trust and transparency
Imagine you have to charge a client $50,000 to build a mobile app. The client has just started working with you, and they don’t know much about app development.
The best way to convince them the work is worth the investment? Detailed timesheets.
Time tracking creates a bond of trust and transparency between a business and its clients. For each item on the invoice, you can add a line describing how much time it took, the hourly rate, and even who completed the work.
Popular time tracking methods
There’s more than one way to crack an egg, and the same is true of how you choose to track time. Here are some methods you can choose to slide into your workflows:
Manual time tracking
As the name suggests, you manually track the time to complete a task. You write down when you started and finished and then add the numbers at the end of the day, week, or month.
The biggest benefit of the manual method is that it’s easy and free. However, it’s very time-consuming, and you can quickly get tired of navigating spreadsheets and staring at the clock nonstop.
Swipe cards
Swipe-card time systems track employees’ time at physical locations and monitor attendance, absences, and breaks. They’re easy for the whole team to use and don’t require training.
Although more modern than punch card systems, this type of time clock still has some limitations. One is that it can’t be used to track remote employee time.
Digital time tracking
Time tracking apps such as Toggl Track allow you to hit a button to start a timer and once more when the work is done. Besides saving time, you also get integrations with other tools (e.g., project management software), automated timesheets and invoices, and much more.
This method allows you or your team members to track time on mobile devices, too, making it ideal for a team that is on the go.
Top tip:
The only downside of this timekeeping method is it may take time for your team to get accustomed to it. However, depending on the solution you choose, you might get help with that. Toggl Track Enterprise plans, for example, come with access to Toggl Solutions — enterprise-level time tracking system customizations.
Automated time tracking
Keeping an accurate record of all activities in one place is easy when everything is automated. An app can simply analyze the window or app you’re using and break down your time entries.
For example, it can tell you how long you spent in Google Docs, Figma, Docker, or some other app. This method is ideal as it doesn’t add new bottlenecks to your workdays; instead, it breaks down activities neatly without manual work.
Mobile time tracking
If you have a distributed workforce across various locations, they can log their time using their mobile devices. With the right time tracking software, they can start the timer on their mobile and stop it on a desktop device.
Geofencing
As an alternative to mobile tracking, geofencing is another way to automatically track the time when an employee enters or leaves a specific location. Administrators set up virtual boundaries, and when employees enter or exit these boundaries, an app automatically tracks their time.
This method can be useful for businesses with field workers or remote employees who may not have access to a computer. However, it can feel too much like surveillance for some.
Pomodoro time tracking
In this time tracking system, you do focused bursts of productive work (usually 25 minutes) followed by a break (usually 5 minutes).
Pomodoro forces you to work without distractions and take breaks to get rest and prepare for another Pomodoro cycle. It’s also one of the templates offered in many time tracking platforms.
Time blocking
In this method, you block off a time period to work on a specific task or set of tasks without interruptions. For example, you might allocate a one-hour block to write or respond to emails. It’s ideal for those with busy schedules who work on tasks they can easily group.
How to use time tracking in different industries
Anyone can use time tracking tools, from small businesses and remote teams to Fortune 500 companies. However, different types of users will experience different benefits:
Freelancers
Freelancers can use time tracking to bill clients more accurately and get fair payment for the work they deliver. They can easily distinguish non-billable and billable time and only invoice clients for the work on their projects.
Perhaps most importantly, freelancers can use time tracking entries to establish trust and transparency with clients.
Lawyers rely on time tracking to bill clients by the hour, often commanding a hefty fee. Tracking their work hours on cases or in court helps them maintain transparency and justify their costs.
They can also determine which clients are taking more time than the others and what tasks take up most of their days.
Contractors typically juggle multiple clients at a time which requires strong self-discipline and careful time management.
Using time tracking platforms, contractors can accurately track projects and tasks per client. They can create accurate time logs and invoices, monitor progress, and identify bottlenecks in each project.
Service providers like IT support can use time tracking to improve their project management and determine which tasks and projects take up a huge chunk of their time. Based on their time analysis, they can better allocate their resources, prioritize tasks and projects, and improve their productivity.
Creative agencies can use time tracking to monitor their employees and clients. On the one hand, they get time cards with each employee’s records for the day and month, ensuring everyone earns their salary.
On the other hand, agencies can more accurately predict project pricing and scope. For example, they can easily avoid scope creep and charging too little for a project that could take double the estimated time.
The famous Pareto principle states that 20% of the input is responsible for 80% of the results. But in large teams, it can be easy to lose track of who does what (and when).
Time tracking in large teams lets you determine responsible stakeholders and their total contribution to the finished project. Additionally, large teams can save massive amounts of time with automated timesheets, invoices, and payroll.
Essential features of great time tracking software
The features you need will depend on your goals and needs. However, any great time tracking software should have the following:
User-friendly interface: The app should be easy to navigate so employees can adopt it quickly without a steep learning curve.
Integration capabilities: Integrations with tools such as project management platforms, invoicing apps, and payroll software save time for your team. Instead of switching back and forth between apps, you can do everything in one window.
Real-time tracking: You’ll gain a bird’s eye view of your team and their performance, enabling quick decision-making and prioritization.
Detailed reporting: You should be able to generate detailed and insightful reports for each task, project, and employee. These reports are valuable for your clients and your team, as you can pinpoint obstacles, improve productivity, and track project progress.
Customization options: Each team has its own processes, workflows, and stakeholders. Your time tracking solution should adapt to your unique needs and preferences.
Data security: The data in the time tracking platform should be yours and yours only. This protects your business, employees, and clients from unauthorized access.
3 common time tracking mistakes
Time tracking is a powerful tool for managing work and productivity, but it can be less effective when these mistakes occur:
1. Confusing time tracking with employee monitoring
Time tracking and employee monitoring can often be mistaken for the same practice, but they serve entirely different purposes.
Managers can use time tracking to understand work patterns, optimize processes, and improve productivity. In contrast, employee monitoring involves recording employees’ activities to ensure they work as expected. Compared to time tracking, employee monitoring is incredibly invasive, often using tracked keystrokes and screen activity as “proof” of what workers are doing.
Top tip:
Toggl is firmly against employee monitoring as it promotes a culture of surveillance rather than trust. If you’re looking for non-invasive time tracking tools, here are 7 Best Employee Monitoring Software (That Aren’t Creepy).
2. Not tracking billable and non-billable hours
Often, employees only track billable project hours they can charge their clients for. They forget about all those extra hours spent on non-billable tasks like internal meetings or administrative work.
This is a mistake, as tracking non-billable hours can help you spot inefficient work processes and understand overall productivity. Proper tracking can also help you adjust your rates.
For example, if a client project requires 25 hours spent strategizing internally but 10 hours executing the work, it would be a mistake to only charge for the 10 hours. You might need to change your rate structure or negotiate with your client to reach a fairer deal.
3. Using time tracking data for appraisals
Although time tracking data shows how team members spend their work time, it doesn’t capture the full picture of an employee’s contributions.
Analyzing work performance based only on time tracking data is unfair as it overlooks the quality of work, creativity, or problem-solving skills.
How to get employees excited about implementing a time tracking app
As a business owner, time tracking obviously has immense value for you. But how do you explain it to Jane from accounting, who already has a packed calendar and 15 different apps she uses daily? Here are some tips.
1. Explain why time tracking is important
Highlight how accurate time tracking contributes to better project estimates and billing and improves employee productivity and accountability.
In other words, show employees that time tracking benefits everyone, from the team to the clients. Reiterate you’re not using it to micromanage or spy on your team.
2. Show your team how to track their time
Before they start using a time tracking app, show your team how it’s done. Tools such as Toggl Track are super simple, but you should still show the team how you want them to use the app.
Training your team on how to track their time:
Ensures accuracy and consistency
Reduces the resistance to change
Optimizes tool usage
Whether it’s a simple spreadsheet or dedicated software, employees need to see practical tips on tracking time to demystify the process.
3. Lead by example
Show your team that no one is exempt from time tracking, even the managers and the CEO. Otherwise, if only the employees are tracking time, they might get a feeling that management is protected and time tracking entries will be used against them.
Fire up the automated time tracker as you begin work, and let the app do the rest of its magic. It will benefit you (no matter your role or skill level) and show your team you’re all equal.
How Toggl Track can help you track time
Once you have your time tracking data collected accurately, you can use it in many different ways. We’ll explore each in more detail.
1. Track project profitability
Tracking project profitability helps project managers identify which projects bring in money and which do not. With these insights, they can plan future projects better to increase business profitability.
With Toggl Track, project profitability is easy to measure. Use the Insights feature to analyze your team’s and projects’ financial performance. Explore project earnings, labor costs, and employee and project profits.
2. Identify bottlenecks
A bottleneck in project management is a point in a process where work slows down or gets stuck.
Identifying bottleneck tasks in a project helps managers address inefficiencies and streamline workflows. To identify bottlenecks with Toggl Track, start by estimating tasks:
Click Create New Project or Edit Project
Go to the Time Estimate section
Enter your custom hourly estimate
To create task-based estimates:
Open the Project
Select the Tasks tab
Add or edit an estimate from the Estimate column
After you’ve created your estimates, go to the Project Dashboard to compare estimates vs. actual time tracked and identify potential bottleneck tasks.
3. Improve resource allocation and utilization
Resource allocation is finding and assigning available resources to a project.
Resource utilization refers to how effectively these resources are used for maximum productivity.
Good resource allocation and utilization keep projects on track and within budget by improving productivity, efficiency, and waste minimization.
Top tip:
You can use Toggl Plan’s Team Timeline to allocate resources more efficiently. You’ll get a visual overview of who’s working on what and when to make informed resource allocation decisions.
Toggl Track integrates seamlessly with Toggl Plan, so you can start the timer directly from Plan. Just right-click on any task and select Start time tracking
4. Monitor employee workload
Monitoring employee workload prevents burnout, keeps workloads balanced, and promotes a healthy work environment.
With Toggl Track, you can easily view your team’s tracked time and what they’re working on. Go to the Team Activity tab under Organization > Workspace > Select Workspace> Activity tab.
Here, you can see the most active team members from the past seven workdays and use the dropdown filter to review Activity by User or the last 20 time entries.
5. Identify training needs
Identifying inefficient team members is important. Why? It helps you understand who needs training to perform better and who needs better tools.
Toggl Track’s Detailed Report makes it easy to analyze individual time entries and spot ineffective work. You can access this report by clicking the Reports tab on the left side menu and selecting Detailed from the top center of the screen.
6. Compliance with local laws
Depending on where you base your business, you may need to comply with local labor laws regarding time tracking and employee work hours. For example, new regulations in the EU require all businesses to implement time tracking systems to record employee hours (as of July 1st, 2024.)
Through its Export functionality, Toggl Track makes it easy to provide a detailed breakdown of time tracked when needed. You can choose to export time entries or user data with total hours worked and overtime to easily share during audits or regulatory reviews.
7. Cultivate self-accountability
Project managers can use time tracking data to cultivate self-accountability among team members. Here are some tips:
Share time tracking insights with employees so they can see their work habits and areas for improvement
Suggest employees set personal benchmarks based on their time tracking data to keep them accountable and focused on their goals
Recognize and reward employees who improve their time management to motivate them to take time tracking seriously.
Get started with a free time tracker
Time tracking isn’t just a way to keep tabs on employees scrolling TikTok instead of putting hours in Jira. It’s a tool that improves productivity and profitability and benefits everyone in the workplace.
Even for individuals, time tracking can help you become more aware of your day-to-day obligations and become a better version of yourself.
The best part is that time tracking is easy and free. With Toggl Track, you can gain control of where and how you spend your time.
Mile is a B2B content marketer specializing in HR, martech and data analytics. Ask him about thoughts on reducing hiring bias, the role of AI in modern recruitment, or how to immediately spot red flags in a job ad.
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Harvest is a well-known time-tracking app that allows users to log and track their time across multiple projects. With valuable features like analytics, reporting, invoicing, and integrations with other tools, it’s a solid choice for many businesses.
But it isn’t the right choice for everyone. Some users report missing features, while others say the reporting doesn’t meet their needs. Every software has its pros and cons, but if you’re curious about exploring Harvest alternatives, you’re in the right place.
Top Harvest alternatives at a glance
Tool
G2 Rating
Who’s it Best For?
Toggl Track
4.6
A simple-to-use time tracking tool known for its powerful, flexible capabilities. Best for freelancers and agencies who need a productivity boost.
Hubstaff
4.5
Time tracking with GPS and geofencing, ideal for remote and field teams needing accountability. Great for distributed workforces requiring detailed productivity insights.
TimeCamp
4.7
Automatic time and billable hour tracking, best for small to medium businesses and freelancers needing seamless integrations with project management tools.
If you need a hawk-eye on where your employee’s time goes, this is the tool. URL tracking shows you as much detail as you’d like to see.
Replicon
4.3
Enterprise-grade time tracking with compliance, payroll, and resource management. Ideal for big companies needing detailed analytics and advanced reporting.
Everhour
4.7
Seamless integration directly into project management tools like Asana and Trello. Less tab switching, more deep work.
Wrike
4.2
Project management tool with built-in time trfacking. Great for teams looking for smooth cross-functional communication and transparency.
QuickBooks Time
4.5
An advanced accounting software that integrates time tracking with invoicing and payroll.
Timely
4.8
Project management tool with built-in time tracking. Great for teams looking for smooth cross-functional communication and transparency.
Paymo
4.6
End-to-end project management with time tracking, invoicing, and task management. Best for small agencies and freelancers who need a 2-in-1 time and project tracking solution.
Why Harvest might not work for everyone
The best time tracking tools should, well, save you time. They should not add a bunch of admin to your workflow. Of course, everyone works in different ways, so a customizable tool that can streamline employee performance and boost profitability is an investment worth making.
While Harvest does have a lot going for it, there are some limitations to consider. Depending on your specific needs, they might be deal-breakers that point you toward other options.
Here are some common issues users have complained about on review websites like Capterra and G2:
Very manual most of the time, which is time-consuming and error-prone
No opportunity to account for extenuating circumstances can make it feel a little too “Big Brother”
If you’re worried about these points, it’s fair to consider alternatives to Harvest that might suit you and your team members a bit better. That said, we recommend testing Harvest alongside a few other tools to see how they compare side-by-side.
11 alternatives to Harvest time tracking
First up, here’s how we handpicked the 11 best Harvest alternatives for time tracking:
We combed through hundreds of software user reviews and feedback to see what real people had to say.
We double-checked each tool to see how the time tracking features stacked up against each other.
We explored how different tools work in different use cases. We’re all about inclusivity, you see.
So, without further ado, here is our breakdown of a few great alternatives to Harvest so you can see for yourself which tool is right for you.
1. Toggl Track
📌 Best for anybody who wants to optimize their time with an incredibly user-friendly timekeeper. You can start tracking time in just a few clicks.
Toggl Track is a powerful timer that blends user-friendly time tracking and timesheet management in one package. Keep an eye on your time with an automated dashboard, summary reports, and detailed breakdowns. Our platform integrates with 100+ tools and offers invoicing features.
Top features
Multiple device tracking: Toggl Track syncs effortlessly across browser extensions, desktop apps, and mobile devices
Insights: Keep an eye on profitability with simple time reports and insights for further optimization
Billable and non-billable hours: Accurately predict project rates based on historical billable hours
Historic billable rates: Set and modify historic billable rates to past or future data
Custom dashboard reporting: Go beyond a template and design your dashboard as you wish
Project management: Simplify client and team management with straightforward task lists
Pros
Intuitive mobile app and Chrome extension
Value-packed free plan
Easy-to-read time reports
Cons
The free plan is limited to just five users
Manual start-stop timer
Plan
Cost
Best for
Free
$0
Personal use
Starter
$9 per user/month
Smaller teams with basic time tracking needs
Premium
$18 per user/month
Teams needing online and offline functionality for tracking time and profitability.
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Enterprise teams with custom functionality and account management needs
Hubstaff is the ultimate employee monitoring tool. It offers URL and screenshot tracking and automates time entries. It’s an easy-to-use time tracking solution that gives employers lots of visibility — perhaps too much, in our opinion (we’re very anti-surveillance, you see).
Top features
Real-time tracking: Measures time and productivity metrics with screenshots, app usage, and activity rates
GPS and geofencing: Ideal for mobile teams who work between the field and the office
Payroll and invoicing: Built-in payroll integrations for simplified payments and invoicing
Project management: Task management and budgeting tools to streamline projects
Integrations: Connects with over 30 tools, including Trello, Asana, and QuickBooks
📌 Best for teams seeking deeper data and automation.
TimeCamp is a fully automated time tracking tool. It offers more advanced productivity insights and project budgeting features than Harvest, making it ideal for those who want a detailed view of their team’s time and effort.
Top features
Automatic time tracking: Records work time seamlessly across apps and devices
Project management integration: Syncs with tools like Trello, Jira, and monday.com
Productivity insights: Offers detailed reports on time usage and efficiency
Budgeting and invoicing: Tracks budgets and creates invoices directly
Timesheet approval: Delivers easy team management with approval workflows
Attendance tracking: Tracks absences, overtime, and holidays
📌 Best for budget-conscious teams with flexible needs, thanks to their “build-as-you-go” model.
Clockify’s free plan immediately distinguishes it from Harvest. And when you upgrade to the paid version, it’s available for unlimited users and projects. While Harvest boasts more advanced invoicing and expense tracking, Clockify wins in simplicity and ease of use.
Top features
Set billable rates: Track all time effectively and never have a single minute unaccounted for
Detailed reports: Generate customizable reports for detailed insights
Automatic invoicing: Simplifies billing based on tracked hours and expenses
Kiosk feature: Allows employees to clock in and out from a shared device using a specific PIN
Pros
Timekeeping software is intuitive and simple to use
Budget-friendly
Can have unlimited users
Ability to customize for both on-site and remote teams
📌 Best for small businesses looking to optimize productivity through better time management.
DeskTime is designed for teams that prioritize productivity and team performance over traditional time tracking methods. It eliminates manual time entries and offers fully automatic time tracking and productivity analysis instead. Usersrave about its insights into employee efficiency and real-time project monitoring.
Top features
Project progress and tracking: Teams can assign tasks and monitor time spent efficiently
Automatic time tracking: No manual input is needed to track hours
Productivity analysis: Allows you to mark applications as productive or unproductive
URL tracking: Employee management features automatically track all computer activity (with higher-tier plans, employers can also screenshot employee’s devices remotely)
📌 Best for bigger businesses needing comprehensive compliance tracking and field offices.
Replicon is a great Harvest alternative if you’re looking for advanced compliance management and labor law adherence features. It provides extensive tools for managing project costs and employee attendance, making it ideal for organizations with complex regulatory needs.
Top features
Comprehensive time tracking: Tracks billable hours, projects, and attendance
Advanced project costing: Real-time budget insights for precise cost management
Compliance management: Ensures adherence to labor regulations globally
Mobile accessibility: Time tracking on the go with mobile apps
Real-time analytics: Instant access to productivity and profitability metrics
📌 Best for team collaboration and project management with seamless time tracking built-in.
Everhour is a project management tool first and a time tracker second. It basically works like an extension that embeds itself into tools like Asana or Trello to measure how much time you spend on different tasks. Everhour also offers comprehensive budget tracking and detailed reporting, making it perfect for teams focused on collaborative project management.
Top features
Budgeting and forecasting: Helps manage budgets and predict future costs
Invoicing and payroll: Automatically creates invoices and calculates payroll
Task and project management: Organizes tasks within projects for easy tracking
Browser extension: Offers both Chrome and Firefox plugins
Team availability tracking: Monitors who’s available and who’s not
Pros
Free forever (up to five users)
Real-time progress overview
Natively track time from different tools
Cons
Only two plans to choose from
Not built for different time zones, making it challenging for distributed teams
📌 Best for teams needing solid project management abilities.
Similar to Everhour, Wrike combines project management with time tracking. While Harvest is mainly a time tracking and invoicing tool, Wrike offers extensive features for task management and collaboration, making it a great choice for teams that need comprehensive project oversight alongside time tracking.
Top features
Project and task management: Full suite for task assignment, tracking, and deadlines
Built-in time tracking: Track time spent on tasks within the project
Collaboration tools: Real-time file sharing, comments, and notifications
Workload management: Balance workloads with drag-and-drop scheduling
Comprehensive reporting: Visual reports to monitor progress and productivity
Pros
All-in-one project management platform with built-in timekeeping
📌 Best for businesses already using QuickBooks for accounting.
QuickBooks Time is built to integrate with QuickBooks accounting software. It also offers great time tracking, employee scheduling, and resource management features. If you want to see how your team’s time turns into finances, this might be the tool for you.
Top features
Job scheduling: Create and manage shifts to organize work hours effectively
Payroll and invoicing: Tracks time and converts billable hours into invoices while integrating with payroll and accounting software
Geofencing and GPS location tracking: Only with the Elite plan. This feature could be a good fit for mobile workforces, removing the need for manual clock-in and clock-out
Time off management: Centralized management for leave requests and reports
Pros
Easy to use
Great functionality on the mobile app
Seamless integration with QuickBooks accounting and payroll software
📌 Best for teams who want fully automated time tracking.
Timely differentiates itself from Harvest by focusing on AI-driven time tracking without manually starting or stopping a timer. Timely also offers a unique visual timeline and automatic categorization of tasks for increased efficiency and reporting accuracy.
Top features
Background time tracking: Automatically logs time without user intervention
Total privacy: Employees can choose which entries to include in their timesheets
One-click invoicing: The integration syncs directly with QuickBooks accounting tool
AI tools: Automatically track both active and free time. An AI Assistant also categorizes tasks and optimizes work scheduling
Pros
Automatically turns the timer on and off with no manual input required
📌 Best for freelancers and small teams needing financial and invoicing features.
Paymo focuses on invoicing, budgeting, and expense tracking features. It’s designed to help individuals and teams get a better grip on their finances and understand how their time management impacts their revenue.
Top features
Time tracking: Easy manual and automatic time tracking for projects
Invoicing: Customizable invoices with expense tracking for billing clients
Project management: Comprehensive tools for planning, scheduling, and managing tasks
Reporting: Detailed reports on time, costs, and team productivity
Task management: Organize tasks with deadlines, priorities, and assignments
Mobile apps: Track time and manage projects on the go with mobile access
Picking the wrong time tracking tool can cost you time, money, and, in the worst cases, your team’s trust.
Toggl Track offers a simple time tracker your team will actually use. With a minimal learning curve and a strong distaste for “Big Brother” vigilance, Toggl Track believes in empowering employees to take back their time on their own terms.
It’s intuitive yet flexible — designed to work with automatic time tracking, start/stop timer, and manual time entry options. Generate invoices based on tracked billable and non-billable time, and with over 100 integrations, you can slot it into your workflow however you like.
Julia Masselos is a remote work expert and digital nomad with 5 years experience as a B2B SaaS writer. She holds two science degrees Edinburgh and Newcastle universities, and loves writing about STEM, productivity, and the future of work. When she's not working, you'll find her out with friends, solo in nature, or hanging out in a coffee shop.
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In 1776, modern economist Adam Smith dropped a truth bomb about productivity, introducing us to the idea that some kinds of work are “productive”….and others are not.
Nowadays, many of us try to construct the perfect productive day using various methodologies, devices, and technologies. And yet, no one has invented the end-all-be-all productivity tool. Because it doesn’t exist.
Like health or personal development, productivity is a compounding process shaped by various factors. You won’t become the best version of yourself just by exercising regularly but not keeping a good diet. Likewise, no single productivity app can fix all your time or task management problems.
For that reason, most people settle for a productivity stack — a collection of productivity apps working together to make the most of your time.
The best productivity apps at a glance
Todoist: Best for streamlined task management. Quickly add, prioritize, and manage your commitments using natural language commands.
Reclaim.ai: Best for setting your daily planning on auto-pilot with intelligent tools for time blocking, meeting management, and task (re)scheduling.
Freedom: Best for blocking distractions. You’ll customize blocklists to escape the pull of digital interruptions and reclaim your focus time.
Airtable: Best for automating project management. You’ll combine the simplicity of a spreadsheet with powerful automation features to streamline complex workflows.
Trello: Best for visual task management. Drag-and-drop boards make it easy to plan, collaborate, and execute simpler projects.
Caveday: Best for guided timeboxing sessions, enabling you to power through an important mono-task with shared accountability.
Toggl Track: Best for managing your focus. Simply analyze how you spend your day to unlock opportunities for higher productivity.
Zapier: Best for automating steps in recurrent workflows. Link two (or more!) popular business apps in one click to set repetitive tasks on cruise control.
Otter.ai: Best for managing audio files and meeting memos. The platform converts speech to text and organizes transcripts for easy search and collaboration.
Evernote: Best for keeping the information you need at your fingertips. Collect, store, and review your knowledge across devices.
Obsidian: Best for building digital knowledge systems. You’ll create a visual canvas of interlinked notes and ideas to drive your thought process and learning.
How we evaluated each app
To rank the best productivity apps, we first brainstormed the main sub-categories: task management, scheduling, distraction blocking, project management, focus work, process automation, and note-keeping.
Our internal team contributed ideas, and we ranked all options across set criteria: user experience, feature set, flexibility, and pricing. The apps with the highest scores made it to the final list.
The best productivity app for managing your to-do list
Todoist
Todoist is a strong alternative to complex project management tools. This app sorts your tasks across different projects, teams, and nested subtask views. Depending on your preference, you can view your commitments as a list, board, or calendar. From here, it’s a cinch to track your progress with features like priority levels, time-based reminders, and recurring due dates.
Todoist also offers some powerful collaboration features for teams. You can create multiple filter views, assign tasks with custom durations, exchange files and comments, manage roles and permissions, use pre-made project templates, and visualize everyone’s progress in a beautiful chart.
The vendor also recently added an AI assistant for Pro and Business Plans to help you manage tasks by:
Breaking down complex tasks into more manageable subtasks
Creating more actionable task descriptions
Giving tips on powering through delayed items
You can also experiment with custom prompts to chat with your virtual assistant about your goals and priorities.
Todoist pricing:
Free plan: Covers five personal projects
Free trial: Not available
Paid plans: Start from $4/month per user
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
A standout feature for me is Todoist’s natural language processing. All I have to do is type “Client meeting every Monday at 10 am,” and it sets a recurring entry on my calendar and a weekly to-do. The upcoming tab shows my entire week at a glance in Kanban view, while the Today tab shows me what’s happening right now. It’s so easy to switch between a big-picture perspective and my daily availability to better plan my schedule and slot in different commitments.
The best productivity app for scheduling
Reclaim.ai
Reclaim.ai, by Dropbox, uses the power of algorithms to improve your time management. The app automatically slots tasks, meetings, and focus time and breaks into your available time.
The Calendar Sync feature, available with Google Calendar and soon Outlook, also merges all events across unlimited calendars (personal, work, etc) to save you from double-booking.
Thanks to smart scheduling links, similar to Calendly, you can also invite multiple people to book available time slots. If there’s a scheduling conflict, Reclaim will auto-reschedule. The same goes for added tasks. The app helps you build a better schedule using priority markets, urgent task queues, and built-in time-tracking.
Reclaim.ai pricing
Free plan: One user with limited integrations
Free trial: 14 days for premium plans
Paid plans: From $8 per seat/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
Dropbox is big on user experience (UX), and Reclaim doesn’t fall short in this department. The onboarding sequence populates your calendar view with existing events from your calendar and some good “habits”—pre-suggested actions based on the selected role. I’m obsessed with how Reclaim automatically shifts different planned events (tasks, meetings, etc.) between available and unavailable calendar blocks. This eliminates the stress of re-configuring schedules when things take longer than anticipated (which happens a lot)!
The best productivity app for blocking distractions
Freedom
Freedom can be a great aid if you’re struggling to get into a productive groove because of constant distractions. You know the ones — the familiar ping on your iPhone, Slack notifications, or those silly cat videos on YouTube. This app slams the door shut by blocking all selected websites, web and mobile apps, or even the entire Internet for a set time.
Better yet, you can schedule focused work blocks across devices, so if you’re blocking social media on your phone, it’s blocked on your laptop, too. Plus, you can create custom blocklists, making it easy to keep distractions out during work hours while letting yourself check your favorite sites later. Locked mode prevents you from caving in before your Freedom session finishes.
Overall, Freedom is an excellent app for trying Monk Mode — a deep work technique for cultivating intense focus and discipline for productive work sprints.
Freedom pricing:
Free plan: Free browser extension with limited features
Free trial: Seven days
Paid plans:
From $3.30/month when billed annually or a one-time payment of $99.50
Team plans start from $99/month for 10 to 100 members
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
I love that Freedom strictly follows its mission: blocking distractions without overwhelming you with extra features. It’s simple, effective, and hard to cheat. So, if you really want to shut out all the time-wasters, the app will do so seamlessly on all devices.
The best productivity apps for project management
Airtable
As it says on the tin, Airtable is a database-like project management app that allows you to create end-to-end business processes across functions.
You can build databases, pre-populated with data from popular business apps like Gmail, Google Drive, Jira, and Salesforce, or connect custom data sources from your infrastructure (e.g., Snowflake data warehouse or an Azure-based data lake) using available APIs. All relevant fields will be updated based on pre-programmed data sync rules.
Next, you can build automation — custom trigger-action workflows for repetitive tasks. Set up once and maintained occasionally, Airflow automation saves teams hundreds of hours on data entry, synchronization, and verification. Airtable Cobuilder also lets you build low-code apps to automate more complex processes.
Airtable’s strength is its versatility. You can adapt It for virtually any workflow — inventory management, expense tracking, event management, customer relationship management, and more. Toggl’s marketing team, for example, uses it to manage editorial planning and collaboration on content production.
While there’s definitely a learning curve, it’s worth the effort. Once you’ve set things up, you can run many processes on autopilot to improve business productivity.
Airtable pricing:
Free plan: For one user with up to 1,000 records per base
Free trial: 14-day complimentary trial of the Team plan
Paid plans: From $20 per seat/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
The great thing about Airtable is that it offers multiple information views (spreadsheet-style databases, card grids, lists, calendars, and Gantt charts), so there’s something for everyone. You can switch between these anytime to better manage different projects without worrying about losing progress. All data is in sync and easily replicated. In-app comments also help effectively collaborate on all listed items.
Trello
Trello is an excellent project management tool for smaller teams. Compared to Airtable, it has fewer nuts and bolts and a gentler learning curve. The board setup process takes a few minutes, especially when you grab one of the pre-made templates. There are loads of options for everything from new hire onboarding to design sprints and customer success program management.
Drag-and-drop Kanban boards provide the big picture for tracking progress and give ample room to communicate and collaborate on individual cards through features like deadlines, sub-tasks, file sharing, checklists, and more. If you need some extra functionalities, check Trello’s ecosystem of Power-Ups — pre-made product extensions and integrations with other tools you know and love.
That said, if you’re a professional project manager running complex programs, Trello may not be the best app for you. It lacks advanced task dependencies, built-in analytics for productivity metrics, and resource allocation and budget tracking tools.
Trello pricing:
Free plan: Covers unlimited cards for 10 boards
Free trial: 14 days
Paid plans: From $5 per user/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
I love that Trello requires minimal setup time. By copying existing cards, I can make new clients or personal boards in seconds. Sure, there’s more clicking around than with Airtable, but there’s also less overall configuration time. Trello may not be the most robust feature-wise, but it continues to uphold its core value proposition of being an intuitive project management app.
The best productivity apps for focus
Caveday
Caveday isn’t so much of a productivity app. It’s more of a community of deep work enthusiasts who meet on Zoom to accomplish one big thing. Think of it as a digital version of going to a solitude mountain retreat to work on your chops without changing out of your PJs.
Instead of a solo grind, Caveday brings accountability, structure, and a sense of community. You’re not just setting a timer and hoping for the productivity to strike. Instead, you’re entering a focused, guided space designed to help you get real work done.
Each focus session is led by a Cave Guide — a mediator who sets the ground rules, leads introductions, and gives prompts. By taking slot bookings across time zones, cave sessions attract people worldwide and from all backgrounds. You may be working alongside an academic, powering through a research paper, a fellow freelancer, or a busy executive. The sessions are time-limited to one to three hours, with optional break times available and check-in prompts from the host to keep you grounded in your work.
Caveday promotes the idea of focused timeboxing — deep work sessions where you build momentum to power through procrastination and accomplish your task du jour. If you’re someone who thrives on gentle accountability and likes the idea of a group-focused flow, Caveday may be a great tool for you.
Caveday pricing:
Free plan: Not available
Free trial: 1-month
Paid plans: From $18/month when billed quarterly
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
Although I love my solo work, it can sometimes be lonely, especially when I’m in a low-energy mood. A Caveday session proves there is something motivating and accountable about working silently alongside others. The experience also feels private. There’s no screen-sharing, and you can turn the face camera off. It was an interesting experience, but its efficiency depends on your motivation. No one will notice if you’ve drifted off course in the middle of your session.
Toggl Track
Toggl Track helps you figure out where your focus lingers throughout the day. Available as a web app and with dedicated apps for Windows, MacOS, and Android, Toggl Track syncs across devices, so your time data is always up-to-date.
With over 100 integrations (Google Calendar, Asana, Notion, and Trello, to name a few), Toggl Track also embeds time tracking into every workflow, providing you with insights into how much time you spend on different tasks.
You can fire up the timer manually or let it run automatically based on preset rules, like a specific time of day or desktop app launch. Speaking of the desktop, the Timeline feature automatically logs activity for any app or website you view for more than 10 seconds, keeping the data private to only you.
For those who prefer to time-block, Toggl Track also syncs with popular calendar apps, so you can turn events into time blocks for a structured day. Add the Pomodoro timer, and you have a perfect setup for managing deep work and break times.
The app is also loaded with analytics to give you deeper insights into improving your operational efficiency. Customizable dashboards allow you to see detailed time logs, project performance, and profitability. For businesses, this means spotting bottlenecks or tracking estimated vs. actual time on tasks, while freelancers can monitor time spent on billable work vs. admin tasks for greater efficiency.
You can also streamline tedious tasks like timesheet management (for payroll and compliance), invoicing (based on billable hours!), and project planning.
Toggl Track is ideal for trust-based teams who want to empower their members with productivity insights without intrusive monitoring. And for solo users? It’s a practical way to improve focus, optimize work habits, and even set goals around time management.
Toggl Track Pricing:
Free plan: Unlimited, automated personal time-tracking
Free trial: 30 days
Paid plans: From €9 per user/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
Toggl Track is my trusted aid for project scheduling and estimation. Over the past two years, it’s helped me avoid those embarrassing emails of “ugh, I need an extension on this task because I’ve overbooked myself.” With a background Mac timer, I know exactly how I spend my time (productively or otherwise) and can build a better work and play schedule for myself.
The best productivity apps for automation
Zapier
Zapier has become almost synonymous with simple workflow automation. With pre-made connectors to over 7,000 apps, you can set automatic workflows by linking a trigger from one app to an action in another to enable:
Data sync between different apps
File backups to cloud storage
Email follow-ups
Task status updates
Leads segmentation
Support ticket routing
Order processing
And much more!
Neither of the above requires coding knowledge. Instead, you can use natural language or a drag-and-drop process to build a whiteboard canvas. But if you’re tech-savvy or have an IT team behind you, there’s an even greater array of automation scenarios available. For example, you can program actions with conditional logic using filters and paths or add webhooks for custom data exchanges.
The new AI Actions also let you incorporate large language models like GPT into different workflows (for example, to summarize content automatically). Or add AI-powered tasks into Zaps, such as auto-transferring incoming support tickets from French to English.
Zapier pricing:
Free plan: Automate basic workflows with 100 tasks per month
Free trial: 14 days
Paid plans: From $19.99/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
Although I’m far from being a Zapier pro, the few automations I’ve set up over the years save me quite a bit of mental energy on things like auto-saving customer briefs to Google Drive, creating new cards on Trello, and powering up my Toggl timer when I open specific project files.
Otter.ai
Otter.ai automates audio transcriptions. You can power it up in Chrome (or another browser) during video calls to record audio and transcribe the conversation either in real time or after you hang up.
Real-time captioning is handy if you have diverse teams and speak multiple languages. Otter can also automatically take notes, capture slides, and generate summaries for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Meets for team members who can’t join live. The platform supports English, French, and Spanish.
Audio and text data are then accessible via your workspace. You can also drag and drop other audio and video files for transcribing (limited to three in total on a free account). Then, auto-export transcriptions to apps like Google Docs, Microsoft Sharepoint, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Snowflake. Or work with them in the Otter web app, which has some handy AI-powered features like:
Auto-generated email summaries, memos, and status updates based on the meeting recording
Natural language searches through the conversation for specific speakers, concepts, or sentiment
Auto-summaries sharing to private Slack channels and other business apps
In other words, Otter keeps everyone in the loop about recent discussions, regardless of whether they attended the meeting.
Otter.ai pricing:
Free plan: Covers 300 monthly transcription minutes at 30 minutes per conversation (plus three audio/video file transcripts per user for a lifetime)
Free trial: Seven days for business plans
Paid plans: From $8.33 per user/month
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
This is my go-to tool for transcribing interviews. In less than five minutes, I have a fully searchable, accurate transcript with an AI-generated outline. I love using the in-app AI assistant to search and summarize information or provide answers based on the recording. It saves me hours of re-listening and rewinding conversations to find specific takes. My top tip is using it to repurpose content from podcasts into other formats such as blog or social media posts.
Other productivity apps for note-taking
Evernote
Evernote is a beloved classic for building digital filing systems (aka your second brand). The note-taking app offers a convenient interface for organizing text, audio, and drawn notes, plus clipping images, PDFs, and URLs. The Optical Character Recognition feature also lets you digitize hand-written notes and run searches against scanned documents.
The platform enables you to organize all notes by subject, keyword, location, or time. Thanks to its new AI feature, you can also look up information using natural language, e.g., “What was the article about talent management I read on Monday, 11th, at Central Park?”
Built-in task management features also allow you to create to-do lists alongside notes. Or lay your tasks out on a calendar view in Kanban style. You can also forward emails directly into Evernote and turn them into notes. By integrating Evernote with Outlook or Google Calendar, it’s possible to generate automatic notes related to the meeting with linked documents, files, and emails.
Overall, Evernote is great at resurfacing the information you need, but it does require you to build a habit of tagging and organizing your data.
Evernote pricing:
Free plan: Up to 50 notes in one notebook on one device
Free trial: Seven days
Paid plans: From $14.99/month
Top tip:
👩💻Personal take
As someone who spends hours going down various Internet rabbit holes, Evernote has been my trusted ‘second brain’ companion for several years. Apart from hosting my book notes library, the app also doubles as my swipe file and stats database, where I clip all sorts of curious gems. Down the line, Evernote saves me heaps of effort in finding the knowledge tidbits I need for my writing work.
Obsidian
Obsidian is a great alternative to Evernote if you want to mesh note-taking with mind mapping using the Zettelkasten method. A Zettelkasten (German for ‘note box’) is your web of thoughts — a connected wheel of singular notes and ideas interlinked to form a system of references. This knowledge management method builds connections between different topics, finds new interrelated concepts, and tracks how your thinking evolves.
Obsidian helps you build your Zettelkasten using text Markdown note files, smart linking, visual knowledge graphs, and whiteboard canvases. Unlike other popular knowledge-based products, Obsidian stores all notes on your device(s), meaning greater data security. The app is available for Windows, Apple, Android, and Linux devices. Note syncing across devices, however, is a premium feature, starting at $4/mo per connected device. There’s no web version, FYI.
You can also extend the app’s functionality using community-made plugins to gain extra features like converting text to speech, natural language for search, and summary paragraph generation. Obsidian can also double as your personal website. For $8/month, you can access website themes to publish notes online on a fast, mobile-friendly, and SEO-optimized website.
Obsidian pricing:
Free plan: Forever-free access to all product features
Free trial: 14 days for commercial licences
Paid plans:
$4/month per user to sync notes across devices
$8/month per site to publish notes online
$50/month per user for a commercial use licence
Top tip:
👩💻 Personal take
Obsidian allows you to make notes in plain text format, meaning you can easily import/export your data to other apps without any formatting mishaps. Bi-directional linking is another standout feature many note-taking apps lack. That said, you really need to be an adopter of the Zettelkasten method to benefit the most from this product — and I’m not quite there yet.
Other productivity apps worth checking out
There are a myriad of other amazing productivity apps that haven’t made it to this list. Each is nonetheless absolutely ah-mazing at saving you time and mental energy on task management.
But you have to stop somewhere. To round this up, here are several more important shoutouts to genuinely helpful business apps:
Zoom—Although there are plenty of video conferencing tools available, I love Zoom’s iOS app and whiteboard mode.
Slackis great for staying in sync with multiple teams and communities without getting constantly bombarded with notifications (as long as you’ve properly configured them!).
Pocket stores a medley of interesting reads I come across throughout the day. I use it to clip the most interesting data to my Evernote or Notion database.
Loom is a great compromise between sending a long email and finding a time for a 1:1 meeting. It’s also a great tool for recording and sharing video walkthroughs and instructions.
1Password—I don’t have to remember a gazillion passwords for all my accounts (personal, business, client-supplied), and I don’t have to worry about getting hacked.
Need even more ideas? Check more recs from the Toggl Team.
Why you should look for productivity tools offering time tracking
To truly be productive, you must be deliberate about how you spend your time. On average, we have only three to five hours of daily deep work capacity — the ability to stay in full concentration mode to accomplish cognitively challenging tasks.
The more you cave into distractions, the less focus time you have. That’s because our brain needs an irritating 23 whole minutes to regain focus after each interruption, large or small.
Time-tracking features in productivity apps reveal where your focus lingers and when you’re in your top productive state. Toggl Track automatically logs this activity and provides insights into your daily behavior. You can identify when you’re interrupted the most or engage in low-value activities that suck away valuable time (e.g., manually copy-pasting data between apps.)
Based on these insights, you can better allocate time towards different commitments and carve back hours for focused, deep work.
Reclaim your productive time
Sign up for a free Toggl Track account to carve back hours for focused, deep work!
Elena is a senior content strategist and writer specializing in technology, finance, and people management. With over a decade of experience, she has helped shape the narratives of industry leaders like Xendit, UXCam, and Intellias. Her bylines appear in Tech.Co, The Next Web, and The Huffington Post, while her ghostwritten thought leadership pieces have been featured in Forbes, Smashing Magazine, and VentureBeat. As the lead writer behind HLB Global’s Annual Business Leader Survey, she translates complex data and economic trends into actionable insights for executives in 150+ countries. Armed with a Master’s in Political Science, Elena blends analytical depth with sharp storytelling to create content that matters.
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In a successful team, each person works in productive harmony to reach their team’s shared goals on time. In reality? Team time management is tough. Different schedules, locations, and productivity approaches make it challenging for managers to get the most from their team memberswithout burning anyone out.
To help you get on track (pun intended 😏) for 2025, we’ve asked our own team what helps with time management to bring you these 11 proven team time management strategies you should start using today to keep your people motivated and in control of their time.
TL;DR—Key Takeaways
Team time management involves planning employee time to meet project goals, optimize productivity, and maintain team morale.
Effective time management boosts transparency and collaboration. It reduces stress, cutting the risk of burnout. Intelligent use of time improves work quality and makes missed deadlines far less likely.
Essential time management tips include tracking time to understand how teams work and assign tasks effectively. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is vital to keep productivity high.
The best managers empower team members to manage their schedules by setting rules and training staff to prioritize critical tasks. Employees should be empowered to decline tasks if needed, while regular check-ins promote transparency and share time management ideas.
Software tools make team time management easier. Collaboration tools and project management software enhance visibility and communication. Time tracking tools also encourage better time management practices, both for individuals and teams.
Anyone who manages projects knows time is precious. Every project has a timeframe, and clients hate slippages. At the same time, quality is all-important because no one really cares if you’ve met a deadline if the result is sub-substandard.
So, the key is to learn how to balance efficiency with quality — essentially, how to manage your time without becoming so rigid with your hours that you forget to focus on the end results. Team time management can help with this by keeping everyone on the same page and accountable.
That’s not all, though. Here are a few other benefits you can expect when you commit to team time management.
👀 Time management increases project transparency
With a strong focus on deadlines, milestones, and responsibilities, time management techniques ensure all team members know what they and everyone else are working on. They’ll understand what’s causing any bottlenecks or what work is required to hit the next milestone.
🧘 Time management reduces team stress
Overworking is one of the most common causes of burnout and stress. However, managers can reduce stress levels by allocating manageable schedules that accommodate every team member’s personal circumstances and work-life balance.
Top tip:
Efficient time management also reduces the risk of last-minute panics as deadlines approach. Instead, staff can handle work time methodically, avoiding high stress and activity spikes.
🪢 Time management improves team collaboration
Structured time management encourages smooth collaboration and teamwork. When everybody is clear about what’s needed from them and their colleagues, they can align their efforts and avoid inefficiencies like mismatched schedules and duplicated work.
🌟 Time management boosts quality of work
With only so many hours in the day, managers must decide which goals to devote attention to — you know, the tasks that’ll make or break project success. By doing so, team members focus on the most important tasks, raising the overall quality and precision of their output.
⌛ Time management eliminates procrastination
As a side benefit, good time management promotes employee engagement with their work. Well-defined schedules leave no room for empty periods or procrastination (at least until everyone’s smashed their goals for the day).
11 ways to improve team time management
Now that we’ve covered the “why,” let’s move on to the “how” of implementing time management strategies and improving team performance.
Before we get started, it’s important to clarify team time management is not the same as personal time management. Sure, some of the tips below could be relevant for individuals, but the list refers to time management tips for teams, which is even more complex.
1. Start tracking time to see where you’re at
You need to know how to monitor and quantify time before you can begin to manage it. Using time tracking tools to collect high-quality data lets you see how team members spend their work hours on various workflows. Managers can use this data to stay on course with their goals.
Example: Your marketing team spends 10 hours a week responding to customer inquiries on social media, but only 5% of leads come from that channel. Your time tracking data suggests it might be more effective to allocate fewer resources here and focus on channels with higher lead generation rates.
2. Set clear and measurable goals
Effective time management is all about clarity. Team members need to know the objectives of each task you set and the deadline for each milestone.
Once you’ve set team members up with their individual goals, they should have everything they need to:
Allocate enough time
Plan future tasks
Measure their own progress
Of course, managers should still be involved in overseeing task completion, but this isn’t an excuse to micro-manage. Publishing team goals is one way to solve this, so everyone has visibility into project progress, and managers won’t feel the need to request updates.
3. Introduce rules for effective time management
Time management is not a top-down exercise; it’s universal. Every team member should manage their own time efficiently, and clear rules will help them reach that goal.
We recommend creating time management guidelines before assembling project teams. These guidelines should offer guidance about setting deadlines, using calendar software, and strategies like time blocking or the Pomodoro technique.
It’s important to be realistic, though. Staff members are not machines to squeeze every last ounce of productivity from. They still need to relax between intense work periods. But it’s a good idea to set expectations on how much free time or social media usage they can enjoy within their paid work hours.
Top tip:
Publish your time management policy in your staff handbook, internal wiki, or any other collaboration platform everyone can access. Refer to it regularly, not as a disciplinary tool, but as a valuable resource to encourage productivity.
4. Teach your team how to prioritize important tasks
Team members can often get stuck on minor jobs and neglect tasks that impact project success. The trick is to know which tasks will move the needle and get you closer to your goals.
Effective time management strategies teach colleagues to prioritize their time efficiently. One of our favorites is the Eisenhower Matrix, which simplifies task management and applies to almost any situation.
The Eisenhower Matrix has two axes. One axis includes “urgent” and “non-urgent” tasks. The other axis has entries for “important” and “unimportant” tasks. You can probably sense where this is going.
Tasks map onto the matrix, creating a hierarchy of priorities. Those graded as urgent and important rise to the top, followed by important but non-urgent work. Managers can delegate urgent but less important jobs while striking off tasks deemed neither urgent nor important.
Top tip:
This technique is great for sorting project tasks. Team members can use the matrix to understand their workloads, while managers can delegate and focus on daily or weekly priorities. When you apply the matrix systematically, “forgetting” tasks is much harder — especially the urgent and important ones that make or break projects.
5. Create a culture of declining non-urgent tasks
The Eisenhower Matrix has another advantage: it empowers team members in decision-making.
Colleagues can slide non-urgent tasks to the back of the queue or even challenge managers and decline non-urgent tasks. They can avoid being side-tracked and remain focused on mission-critical work.
This level of empowerment doesn’t just happen. It requires a workspace culture that builds confidence and makes staff feel comfortable declining requests. Here are some suggestions about how to do so:
React positively when people decline tasks. Ask team members about their reasons and discuss their current workload.
Use insights from discussions to improve your delegation methods. You may be sending staff too many minor tasks before they complete tasks related to core project goals.
Use team meetings to reassure colleagues that declining tasks is OK, and that you welcome self-management.
6. Give employees the right collaboration tools
So far, many of our time management techniques have focused on allowing team members to manage their time productively. But here’s the catch. Self-organization won’t happen without the right infrastructure, which is where collaboration tools come into play.
Project management and direct messaging software like Notion or Slack enable seamless communication within teams and encourage a free flow of ideas. Colleagues can check progress in real-time, support each other, and spot tasks requiring attention.
7. Create workload overviews
Teams also need visualization tools to implement time management concepts. Collaboration tools with built-in workload views visually represent teamwork schedules and tasks. Managers can see tasks assigned to team members, making it easier to avoid excessive workloads and balance tasks efficiently.
Top tip:
Workload management matters because burnout is a project killer. Almost 75% of American workers experienced burnout in 2023, with heavy workloads leading the list of causes.
8. Encourage regular breaks (or different working styles)
This might sound strange, but being more flexible about employees’ work schedules and time off can lead to better time management. Whaaaat? How does that work?
As we briefly mentioned at the start, time management can suffer when staff become too focused on single tasks. When people bury themselves in work, they forget to plan their days and set achievable goals. Burnout is just around the corner.
Regular breaks and flexible work days provide space to reflect and recharge. Workers might find better ways to approach time-consuming tasks or return to work with a clear head and an energy boost.
Top tip:
There are many approaches to flexible working. At Toggl, we apply RAFT principles (Results and Accountability First at Toggl) to boost productivity. Employees are free to set their work schedules provided they meet their professional goals. Whatever approach you choose, remember to take breaks seriously. Stepping away from the screen really does help.
9. Offer training to improve time management skills
Managing time is like any other professional challenge — it takes training and practice.
We recommend scheduling team time management workshops annually (or in the early stages of projects.) A few sessions on the Eisenhower Matrix or time blocking will pay huge dividends as your projects proceed.
It’s also important to organize one-on-one sessions between managers and team members to understand individual blockers. Everyone has different distractions and demands on their time. For some, it’s the pull of too many meetings, while others need flexibility to manage families and external commitments. These discussions will help you find tailored solutions for each team member.
Whatever strategy you adopt, focus on building critical time management skills, including:
Prioritization: Leaning on the Eisenhower Matrix, or similar, to decide which tasks you need to handle right now
Goal setting: Teaching staff to set achievable targets instead of chaotically working through a pile of tasks
Avoiding multitasking: Stressing the need to focus on a specific task
Setting boundaries: Suggesting ways to structure separate work and personal commitments
Collaboration: Allowing employees to share tasks when needed, optimizing your team’s potential.
10. Conduct regular check-ins with your team
Regular meetings allow you to assess progress and let colleagues raise issues that matter to them. Make meetings friendly and open so team members feel confident asking for a reduced workload or suggesting automation ideas to reduce time spent on mundane tasks.
Your team works on the front line, and they know better than anyone if tasks are unnecessary or inefficient. Use their experience to devise better strategies that align with your business goals.
Top tip:
Remember: Don’t schedule too many check-in meetings, which might defeat the purpose of having them at all. Make sure you’re using time with your team efficiently.
11. Use the right team time management tools
Finally, we feel it’s important to say a bit more about time management tools and how they’ll enhance your project management tech stack.
We’re obviously a little biased (just a lil), but we have seen firsthand how the right time tracking tool can help teams screen out distractions and set block lists so they don’t get sucked into scrolling Facebook, Instagram, or the latest news story.
Ideally, you’ll be able to align restrictions with time blocks, too — creating focus zones and times to let loose and relax. Tools with built-in Pomodoro timers and integrations with popular calendar tools are also a hit.
How Toggl Track can help you implement these time management strategies
Even the best schedulers can benefit from revisiting their time management strategies. After all, everyone is guilty of poor time management from time to time. Nobody is born with perfect scheduling skills, and things can quickly go awry when you’re handling time management across an entire team.
At Toggl Track, we know this from experience. When you lose track of time, stress levels rise, and team productivity suffers. That’s why we’ve created a time tracking tool to empower teams and make every minute count.
We’ve made it easy to manage employee schedules and set individual goals. Reporting functions identify potential bottlenecks or training opportunities because, well, it’s much harder to waste time with data from every team member at your fingertips.
Your team can turn on Focus Mode when they need to concentrate. Flexible time tracking also lets users blend billable hours with non-work activities. Even better, our time tracker integrates with over 100 third-party tools, allowing seamless link-ups with Jira or Todoist.
Call timeout on your scheduling issues
It’s time to find a better way! Explore Toggl Track’s team time tracking features.
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur, writer, and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses, including two of her own, and shares Toggl's mission of challenging traditional beliefs about what building a successful business looks like.
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We’re in the middle of a recruitment revolution, with technology rapidly transforming hiring processes. Every part of the recruitment pipeline is up for revision, but few areas are shifting as quickly as resume screening.
Corporations now routinely use automated resume screening tools to streamline candidate assessments. Their technology transforms thousands of applications into candidate shortlists without time-consuming manual screening or interviews.
Recruiters can identify top talent to set the stage for in-depth assessments — and it all happens in seconds. The accuracy and efficiency of automated screening make it a must-have for many employers. But which software should you choose?
It’s a crowded market, and bad decisions can ruin hiring outcomes. This guide will introduce the best options in 2025 and help you pick the ideal screening solution.
Ready to start screening candidates now?
Learn how to expand your resume screening and candidate assessment capabilities with Toggl Hire!
Before we get into the details, resume screening software is a technological solution to an age-old problem: sifting through hundreds (or thousands) of resumes and candidate profiles and making sense of them at speed.
Automated resume screening software evaluates resumes based on keywords and essential criteria. It provides an initial screening service at the top of the pipeline, allowing companies to filter out unqualified candidates so you’re not wasting their time or yours.
Why is resume screening such a hard part of the recruitment process?
At first glance, automated resume screening seems fairly simple, but looks can be deceptive. Because actually, screening candidates is hard work.
Recruiters face vast amounts of resumes and must handle each applicant fairly — a serious challenge when we factor in more than 200 cognitive biases that exist in humans. So, it’s easy to take shortcuts and wave through the wrong candidates when you’re screening manually.
Resume screening must also be precise. Little details like qualifications or specialist project experience can make all the difference when seeking the best candidates for a specific job. But it’s hard to pinpoint essential skills based on generic resumes.
These problems influence your quality of hire. Poor screening can remove suitable candidates from your pipeline, so they never proceed to interviews or other assessments. Worse still, it also wastes time and resources. That’s why automated screening tools are so popular.
Pros and cons of automated resume screening
Humans are not good at screening documents. We tire quickly, make mistakes, and sometimes, we subconsciously choose people “just like us.” Automated resume screening tools could be the answer.
With the help of applicant tracking systems, HR teams can quickly and easily screen resumes, manage job postings, and communicate with candidates, improving the recruitment process and ensuring that the best candidates are hired.
Here’s the case for leaning on software to screen resumes:
Efficiency: Ditch LinkedIn profiles and mountains of paper, opting instead for resume screening tools. Expect faster processing which reduces human workloads without losing precision.
Consistency: A consistent resume screening process evaluates job applications fairly which can be hired when humans (and our many flaws) are involved. Automated resume screening tools rank candidates impartially so there’s less of a chance of mishiring.
Improved quality of hire: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) resume screening tools use algorithms to assess keywords, job qualifications, and applicable experience. AI can identify exceptional candidates that manual screening may ignore. AI and ML tools also learn continuously, improving the selection process.
Cost savings: An automated resume screening process can cut hiring costs. How? Users need fewer HR personnel and can allocate resources to critical hiring tasks. Time savings also cut costs, allowing recruiters to focus on honing a strategic hiring process.
Flexibility: Automated resume screening scales smoothly as applicant volumes change. You’ll find it easy to handle seasonal variations or business growth without losing quality or consistency.
❌ Drawbacks of relying on resume screening tools
Be aware of the following challenges of this type of technology:
Over-reliance on keywords: Resume screening tools often compare keywords in resumes with job postings. This strategy can miss great candidates who deviate from key phrases. Keyword parsing also encourages job seekers to lean on keyword stuffing, potentially ruining your talent pool management.
Potential for more bias: Algorithms trained on prejudiced data may inadvertently preserve unconscious biases. For instance, AI tools trained on male CVs have downgraded female applicants in the past. A recent study assessed 500 job descriptions and individual resumes, asking AI screening tools to recommend the best fit. Researchers found a significant bias towards male names and a skew away from names associated with minorities. In that sense, AI screening remains a work in progress.
Technological limitations: Screening tools can make mistakes when processing resume formats or layouts. Something as basic as failing to process PDF files can miss outstanding talent.
Difficulty recognizing non-traditional candidates: Resume screening software struggles to assess non-conventional applicants like career switchers or qualified candidates with unorthodox work histories. These applicants could bring creativity and fresh perspectives to the role, but because they differ from “the norm,” the technology could skip their potential.
Inability to assess soft skills: Resume screening software also has trouble analyzing soft skills like communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. Keyword matching and qualifications may overlook essential qualities required by great candidates. We recommend employee skills testing to assess an applicant’s overall fit and identify if they could bring any transferable skills to the role.
Before we break down types of resume screening tools, it’s important to note that most applicant tracking systems include basic screening functions as a core part of the recruitment pipeline.
There are three main types of resume screening tools: resume parsers, resume enrichers, and AI resume screening software. Let’s take a quick look under the hood of all three (but if you scroll down just a bit, you’ll find a side-by-side comparison of other types of tools).
Resume parsers
Parsing is the process of scanning data from documents and analyzing the role played by different semantic components.
In resume screening, parsing extracts relevant information like contact details, previous work experience, qualifications, and skill certifications. Parsers structure this information in a standardized format. This makes searching and analyzing candidate data easier as you shortlist potential interviewees.
This sounds great, but resume parsing tools aren’t flawless. Candidates may supply resumes in non-standard formats, causing parsers to overlook data and discard applicants. For instance, parsers sometimes fail to process image-based PDFs.
Parsing tools also aren’t always 100% accurate when evaluating job candidates. Systems may not properly match information supplied by candidates with the job description, resulting in poor-quality hiring decisions.
Resume enrichers
Resume enrichers go beyond resumes, giving HR teams a more detailed portrait of each candidate. They generate candidate profiles using social media activity, online portfolios, and other online resources.
Without needing to meet or even speak to applicants, recruiters can gain insights into who they are. Hiring teams can make informed decisions about who would be a good cultural fit for their organization and whether candidates have the necessary soft skills to succeed.
Resume enrichers are also useful because they suggest candidate potential. Resumes show achievements and experience. Enrichers are a bit more subtle and may highlight candidates who you would otherwise miss.
However, they’re heavily skewed toward candidates with an online presence. People who don’t use social media or don’t actively share their work in a digital sphere are disadvantaged. This may also favor younger over older applicants.
AI resume screening software
Standard parsers or enrichers require human operators to evaluate decisions and data outputs. AI tools remove human eyes from the screening process. Instead, AI resume screening tools use machine learning to learn from patterns and improve performance.
AI tools search resumes for terms, data points, or concepts related to the initial job description. As models improve, they learn how to find better matches while avoiding bias (provided the models are trained on neutral data sets).
Ideally, AI screening cuts out secondary data like age, gender, or race. Screening tools focus on role-related factors like skills and job requirements. In theory, this should identify the best talent for every open position.
In the real world, AI recruitment automation can’t work alone. Humans still play critical roles in approving AI decisions and setting initial parameters.
Type
Description
Pros
Cons
AI-driven Resume Screening
These tools utilize Machine Learning algorithms to assess resumes for job-relevant keywords and phrases. Their precision increases with use.
AI-driven hiring systems become more accurate over time as they learn from past hiring decisions. Focusing on qualifications alone can help to reduce bias.
Could potentially overlook distinctive applicants who do not meet standard criteria; Can be costly to establish and sustain.
Traditional ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems)
Recruiting systems store and track job applicants’ data, utilizing keyword searches that do not change.
A recruitment management system simplifies the task of managing numerous job applicants with the applicant tracking system.
Keyword searches may cause desired candidates to be overlooked, and those not familiar with technology may find the system difficult to navigate.
Resume Parsing
Resume parsing tools extract data from resumes and convert it into an organized format quickly and efficiently.
Automation of resume data entry into a database saves time and makes it easier to search for specific skills and qualifications.
Automating resume data entry into a database saves time and makes searching for specific skills and qualifications easier.
Semantic Search & Matching
These tools go beyond keyword matching to understand the context and concepts behind the words in a job description and a resume.
More precise matching by understanding the context of words; Improves the quality of matches.
Hiring for complex roles can be costly; A well-crafted job description is essential for success.
Companies can now use modern tools to assess candidates’ skills instead of relying on traditional testing methods. Such tools allow for tests or challenges to be administered to candidates.
Evaluate a candidate’s abilities without relying on their own reports of their skills.
A requirement for a higher commitment from candidates could shrink the applicant pool if the tests are seen as challenging or irrelevant.
Resume screening tools vary in quality, price, and depth. We want you to find a solution that suits your needs, but in a crowded marketplace, it’s easy to take a wrong turn without expert advice.
To help you avoid hiring mistakes, we’ve assessed popular screening software. Our favorites all score highly according to the following criteria:
Ease of use: Can users start screening in minutes, or is there a steep learning curve?
Integrations: Does the software integrate with full-cycle ATS functions, collaboration tools, and HR systems?
Customization: Can you toggle filters to capture certain skills or qualifications needed by top candidates or focus on keyword groups? Is there scope for automatic candidate shortlisting?
Scalability: Does the software work best when screening a few resumes, or does it struggle at scale?
AI: Do AI tools screen candidates fairly and efficiently, or are you losing top-caliber candidates?
Top tip:
We haven’t ranked resume screening agencies or services, just software. All the tools below stand out from competitors, with strengths and weaknesses to consider. We’ve also included pricing information and customer feedback to guide your purchasing process.
#1 – Zoho Recruit
Zoho Recruit is a resume management software that helps recruiters save time on shortlisting, engaging, and hiring candidates. It lets you parse multiple resumes and transfer candidate information to your candidate or client database.
Category: Applicant tracking system with multiple solutions
Key features: Candidate sourcing, resume management, social recruiting, employee referrals, job advertising, background screening, AI behavioral assessments
Standard: $25/year. Covers 100 active jobs. Includes resume management, but not complete screening features.
Professional: $50/year. Covers 250 active jobs. Includes screening and assessment functions, alongside AI candidate matching.
Enterprise: $75/year. Covers 750 active jobs. Adds more templates and integrations but no extra screening tools.
The Zoho Recruit Forever Free package does not include resume management.
What customers say:
Zoho Recruit is tailor-made for a recruiter so that I can interact with my client in real-time, 24/7 no matter where I am. I don’t have to do a lot of documentation that in itself is worth a million bucks.
Katari Grassiel, MD, Seattle BC Group, Seattle
#2 – Ideal
Ideal is an AI-driven HR software platform that enables hiring managers to make better, faster, and unbiased talent decisions.
Price: The Ideal Talent Marketplace is completely free to use.
What customers say:
The IDEAL project team is easy to work with and aren’t “Locked In” to their own way of doing things rather they are willing to listen and open to new concepts. Ideal brought an entire integration project team to the table from day 1 to help us integrate and get launched.
Oracle Talent Management facilitates strategic review and analysis of talent, retention and improvement of skills, provision of career opportunities, coaching of goals and performance, talent reviews, and succession planning to keep talent engaged and productive.
Category: Traditional applicant tracking system
Key features: Recruiting, candidate relationship management (CRM), onboarding, performance management, learning and development, succession planning, compensation management, analytics and reporting, integration and API, compliance and security, and mobile accessibility.
Price: The Oracle Talent Management Cloud costs $7 per month, in addition to the base Oracle Cloud subscription, which costs $15 per month.
What customers say:
Detail-oriented recruitment tool. Globally used, and I have been using this tool for the past 5 years. Easy to understand and use the tool for creating candidate experience and others with respect to recruitment.
Price: Sovren provides its parsing services with textual analysis partner Textkernel. Customers can try the parser free of charge. The free trial provides 500 free credits, giving you a sneak preview. If you like what you see, Sovren offers two pricing tiers:
Professional: Starts at $99/month. Annual plans extend to 100,000 credits (max), cover 29 languages, and access the company’s LLM parser.
Enterprise: Prices vary according to client needs. Users have no limits and can integrate LLM parsing with APIs for full customization.
What customers say:
Their technology affords you an opportunity…a means to do what you do at a higher level, more efficiently, more effectively…than ever before.
#5 – DaXtra Parser
DaXtra Parser is the most accurate multi-lingual job parsing software. It can convert unstructured documents into structured XML/JSON in multiple languages.
Category: Resume parsing
Key features: Resume parsing, job parsing, skill extraction, semantic search, multi-language support, industry-specific taxonomies, data standardization, integration capabilities, configurable rules and filters, and compliance and privacy.
Price: Daxtra does not publish fixed prices, as packages vary between clients. You can request a free demo to explore the platform and test its parsing capabilities.
What customers say:
They did exactly what they told us they could do. Efficient parsing, comprehensive search.
#6 – Affinda
Affinda‘s machine-learning system identifies more than 100 details from resumes, organizing the information into a searchable format.
Category: Resume parsing
Key features: Document processing, data extraction, entity recognition, language detection, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition (NER), optical character recognition (OCR), text classification, relationship extraction, and data visualization.
Price: Affinda operates a custom pricing model based on document volumes and business types. Contact the company directly to ask for quotes.
What customers say:
When I compared the accuracy of the Affinda resume parser to 8 other resume parsers, Affinda was better than or equal to the others. But where Affinda really stood out head and shoulders above the others is in their level of support and attention to the customer.
#7 – Tracker
Tracker is a web-based recruitment management and CRM solution designed for recruiting professionals across all industries.
Price: Tracker’s ATS starts at $80/user per month for its basic package, including resume parsing. You can also add extra features for $16/month. Extras include sentiment analysis. This enriches simple parsing but is not essential.
What customers say:
As the marketing director for our firm, I am already seeing an increase in productivity and ease of use for implementing all strategies. The built-in campaign and sequencing are clutch for our prospecting. Data import and access to both client and candidate data online has been terrific.
#8 – Eightfold.ai
Eightfold.ai is an AI-driven, continuous learning platform which mines millions of data points and billions of interactions to bring intelligence to your organization.
Price: Eightfold.ai does not publish fixed prices on its website. Customers can download a free demo to learn basic features and sample the interface.
You can also schedule live demos with Eightfold experts, which are a good way to explore AI features and determine whether you need automated analysis.
What customers say:
The Eightfold AI is very intuitive and brings in several dimensions to present employees with quality recommendations. The combination of jobs, learning, mentors, and projects helps employees and the enterprise connect all the dots. It is truly a dynamic tool delivering a quality employee experience.
#9 – Toggl Hire
Toggl Hire is a skills assessment platform with powerful applicant tracking system capabilities. It gives hiring teams incredible insight into candidates’ job-specific skills with smart screening tools. Instead of focusing on self-reported competencies on candidates’ resumes, recruiters and hiring managers can get reliable proof of competence via pre-employment assessments, pre-recorded video interviews, and homework assignments. You’ll find and shortlist quality talent faster.
Price: Users start with a feature-rich free account which includes basic AI screening that generates “pass scores” for candidates. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Two pricing tiers enable deeper resume screening:
Starter: $199/month. Adds unlimited skills tests and candidates for up to 3 active job openings at a time. Access a 19k+ skills question library, fully customizable assessments, async interviews, and really helpful candidate screening tools like AI evaluation, automatic candidate feedback, and more.
Premium: $349/month. Covers unlimited candidates and job openings plus access to more advanced analytics, homework assessments for more in-depth screening, and powerful integrations.
What customers say:
We’ve been using Toggl Hire for almost 3 years, with more than 20,000 test-takers that completed one of the 20+ tests we have on the platform. The service is easy to use and helps us perform quick and effective top-of-the-funnel filtering while keeping a great Candidate Experience.
Gilad Bornstein, Co-Founder and CEO at Flatworld.co
Are skills tests a better way to find the best candidates?
This is a great and very important question.
AI is a tempting technology, and its cost and time savings certainly sound great on paper. But before you choose any of the suggestions above, let’s throw a curveball into the mix. You may not need AI-powered resume screening, and we certainly don’t recommend relying on candidate screening tools alone to shortlist interviewees for your open roles.
In many situations, targeted skill assessments offer more value. Here’s why. 👇
Skills tests demonstrate actual ability
Skill assessments let candidates show off their aptitudes and skills. Employers gain reliable evidence of their abilities, not self-declarations on resumes.
Candidates can also demonstrate role-related competencies. Tests prove candidates can perform the real-life tasks of a digital manager or web designer in your organization.
Assessments also show the ability to perform under pressure, which may be an important indicator of how they’d fare in your workplace. Parsers and machine learning tools can’t emulate these insights — at least not yet.
Skills tests reduce bias
Skill assessment tools counteract bias by focusing on practical abilities. They test what candidates can do, not who they are. Facts about the candidate, like their gender or ethnicity, don’t enter the equation. Instead, Human Resources teams focus attention on what really matters and avoid subjective elements.
Skills tests are applicable to various roles
One of the great things about skill assessments is their flexibility. HR teams can design custom assessments for each job opening or even create tests for different components of every role.
You can test virtually any discipline, from Python coding to content production. Employers can drill down into candidate potential, taking a job-specific approach. This should generate shortlists filled with relevant, highly-skilled candidates.
Skills tests ensure data-driven decisions
Skill assessments generate quantifiable metrics about aptitudes, enabling data-driven decision-making in the recruitment process.
HR teams can set data criteria for different job titles and rank applicants based on test scores. Combining personality traits and screening outputs like qualifications and experience results in better hiring decisions.
3 expert tips for candidate screening
Although we recommend integrating tests and other assessments into your hiring process, you might continue resume screening as a form of gatekeeper.
After all, screening could pinpoint which candidates merit assessments and which applicants to discard. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? The truth is that you need to be smart about screening to get accurate results.
The tips below come straight from our talent team. Toggl Hire has spent the last decade hiring remotely, so we’ve learned how tech can compensate for distance and the absence of face-to-face contact. Here’s how to get the most from your recruitment software:
Define your screening criteria
Firstly, set clear guidelines for screening remote candidates. Recruiters need to know what they’re looking for when evaluating resumes.
It’s hard to calibrate parsing tools when you’re unclear about what makes an ideal candidate. Fuzzy criteria produce inaccurate results, leading to wasted interview time and (eventually) bad hires.
Clear criteria also ensure consistency for all candidates and help stamp out subjective biases. Plan your screening requirements before firing up software solutions.
Use skills assessments to shortlist candidates
We’ve also learned the value of combining automated resume screening with skills assessment tools. The two technologies work together.
Screening removes clearly unsuitable candidates. Tests and assessments narrow your candidate pool, filtering applicants with talent and the right personality traits. Employee skill testing also digs deeper than resume information, creating a far fuller portrait of potential hires.
Remove degree requirements from job listings
Degrees can be great evidence of specialist skills, but they aren’t essential when sourcing candidates, and you should probably leave them off job listings.
This sounds counter-intuitive. Surely most professional roles require degree-level competency? We’d counter that by suggesting you can assess skills and competencies later in the talent pipeline.
Job listings aim to expand your talent pool. They should encourage people to apply without deterring potential hires. Academic requirements can put off minority candidates or anyone lacking self-confidence.
Top tip:
Instead, focus on essential skills and experience when advertising roles. Promote your inclusivity and the value you place on practice expertise. You won’t alienate academic high-fliers, but you may attract creative and well-suited candidates.
Screen candidates faster with Toggl Hire
Toggl Hire combines reliable resume screening with flexible, high-quality skills assessments. Users can save time screening initial applications and then go deep with skills tests or homework assignments before contacting top candidates for interviews.
Online payments company Monese has seen this work in real life. Monese needed a quick but accurate way to screen applications. Working with Toggl Hire experts, they used targeted pre-employment skills testing to pre-screen candidates before they submitted applications. Only applicants who passed the skills test could apply. The result was a 72% reduction in time-to-hire and significant time savings for busy recruiters.
Want to achieve similar results in your organization?
Start effortlessly screening candidates
Create a free Toggl Hire account to see how it works!
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur, writer, and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses, including two of her own, and shares Toggl's mission of challenging traditional beliefs about what building a successful business looks like.
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The average worker wastes 1.51 hours per day, amounting to a whopping 360 hours of lost productivity each year. This is huge for developers, who need to optimize their development cycles and launch effective, workable products that hit the mark with their target audience. They don’t have time to waste.
Time tracking tools are a popular way for development teams to unlock real-time efficiency. Whether connecting your code to project management targets, keeping team members focused on the right things, or optimizing your client invoicing process, accurate time tracking offers many benefits.
This article provides the full rundown on time tracking for development agencies and their workers, covering the key points to consider when looking for a tool and the seven best time tracking software apps for developers.
The best time tracking software for software developers at a glance
Short on time? Here’s what each of our seven top-rated tools does best.
Best for detailed time monitoring and productivity analysis
Common misconceptions of time tracking for software developers
Unfortunately, time tracking sometimes gets a bad rap in the software development community. Some developers feel that time tracking can be:
Disruptive: It might add unnecessary tasks, such as creating timesheets, that distract from their core development workflows.
Controlling: Depending on the flexibility of the employer, it removesthe autonomy to work in different ways and at different times to get the job done.
Burdensome: The task of tracking time can make them less productive, which, in turn, impacts key project timelines and damages their own time management.
Invasive: In some company cultures, employees may believe time tracking is a covert way for management to monitor them, leading to a lack of trust, a poor culture, and a belief that time tracking is bad.
But, done well, time tracking has the opposite effect. Good time tracking tools actually help developers:
Automate work: Time tracking tools save manual tasks such as updating project management software or creating invoices by automatically capturing time and work-related information.
Simplify processes: User-friendly and intuitive tools help users identify areas for improvement while saving unnecessary management updates.
Collaborate with others: It’s easy to gain visibility into what others are working on, helping to build collaboration, share ideas, and overcome blockers.
Make more money: Time tracking and invoicing go hand-in-hand, with many time tracking solutions helping developers optimize their hourly rates and boost profitability.
Top tip:
Still not sure? Don’t just take our word for it…
Take a look here at how FullStack Labs, a 600-employee-strong software consultancy, used Toggl Track to optimize their development process, retain employees, and win clients such as Uber, thanks to automatic time tracking and Jira-sync functionality!
The best time tracking tools for software developers compared
Now you know why time tracking tools are great for developers, it’s time to go through our roundup of the best seven options on the market.
To create this list, we’ve used our years of time tracking insights and direct feedback from our customers to compare the features developers really need to excel with time tracking!
Harvest
Best for small businesses and large organizations looking for a solid all-rounder.
Thanks to developer-ready features such as automated tracking, productivity reports, and system-system integrations, Harvest makes it easy for developers to simplify their workflows and keep their projects on track. The simple UI makes for a quick learning curve, with all the functionality freelancers need to turn hours into invoices.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
Accurate time tracking down to the minute across different clients and projects
Native and browser-based integrations connect to the platforms developers already use
Alongside a desktop app, there are also handy iPhone and Android mobile versions
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
The simple user interface makes it easy to get started with Harvest quickly
Tracking time from browser, desktop, and mobile apps
Easily visualizing team capacity to manage workload and re-prioritize tasks
Unfortunately, users struggle with:
Limited ability to customize the system, leading to lost insights across the team
Best for clean and simple time tracking with a strong free plan.
For developers who need clean and simple time tracking, Clockify is a great solution with a core focus on accurate timesheets, automatic tracking, and detailed analytics. Clockify has a range of implementation options, including desktop, browser, and mobile apps, and has decent invoicing functionality for freelancers, too.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
A clean user interface means it’s easy to start tracking employee time
Flexibility across devices with desktop, browser, and mobile apps
For those on a budget, Clockify’s free plan is one of the best on the market
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
Simple time tracking that gets straight to the point
Easily linking time records to projects, clients, and expenses
Solid reporting capabilities to uncover productivity gaps and improve ways of working
Best for a stunning UI that makes time tracking simple and easy for everyone.
Toggl Track’s beautiful UI, automatic time tracking, and detailed data insights make it a great tool for developers looking to improve their workflows. With options to track on desktop, browser, and mobile, simple billing, integrations, and a strong anti-surveillance stance, it’s a powerful option for big businesses, small teams, and freelancers alike.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
Multi-platform time tracking from your desktop, phone, or the web, alongside a handy Chrome browser extension to track time from inside other workplace tools
Smart integrations with 100+ other platforms, such as Slack, OneDrive, and Quickbooks
Tracking reminders, alerts, and required fields cuts down admin work and helps automate your end-to-end billing workflow
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
Features designed to create a more focused, productive, and aligned development team
Detailed analytics for flexible, customized, easily shared and easily visualized data analysis
Support that’s fast and humane, helping you maximize the value you receive from Toggl Track
Unfortunately, users can struggle with:
Functionality variations between the app and the full web version
Best for development teams looking to boost productivity.
If you want deep insights into your team’s productivity, TimeCamp is a great choice. With a strong focus on productivity and profitability, TimeCamp’s automatic timer, project dashboards, and customizable billing help software managers deliver a strong ROI.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
For managers, website and app monitoring identify where time is wasted day-to-day
Trigger timer start/stop with keywords, workflows, and manual intervention
Over 100 integrations with platforms such as Asana, Trello, Jira, and GitHub
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
Detailed insights into productivity and process improvement opportunities.
Integrations with lots of other developer tools.
Strong billing and invoicing capabilities help developers get paid.
Unfortunately, users struggle with:
Weak offering when it comes to mobile apps and flexibility across different devices
Best for connecting large distributed software development teams.
Hubstaff’s USP is its focus on connection and collaboration, with strong project, task, and reporting capabilities integrated with slick time management. With many options for tracking across Windows, Linux, and Mac, Hubstaff Tasks is an agile project management package that helps to ship more releases with sprints, stand-ups, and Gantt charts.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
One of the few packages that includes a dedicated Linux app
Integration with Hubstaff Tasks creates a full software development package
Detailed workload tracking helps managers spread the load across the team
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
Individualized reporting templates help managers break down their employee’s time
Integrations with lots of other software development and project management tools
Strong billing and invoicing capabilities help developers get paid
Powerful, enterprise-level billing and invoicing for managing client financials
Best for AI-backed time tracking with detailed productivity insights.
Timely helps you unlock business insights using automated time and activity tracking. The platform tracks your activities as automatic ‘memories’, helping developers understand how they spend their time without any manual intervention.
Best for detailed time monitoring and productivity analysis of development teams.
Time Doctor’s mission is all about helping teams unlock performance and boost profits. To that end, their time tracking integrates with various other employee monitoring and productivity analysis tools to better understand how developers spend their time. Sync the data back to tools you already use thanks to Time Doctor’s 100+ integrations.
🌟 Standout features for software developers
User-controlled, silent, and offline time tracking makes it easy to log timesheets
Client login access helps technology companies create transparency for customers
A range of interfaces, including Zendesk, Wrike, and Redmine
⚖️ Pros and cons
Developers love:
Clear insights into project progress and productivity
Creating a level playing field for remote, home-based, and hybrid workers
Work-life balance metrics help management manage and distribute workloads fairly
What to look for when choosing time tracking software for developers
While everyone from lawyers to administrators uses time tracking tools, developers need some specific features to help them manage the software development process.
Now that you know what a few of your top options are, let’s take a look at some of the most important functionalities to consider when choosing time tracking software for developers.
🦾 Automation
Developers are busy people who don’t have free time to waste. They need time tracking tools to automate and streamline their processes while still capturing accurate time entries.
Automation is a key part of most time-tracking apps, so look for tools with an automatic time clock, customizable notification flows, and clock-in/clock-out reminders to keep developers on track throughout the day.
🔌 Integrations
Whether it’s Slack, QuickBooks, Trello, or GitHub, your developers are likely already using several tools to manage their day. If you’re going to add another to the mix, it needs to slide right in and create a complete end-to-end workflow.
Look out for integrations with other project management tools, design platforms, or invoicing packages to ensure everything stays in sync. These may be direct, native integrations or open, configurable APIs.
🪄 Customization
No two development teams are the same, so you need a tool you can easily customize for big businesses, small teams, or individual freelancers.
Look for common customizations, such as adaptable project templates, detailed reports, or the ability to calculate billable hours rates, to ensure your chosen tools adapt to your way of working.
🧰 Project management
While many teams may use project management tools such as Asana or Basecamp, every time tracking tool needs to be able to track project time, assign specific tasks, and report on the team’s progress against a plan.
As a software development manager, these task management features will also aid you with task allocation, deadline management, and resource planning, providing you a holistic view of your software development pipeline.
💱 Financial management
For many developers, especially freelance developers, time really is money. Any time tracking tool worth its salt should boost your profitability by turning work hours into cash in the bank.
Alongside time management, look for tools that offer expense tracking, invoice creation, and the ability to bill clients for the hard work you’ve put in.
⚡ Cross-platform capabilities
Developers work across different devices, so look for a tool that does the same. While most tools offer a native web app, perfect for MAC, Chrome, and Windows users, look for those who also have a handy mobile app (for iOS and Android) to support developers who work in diverse environments and need flexibility.
🔐 Privacy and security
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, you need to find a time tracking tool that takes employee monitoring and security seriously.
Top tip:
As IT professionals, developers are switched on to data privacy, information security, and compliance concerns, but they also want to know they aren’t being watched. Features such as user access controls give them confidence their timesheets can’t be read by just anyone. Equally, they also alleviate fears about management watching their every move.
Tips for integrating your time tracking app into a development workflow
Once you’ve got a time tracking tool in mind for your development team, how do you go about integrating it into your workflow? Here are some tips to manage your implementation:
Ensure team buy-in. Like all good workplace changes, no project will succeed without buy-in. Before implementing a tool, talk to your team about the benefits of time-tracking to gain support.
Get onboarding support. While time tracking tools aren’t the most complex tools in the world, having some support from your provider can maximize some time tracking best practices. Partner with a customer success manager or a dedicated supplier-side project manager to support your implementation.
Start with a pilot phase. Time tracking implementations work best when they start small and grow over time. Pick a group of ‘early users’ and start them off as part of a pilot group. You’ll gain essential feedback before moving forward with a larger roll-out.
Leverage integrations. When it comes to implementing time tracking tools, ease of use is the key, and integrations are a great way to achieve this. If you can simplify workflows and automate data sync between systems, your team will likely love their new time tracking tool.
Development teams often have a lot to do and not enough time to do it. So, finding ways to optimize their time is essential for success.
While many people (wrongly) believe time tracking is an invasive and time-consuming task, it’s actually a great way to identify productivity gains, boost collaboration, and improve billing and invoicing.
Sounds good, right? Here are just some of the time tracking features our Toggl Track customers use to boost their software development process:
Timeline: This program records your activity timeline privately on your computer and allows you to upload selected activities as time entries whenever you’re ready.
Autotracker: Helps you set rules and automatically track time for specific activities.
Integrations with Google Calendar, Outlook, Jira, and Asana to automatically sync time spent on meetings and project work.
Billable and non-billable time: Identify how much of your time is spent in admin work and how much value-adding coding you need to bill clients for.
See how easy time tracking can be
See how easy we’ve made time tracking for software developers and agencies. Sign up for free to view all the features mentioned above and more!
James Elliott is an APMQ and MSP-certified project professional and writer from London. James has 8 years' experience leading projects and programs for tech, travel, digital, and financial services organizations, managing budgets in excess of £5m and teams of 30+. James writes on various business and project management topics, with a focus on content that empowers readers to learn, take action, and improve their ways of working. You can check out James’ work on his website or by connecting on LinkedIn.
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Ever felt like you’re working endless hours, but your paycheck doesn’t quite reflect that?
Whether you’re a contract worker invoicing by the hour, a side hustler juggling multiple gigs, or a full-time employee trying to decipher your hourly wage, understanding your annual work hours is extremely important.
This information helps you plan your schedule effectively, gain control over your finances, and even negotiate better rates. Plus, it promotes a healthier work-life balance, ensuring you’re not overworking or underselling yourself.
TL;DR—Key Takeaways
While the number of average working hours in a year for a full-time employee is 2,080 hours, that doesn’t take into account paid holidays and paid time off.
Work hours refer to the time you dedicate to your job, whereas non-work hours are reserved for personal activities.
You can calculate your annual work hours using a simple formula involving your weekly work hours, vacation days and holidays, typical hours worked in a day, and total time off.
Understanding your hourly pay empowers you to recognize your value, strengthens your position in negotiations, and enables more strategic financial planning.
Start tracking your working hours now
Toggl Track supports a healthier work-life balance, empowering you to take control of your time management and make informed decisions about your workload
The number of work hours per year for full-time workers is 2,080. How’d we get here? A full-time employee typically has five, eight-hour work days a week — or a 40-hour workweek. Multiply that by the 52 weeks in a calendar year, and you get the total number of hours: 2,080.
But not every year is a carbon copy. Thanks to leap years, you might get an extra day, bumping that amount of time up to 2,088 if leap day falls on a weekday. And let’s not forget public holidays, sick days, and vacation time. Depending on where you live and work, these can shave off a few days from your total work hours.
Don’t feel like you’re missing the mark if your hours aren’t adding up, though. Everybody’s year looks different. Healthcare professionals, for example, often have set shifts that can vary in length. Some roles might require 12-hour shifts, followed by extra rest time.
Freelancers and contractors experience perhaps the most variability, as their work hours can ebb and flow based on project load, client demands, and personal work schedule preferences. Just keep in mind that the industry you work in and the type of employee you are might mean your hours differ from the typical 2,080-hour work year benchmark.
It’s important to understand the difference between work and non-work hours, as this balance affects your overall well-being and productivity.
Work hours are the time you spend on your job, while non-work hours are for personal time. If you don’t balance work and personal time effectively, you may face burnout, decreased productivity at work, and struggle to fully relax during your downtime.
Again, the industry you work in shapes how consistent your work hours are. In a corporate setting, you might have a more structured 9-to-5 schedule.
However, the pressure to meet deadlines or respond to emails after hours can often blur the lines between work and free time. In the hospitality industry, work hours can be all over the place — often stretching into evenings and weekends, making it tough to find consistent downtime.
Top tip:
To maintain a healthy balance, try setting clear boundaries. Turn off work notifications during your off-hours and take regular breaks. This way, your non-work hours are truly restorative, helping you return to your job refreshed and ready to go!
How do you calculate work hours per year?
For that, we’ve created this mini timekeeping guide on how to calculate your work hours annually. It’s really important to tailor these calculations to your individual circumstances and work agreements. If we haven’t made it clear already, everyone’s situation is unique.
Whether you’re a salaried employee, a part-time employee, or have a flexible hourly schedule, we’ll walk you through the steps to help you get a clear picture of your annual work hours.
Step #1: Track and calculate your weekly work hours
The best way to accurately track your weekly work hours is with a time tracking app. Set alerts to start and stop your timer, or choose a tool like Toggl Track that comes with built-in reminders. Make sure to log your hours daily — including breaks and overtime hours. And remember to log all work-related activities like meetings, emails, and calls in a timesheet for better visibility.
Once you have your average number of hours worked per week, simply multiply that number by 52 (the number of weeks in a year) to estimate your total annual work hours.
Imagine you track an average working hours of 32 hours of working time each week. Then, multiply that by 52.
32 hours work x 52 weeks in a year = 1,664 yearly work hours.
We’re not done yet! This doesn’t account for any holiday hours or time taken off.
Step #2: Calculate PTO and holidays
Let’s talk about PTO hours (any time you weren’t working but were still getting paid). Paid time off can be for sick leave, a paid federal holiday, or a well-deserved vacation. The amount of PTO you get can vary depending on your company’s policy and how long you’ve been with them.
Not everyone is entitled to days of PTO. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, no federal law requires paid time off, so it’s really up to your employer.
The Department of Labor recognizes 11 annual federal holidays, though (even if they don’t have to be paid). Every four years, there are 12 national holidays to account for Inauguration Day. Private employers can choose to offer more or fewer holidays.
Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Monday, January 20)
Inauguration Day (Monday, January 20)
Washington’s Birthday (Monday, February 17)
Memorial Day (Monday, May 26)
Juneteenth National Independence Day (Thursday, June 19)
Independence Day (Friday, July 04)
Labor Day (Monday, September 01)
Columbus Day (Monday, October 13)
Veterans Day (Tuesday, November 11)
Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 27)
Christmas Day (Thursday, December 25)
Step #3: Multiply the number of total days you took off with the number of hours you work per day
Take the total number of days you took off—including PTO and holidays—and multiply that by the number of hours you typically work in a day. Let’s say you took 26 days off in a year (that’s 15 days of PTO plus 11 holidays), and you work eight-hour days. So, you’d calculate 26 days off multiplied by eight hours per day.
26 days off x 8 working hours per day = 208 hours off.
This number represents the hours you didn’t work, which can help you see the real impact of your time off on your annual work output. Plus, if you’re paid hourly, this can also help you understand how your time off affects your annual earnings for better financial planning.
Step #4: Subtract total time off from annual work hours
You’ve made it to the last step! To find your net annual work hours, you’ll want to subtract your total time off from your annual work hours.
Here’s how.
Take the total work hours you calculated in Step #1 and subtract the hours you took off (from Step #3). For example, if you work 1,664 hours a year (32 hours a week x 52 weeks) and took 208 hours off, your calculation would be:
1,664 working hours – 208 hours off = 1,456 annual work hours.
This final figure represents your net annual work hours—a powerful number to keep in your back pocket for effective workload management. By having a clear view of your net hours, you’re equipped to:
Set productivity goals that are actually achievable
Dodge the pitfalls of overcommitment
Gain a bird’s-eye view of your work capacity throughout the year.
Whether you’re a salaried or part-time hourly employee, you can translate your annual work hours into hourly pay. It’s best to use time tracking software to ensure your annual work hours are accurate!
Hourly workers
If you’re an hourly or part-time worker, this is pretty straightforward. You simply divide your annual earnings by the number of hours of work you have in a given year.
Let’s say your annual earnings are $40,000, and your annual work hours are the standard 2,080. Your hourly pay is your annual earnings divided by your annual work hours.
$40,000 annual earnings / 2,080 annual work hours = $19.23/hour
Salaried workers
If you’re salaried, you’ll need to do a bit more math, but it’s still quite simple. First, calculate your net annual work hours (as we did in the previous steps), then divide your annual salary by those hours.
Let’s say your annual income is $60,000, and your annual work hours follow the traditional 40-hour workweek, so 2,080. Now, you need to account for time off, which we’ll say is 208 hours from our previous example. Your hourly pay is your annual salary divided by your net annual work hours (annual work hours minus total time off).
Knowing your hourly pay helps you understand your worth and can be a powerful tool in negotiations. For example, if you find your hourly pay is lower than the industry average, you might consider negotiating a raise or looking for better opportunities elsewhere.
It also supports financial planning — like budgeting your expenses or planning for savings.
If you’re an hourly worker making $19.23/hour, you might realize that picking up a few extra shifts could significantly boost your annual earnings. For example, working an extra five hours a week at your hourly rate could add up to nearly an additional $5,000 a year!
Can’t you just use a calculator to plot how many work hours there are in a year?
Sure, you can pull out a calculator, but it’s better to do that after you’ve already done your manual calculations. Use an online calculator to double-check your work. Manual calculations might seem old-fashioned, but they help you personalize the variables unique to your working situation.
Here’s a quick pros and cons list of using online calculators:
✅ Convenient and easy to use
✅ Very accurate for straightforward calculations
✅ Can save you a lot of time if you’re in a rush
❌ Lack the personalization needed for your work schedule, holidays, or PTO
❌ Over-reliance on calculators can make you less adept at understanding basic math
❌ Online calculators can sometimes have bugs that lead to incorrect results
However you prefer to conduct your calculations, it’s better to do it than not at all. And if we haven’t driven the benefits home already, here’s one more reminder of why it’s beneficial to calculate how many work hours there are in a year:
Better workload management: A clear understanding of your annual work hours empowers you to spread your tasks more evenly throughout the year. This helps prevent burnout and also ensures you aren’t overextending yourself during peak periods.
Accurate financial planning: Calculating your annual work hours allows you to translate your salary into hourly pay. This is essential for budgeting, understanding your earnings, and planning for the future.
A great ally to the HR department: Annual work hours aren’t just a great thing for workers to know; the HR department also needs them. This ensures accurate payroll processing, compliance with labor laws, and better resource allocation.
Track your total work hours with Toggl Track
When you understand exactly where your time goes, you can optimize your schedule and ensure you’re not overworking. With Toggl Track, you can track your hours easily and accurately.
Detailed reports give you a clear overview of your work patterns, making it easier to plan your schedule and negotiate fair compensation. And project management capabilities help you stay organized and productive.
By offering visibility into your work habits, Toggl Track supports a healthier work-life balance, empowering you to take control of your time management and make informed decisions about your workload. Ready to take control of your time? Sign up for a free Toggl Track account today!
Michelle is an experienced freelance writer who loves applying research and creative storytelling to the content she creates. She writes about B2B SaaS software while also participating in conversations about other industries, such as the digital publishing landscape, sports, and travel.
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In 1979, a group of IBM executives came up with a curious idea: What if we let some people telecommute by logging into their work devices remotely? It proved a success. The first telecommuters were more productive and more engaged. By 1983, some 2,000 IBM employees were working remotely.
Today, personal connectivity has advanced even further. Work can happen anywhere, anytime, and from any device. This is a major advantage for companies as remote hiring delivers better access to talent, enhanced operational agility, and oftentimes higher productivity levels.
But, even though it’s been around for 45+ years, the remote work trend isjust getting started.
Why we believe remote work is the future
Today, almost a quarter of the global workforce works remotely, with telecommuting levels rising to 67% in industries like technology. Going forward, we can expect some 90 million roles to become remote.
It was the best decision for Toggl to go fully remote in 2014. “Being remote gives us an opportunity to hire from the widest possible talent pool and allows us to bring the best of the best to our team,” shares Dajana Berisavljević Đakonović, Head of People at Toggl.
For Pinterest, a flexible work model also led to a greater diversity of new hires. About 79% of all Black, Indigenous, Latino, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander employees (BILNP) who have joined Pinterest within the past year came from outside of the Bay Area, compared to 60% of non-BILNP workers,” shared Doniel Sutton, the CPO of Pinterest.
At Dropbox, a virtual-first approach to team management led to 72% higher self-reported productivity and 80% higher effectiveness.
Many other businesses stand firm behind remote work, believing it creates better employment dynamics. Employees gain greater flexibility and have higher job satisfaction. All the while, employers enjoy improved access to talent, better employee retention, and reduced absenteeism — all leading to higher profitability.
But, of course, not everyone is sold. Many businesses are shoehorning people back to the office, creating tension (and you can read our 🌶️ thoughts about that here).
1 in 5 employees plans to ignore return-to-office (RTO) mandates by leveraging employment law loopholes or channeling their energy into endless arguments with the management.
This undermines productivity, disrupts morale, and creates a bad rep for the company. Three-quarters of Amazon employees plan to search for a new job following this year’s RTO mandate.
The truth is…remote work can be equal parts hard and fulfilling for companies to build.
“Forcing people back to the office won’t fix your communication issues or low engagement rates. It definitely won’t cure your inability to innovate or collaborate”, says Dajana. “A remote work culture has to be built with intention and have people who truly support productive work and a healthy work-life balance.”
The well-sung benefits of remote work emerge when you establish a fair management process based on trust and results rather than micromanagement and arbitrary performance metrics. In many cases, you also need to remove the pressure of immediacy from communication to provide your people with ‘headspace’ to do deep, thoughtful work.
Pulling off such cultural and process transformation can be hard. But it’s worth the effort because new generations of talented people have already made their choice: they want to work remotely.
Fifty-eight percent of workers said they would “absolutely” look for a new job if they cannot continue remote work in their current role.
Working remotely isn’t just about accommodating the demands of the workforce. It’s a strategic shift bringing in a bevy of operational benefits, such as…
🏊 A wider talent pool
If you hire remotely, your talent pool grows from local to global. This means more qualified potential candidates for each position and less competition with other employers.
Remote positions attract 3X more applicants than in-office jobs. At the same time, 67% of US employers have already lost their talent to competitors, offering more flexible work arrangements.
You also escape local talent shortages for specialized skills. For example, the largest proportion of people with AI skills live in India, the United States, Germany, and Israel. Remote hiring means you don’t need to be in the same Zip code.
💰 Cost savings
The average real estate savings per full-time remote employee is $10,000. No office space also means no utility, cleaning, catering, office equipment, or security costs.
For larger companies, those translate to massive cost efficiencies. The US Patent Office, where 80% of eligible staff teleworks, avoided over $65.6 million in miscellaneous real estate costs since launching its remote work program after the pandemic.
🪄 Improved productivity
The jury is still out on whether remote work is always more productive. Over the past three years, companies reported anywhere between 19% decreases to 13% gains. The exact impacts depend largely on pre-existing process efficiencies and success with mastering asynchronous communication and remote collaboration.
Generally, companies with mature remote work practices have more engaged, happy, and productive teams. This is mostly because their staff doesn’t have to lose energy due to long commutes, noisy office spaces, or ongoing stress.
🤩 Employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction increases as much as 20% when given the option to work 100% remotely. Satisfied employees aren’t just less grumpy — they’re more engaged and perform better in their roles.
As Dr. Camille Preston argued in her book, The Happiness Advantage, “Happiness improves almost every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%.”
Despite the above benefits, many teams remain hesitant about going fully remote…and rightfully so. The shift to remote-first often requires major changes in operational processes, corporate culture, and legal setup. Here are the top challenges to overcome.
🔍 Finding qualified remote candidates
Assembling a high-performance global team is no small feat. You’ll have to adapt your recruitment and selection process for remote candidates. Think video calls over on-site meetings, skills tests on top of resume screening, and a structured interview process over casual chit-chat.
You’ll also need to adjust your job descriptions and job promotion strategies, favoring specialized job boards and niche communities over general job aggregators like Indeed or Monster (the next section explores this in more detail).
🚨 Legal complexities of international hiring
Hiring cross-border requires familiarity with local employment laws and payroll management practices. If you choose to hire international staff as contractors, misclassification can land you in regulatory hot water.
Granted, specialized remote work services providers streamline the hiring process. Employer-of-record service providers like Deel and Plane help legally hire staff in countries where you don’t have a legal entity and ensure compliance with all applicable regulations — from proper compensation to IP rights protection.
🏄 Building a remote onboarding process
Limited face time and fractured communication can make it hard for new hires to settle into their roles. They may feel clueless about corporate policies and lack timely feedback or basic tech assistance with setting up their equipment and corporate accounts.
To integrate new employees remotely, create a structured onboarding plan covering all the legal formalities, general orientation, and role-specific guidance. Good communication is key.
Communicate everything more than feels necessary. It’s better to sound like a broken record than to have a new team member who feels left out or doesn’t know what is expected from them.
Ensure the new employee receives access to all important work systems: email, project management software, department-specific tools, HR platform, and corporate knowledge libraries. Develop personalized onboarding paths, which include introduction meetings with key people, must-complete tasks for each day, and check-in sessions with direct supervisors.
🎉 Managing a remote company culture
Remote work culture is like an invisible cord linking people from different locations, backgrounds, and values into one tight-knit allyship.
“You need to actively work on defining the culture. It is a constant effort and should not be left self-organizing. It’s so important to keep people communicating, making sure they talk about their plans, achievements and also problems. It’s also very important to work on building trust and a safe environment for taking risks,”notes Alari Aho, Founder of Toggl.
Apart from promoting candid communication, you’ll also need to create new opportunities for bonding remotely. This can be anything from thematic Slack chats (e.g., for new parents or pet owners) to group health challenges or virtual parties.
Top tip:
Toggl hosts meetups around the world various times per year. We also participate in company-wide health challenges and share photos of our furry best friends on Slack.
If you don’t have the budget for in-person meetings, however, another thing you can do is host remote events. For example, at Toggl, teams receive a stipend for remote pizza parties, where the company compensates the celebratory takeaway, and we munch together over Zoom.
🤝 Encouraging collaboration and productivity of remote employees
Remote work requires building a virtual workspace where everyone can connect, exchange ideas, air grievances, and find resolutions. Without a strong collaboration process, you’ll either lean into micromanagement (bad!) or employee surveillance (even worse). Or lose efficiencies due to information asymmetry and under-management.
To strike the right balance, invest in the right type of project management software for your team. A simpler task management app may do for smaller, autonomous units (e.g., a marketing team). Meanwhile, larger departments may need more feature-rich platforms to streamline several different types of workflows (e.g., an HR team may want to have a full-cycle system that integrates recruitment and project management workflows).
Likewise, find a suitable set of communication platforms — async messengers, video conferencing tools, and a knowledge management system for storing and exchanging text, video, and audio notes.
How to hire remote employees in 10 simple steps
Toggl has been a remote-first company since 2014 — a bold but right decision for a startup that grew to a global business of 1.5 million users across four different products.
Without remote work, we would have struggled to scale. After all, Estonia is a country of just 1.36 million amazing people. We would have struggled to scale our product because people from 40+ countries bring at least 40X brighter ideas for growth.
If you, too, want to build a strong, thriving, and growth-driven remote-first company, here are our best tips.
1. Confirm the role can be done remotely
At least 35% of all jobs existing today can be done remotely. These include the majority of knowledge work like software development, sales, finance management, marketing, and consulting, among others.
Generally, a role can be remote if it doesn’t require:
Hands-on tinkering with physical equipment
Non-negotiable in-person customer interactions
Immediate face-to-face interactions for troubleshooting
Regular on-site supply handling
Next, consider the communication requirements. Can most job responsibilities be achieved effectively with virtual collaboration tools? Will timezone differences affect productivity? Can async communication negatively affect the employee’s performance?
Lastly, confirm you have (or are willing to invest) in the right remote technology setup. Beyond personal hardware (laptop, headphones, etc.) and digital workplace apps, you should also consider security measures like a corporate VPN and encrypted remote system access for roles with sensitive data.
2. Ensure salary and benefits are attractive to remote workers
Traditionally, employees had to trade the affordable cost of living for an opportunity to earn more in a major business hub. Remote work changed this trend. Job seekers no longer have to choose the high costs and stress levels of living in a big city for the opportunity to get a great salary.
Top remote talents also understand how much their skill sets can earn them in different countries (as much of the salary data is public). So you’ll need to offer a competitive package to land the best hires.
Some companies like Basecamp and Zillow pay the same rate to everyone, regardless of their country of residence. Others add a ‘location index’, adjusting the pay across different markets based on factors like cost of living or payroll overheads (e.g., legally required social benefit payments in the employee’s country of residence).
The reality is the costs of hiring employees can be vastly different across countries. Christophe Pasquier, founder of Slite, argues, “Remote employees should indeed be paid fairly, but not equally. The same work should be given a similar standard of living level, and give the feeling that it’s appreciated the same way—no matter where people live”. His company decided to pay remote employee salaries indexed on the top percentiles of the capital of the employee’s residency.
Top tip:
Consider an approach that works best for your business in terms of cash flow at this time. Small businesses may not lure remote workers with the highest salaries but can appeal to candidates looking for flexible work hours or a greater degree of autonomy. Likewise, you can sweeten the deal with extra remote employee perks like home office stipends, annual self-care budget, paid education, or local childcare benefits.
3. Write a great job description
A great job description for a remote open position sets clear expectations regarding responsibilities, skills, and job logistics. Explicitly state if there are any restrictions about hiring locations, time zones, working hours, or required travel for in-house or client meetings.
Conduct a job task analysis to pin down the preferred work experience, hard skills, professional licenses, and personality traits of ideal candidates. Keep a reasonable list of candidate requirements to avoid wasting time searching for a purple squirrel—an ideal candidate that doesn’t exist on the market.
Job listings aim to attract a wide pool of applicants, whom you’ll pre-screen and evaluate using different methods, such as skill sets, technical and cultural interviews, or homework assignments.
Lastly, work on your messaging around the benefits of remote work and state what perks come with the role. Some candidates may have concerns about their work-life boundaries or opportunities for promotion. Here is what that looks like for most Toggl job listings. 👇
4. Expand your pool to include global talent
Remote work enables you to hire from a global talent pool, not just your country. The initial mechanics can seem challenging as you must figure out international payroll and contractor laws. On the pro side, many specialized remote hiring companies now help with the legal aspects.
Cultural differences also come into play. However, greater cultural diversity usually translates to better business outcomes. Diverse teams are 87% more likely to make better decisions than non-inclusive ones because they’re less prone to biased thinking and more creative in brainstorming.
By bringing an amalgam of perspectives and cultural experiences, such teams can approach problems from different angles and propose truly innovative solutions.
To broaden your reach, distribute job descriptions to global remote job boards. Our favorites are:
To attract more remote candidates to open positions, try combining several methods. You can also advertise remote job posts through your website and blog to attract candidates interested in your brand.
Next, promote open positions on LinkedIn and other social media networks. Ask existing employees to get the word out to their network.
Finally…ask for employee referrals which can reduce time-to-hire and save money on advertising costs and agency fees.
Top tip:
To optimize remote candidate sourcing times, focus on building a talent pool — a database of passive candidates with the skills your organization may need now and in the future. So that the next time you start a hiring cycle, you know exactly who to message first with your job ad.
6. Use a skills test at the start to shortlist candidates
Pre-employment skills testing narrows down the candidate pool by detecting relevant skills and competencies early in the hiring process.
We recommend including short, multiple-question tests for role-related skills (e.g., accounting best practices, Android app development, or SEO) as the first pre-screening step to eliminate unsuitable candidates. With Toggl Hire, you can create customizable assessments for 100+ hard and soft skills using a database of expert-made questions. Then, automatically send these over to all candidates to vet their qualifications.
By using skill assessments early in the hiring process, everyone wins. Applicants receive instant feedback (great for candidate experience) on their application status, while your team gets objective data for decision-making (i.e., candidate scores on different types of questions).
By using pre-assessments, Proxify reached a 93% confidence of the candidate’s fit even before the first call (a major factor for a company processing over 3,000 applicants per month) and increased time-to-hire by 1.5x. At the same time, 4 out of 5 candidates who completed Toggl Hire skills tests love their experience.
7. Invite the best candidates to a video interview
You’ll want to have face time with the strongest candidates over a video app. This is the opportunity to further evaluate the employees’ skills, personality, and alignment with the company culture.
Just like a regular interview, basic courtesies apply: Select an appropriate time slot (mind the different time zones), tune in on time, and prepare thoughtful questions. But there are also important differences.
Instead of looking for someone personable in real-time, you need to find someone who can also communicate well asynchronously. Similarly, for remote work, you don’t always need amazing team players but someone who’s also a self-starter and knows how to figure things out on their own.
During the video interview, focus on assessing the candidates’ communication skills and professional demeanor through the lens of remote work. During a culture interview, try asking the following questions to gauge a fit:
What’s your current process for working through the challenges? Your goal is to receive a concrete response, demonstrating the candidate’s self-awareness levels. Then probe them to share a solution to assess their problem-solving skills. Everyone will face difficulties with remote work. Your goal is to find people who can recover from occasional setbacks without waiting for someone to come to their rescue.
How do you get into productive mode? Again, your goal is to assess the candidate’s self-awareness. Do they know how to best manage their time and energy? Can they do so without constant nags? The best remote work candidates will share their ‘recipe’ for getting into the groove.
What did you like about your last employer’s work culture? If the candidate starts talking about the in-office camaraderie, they might not bode well with remote work. On the other hand, if they love the role’s autonomy, it’s a great plus. Broader responses like “a running club” or “inside team jokes” help you understand if the person would fit with the cultural themes you’re cultivating or bring something new to the mix.
8. Use the final interview correctly
Final interviews play a crucial role in the hiring process because you’re choosing from an exceptional cohort of talented people. By this point, everyone is a strong fit. So the decision boils down to figuring out who has a slight edge over the others in terms of skills, cultural fit, and job performance prospects.
To make the right call, ask several final interview questions, testing the candidates’ situational judgment, motivation, work process, and first steps in the new role.
Follow a structured interview process. Ask each candidate the same question and measure their responses using a scorecard with standardized evaluation criteria. To make an informed choice, evaluate answers based on:
Consistency: Check if the candidates’ answers align with previous responses and their resumes. Do they expand on experiences or repeat the same points? Prioritize candidates who bring in more dimensions.
Insight depth: Look for candidates who provide sharp, detailed examples over vague, generalistic responses. It shows they have better communication skills and deeper experience to offer.
Behavioral cues: Observe their engagement and soft skills — problem-solving, adaptability, and communication — to better gauge their comfort in a remote role.
Cultural add: Assess how they’ll complement the company’s culture, mission, and values. Hiring for cultural add, rather than fit alone, promotes inclusivity and innovative thinking.
9. Be transparent about your remote work policy
The success of remote work hinges on trust and mutual accountability. New hires should clearly understand your company’s remote work policies. Namely:
Schedules: Expected work hours, including any core hours when employees must be online. Specify the procedures for requesting time off or scheduling flexibility.
Performance: Explain how you’ll measure results to evaluate the new hires’ performance and eligibility for bonuses or promotions. Set clear, measurable, and realistic role-specific KPIs to drive engagement and avoid ambiguities during performance reviews.
Communication: Outline all means of communication available. Explain where different types of requests and questions should be routed (e.g., perks-related questions should be emailed to HR via Slack. Hardware-related problems should be reported to tech support via a ticketing app). Keep all of these procedures documented in a corporate knowledge base for convenience.
Expense reimbursement. Clarify which work-related expenses are eligible for reimbursement, e.g., home office supplies or new software license purchases. Explain how to submit expense claims and when to expect payment.
Cybersecurity. Provide guidance on securely accessing corporate software (e.g., installing a VPN or activating two-factor authentication). Explain how to handle sensitive data, what cannot be disclosed, and where to file requests for accessing restricted resources.
Top tip:
Proactive communication during onboarding reduces confusion (and mistakes!), helping new hires settle faster into their role. Employees with an effective onboarding experience are more likely to be satisfied with their workplace. Higher satisfaction, in turn, translates to better productivity, engagement, and retention.
10. Check their remote work setup
Give your new hires everything they need to begin working efficiently. This includes a laptop and software licenses at a minimum, although many companies will add a bit of extra home office setup like:
One-time cash home office allowance for buying other necessities like a comfy chair or extra desk accessories
Coworking space membership or an Internet stipend to help cover the bills
Support with paying for preferred tools or premium digital content the person may need in their role.
At Toggl, we provide each new hire with a €2,500 laptop budget (renews every 3 years) and a €2,000 budget for home office setup, plus an extra €300 every year after 3 years of tenure. Effectively, these are the savings from not having a physical office that we pass on to our people to help them settle in.
Tips for conducting remote interviews
The most successful remote companies focus on finding people with a similar ethos — those who’ll thrive in highly autonomous environments, build meaningful relationships without a ton of face time, and get things done right on cue without endless nudges.
To identify such candidates in the sea of applicants, we use four cornerstone recruitment best practices:
Shortlist candidates using skills tests. To avoid wasting anyone’s time, we schedule video interviews only with candidates who scored above a set testing threshold. This way, we know the candidate already has the desired chops, which we can further probe during a structured conversation.
Use async video interviews for different time zones.Asynchronous video interviews, a type of pre-recorded submission from an applicant, reduce the hustle of aligning schedules and provide greater room for feedback. Several people, recruiter(s) and hiring manager(s), can review submissions and provide feedback to reduce individual bias.
Use homework assignments to gauge remote work skills. Homework assignments provide even more insights into candidates’ aptitude for a remote role. We combine different situational and behavioral-based questions to measure the candidate’s potential to do well in remote settings.
Ask the right interview questions. Most Togglers have several interview rounds—a pre-screen with a recruiter, a deeper technical interview with a hiring manager, and the final one to gauge culture fit. At each stage, we ask strategic interview questions to gauge the applicant’s personality traits, experience, values, and skills—and measure the responses using interviewing scorecards.
10 qualities to look for when hiring remote workers
Identifying candidates with the following ten qualities is essential for a successful remote hiring process.
1. Communication skills
Good communication underpins a successful remote team. You can test the communication skills of remote employees by setting up a short standardized assessment and getting more insights during the interview. Ask questions like:
What’s your usual process for giving someone complex instructions remotely?
Tell us about a situation when you had to resolve a conflict remotely.
Describe a situation where you were able to influence others on an important issue. What approaches or strategies did you use?
Top tip:
If the candidate can’t provide a clear walkthrough or explain their thinking process, they may not be a good fit for the remote role. However, some candidates do get nervous when put on the spot, so keep that in mind when evaluating their answers.
2. Organizational skills
Because remote employees will largely work on their own schedules, they will need to be highly organized. This will require a good ability to prioritize tasks, manage their time, and stay motivated.
To evaluate the organizational skills of remote candidates, ask which time management strategies they favor:
Do you have a favorite time management tool or technique for working around a tight deadline?
How is remote work compatible with your current lifestyle? Will you need to make any changes?
How do you determine which task to do first when you have multiple priorities?
Top tip:
If you want to test a candidate’s ability to work remotely, have them take a Working Remotely skills assessment test. This skills test assesses candidates’ asynchronous working abilities, including digital literacy and remote communication.
3. Technical skills
Remote work requires a high degree of digital literacy — an ease of using and learning new technical tools. If you require knowledge of specific business software, you can test a candidate’s aptitude with a quick skills assessment.
Trust is the bedrock of strong remote cultures. But this can be a tricky character trait to assess, and you almost have to trust your candidates are being honest about being honest.
The best you can do is ensure the applicants can do what they say they can.
Use several competency assessment methods — multiple-choice answer tests, take-home assignments with open-ended questions, portfolio evaluations, and structured interviews — to cross-validate candidates’ responses.
Describe the management style that will bring forth your best work and efforts.
Describe the work environment or culture in which you are most productive and happy.
Do you have a best friend at work? How do you feel about becoming friends with your coworkers? Is this a wise practice?
6. Self-sufficiency
Remote employees need to be highly self-motivated and autonomous, or else it’ll be a struggle for their manager and everyone else on the team. Hire people who can solve issues on their own (when possible), show initiative, and take responsibility for their decisions.
Some other good questions to ask are:
When do you prefer working alone and when as part of a team?
What initially got you interested in your profession? How has that sentiment changed since you started?
If you find yourself working on a boring task, how do you keep yourself going?
7. Self-discipline
Self-discipline is extremely important for remote staff who need to work harder to minimize distractions, take regular breaks, and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Lack of proper routine can create extra physiological strain on remote workers, leading to emotional exhaustion, disengagement, and burnout.
Ensure the candidate knows how to self-regulate and build healthy boundaries between work and play. You can get some ideas by asking questions like:
What’s your ideal workday like?
How do you usually cope with stress?
How do you deal with productivity slumps?
8. Flexibility and adaptability
You’ll want to allow remote staff as much autonomy and flexibility as possible, but some structure is necessary to ensure alignment.
This can take the form of weekly 1:1s with your team members or monthly retrospectives, where successes and failures are discussed. This is a great way to organically foster interaction in what can be an isolating environment at times and also create accountability without micromanaging.
At the same time, you’ll also need ‘faster’ channels for escalating emergency issues and shifting the teams to a new direction. To get an idea of a candidate’s adaptability, questions like these could come in handy:
Your team needs to create a new data security strategy quickly in response to a new regulatory requirement. How would you approach this?
You have a critical task dependency, but the responsible teammate is working in a different timezone. How would you navigate this?
Have you ever dealt with a prospect with a “this is how we’ve always done it” attitude? What did you persuade them to try a different approach?
9. Ability to respond to feedback
Constructive and candid feedback is critical for ensuring effective work. But not all people process feedback well, especially in remote settings, when you don’t see the non-verbal cues or hear the exact tone of voice.
Top tip:
Search for people who can tolerate constructive criticism without getting too defensive or emotional. You could even test this by giving an applicant a short task and offering constructive critical feedback on it.
10. Remote working experience
This isn’t an essential requirement, but people who previously thrived in hybrid or remote roles come with better ‘cultural baggage.’ They usually have stronger written communication skills, a better sense of tact when it comes to async communication, and mental resilience for doing most of the work solo. So it’s safer to go with someone familiar with the requirements than someone wanting to give it a go who thinks they might be good at it.
Hire for remote jobs the right way
For employers, remote work enables access to the best talent in the market. For employees, it’s a way to live and work on their terms. While it’s advantageous for both, remote hiring comes with a host of unique challenges. You’ll need to adapt your processes and culture to reinforce multi-time-zone, cross-border collaboration.
When it comes to remote hiring, businesses are often worried about making a poor choice and ending up with ‘ghost workers’ — people who give the illusion of presence but fail to deliver real contributions.
Skills-first hiring platforms like Toggl Hire bring greater predictability into the hiring process. Our hiring platform integrates the necessary ‘quality gates’ into your hiring process — auto-graded competency assessments, homework assignments, async video interviews, and advanced candidate analytics — to vet prospective candidates.
Built and tested on our remote-first company and now adopted by businesses worldwide, Toggl Hire helps you make smarter hiring decisions faster.
Elena is a senior content strategist and writer specializing in technology, finance, and people management. With over a decade of experience, she has helped shape the narratives of industry leaders like Xendit, UXCam, and Intellias. Her bylines appear in Tech.Co, The Next Web, and The Huffington Post, while her ghostwritten thought leadership pieces have been featured in Forbes, Smashing Magazine, and VentureBeat. As the lead writer behind HLB Global’s Annual Business Leader Survey, she translates complex data and economic trends into actionable insights for executives in 150+ countries. Armed with a Master’s in Political Science, Elena blends analytical depth with sharp storytelling to create content that matters.
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Unconscious biases impact hiring decisions. Gender, age, university degree, or ethnic background influence our first opinion about candidates — and not always in a good way.
Statistically, applicants with ethnic-sounding names are 28% less likely to get a callback for an interview, while those who disclose they have a mental illness are 45% less likely to receive callbacks. Age plays a role in hiring discrimination, too. Older job seekers are often considered 25% less competent than younger ones.
Is there a way to prevent this entirely? As humans, it’s hard, but it’s no excuse for this kind of bias. One tool to lean on to improve fair hiring decisions. Blind recruitment software.
Blind recruitment software removes sensitive information from candidate applications, allowing managers to make decisions based on experience and skills rather than ancillary demographic factors. The following six blind hiring tools help create a fairer, merit-based recruiting process.
TL;DR – Key Takeaways
Blind hiring software removes personal details from job applications and keeps the focus on skills and qualifications, so the only bias is in favor of talent and the most qualified candidates.
You’ll find different blind hiring tools for different purposes. Tools like Toggl Hire and Pymetrics help evaluate applicants based on their skills rather than resume-listed qualifications, while tools like Pinpoint and TalVista help anonymize candidate profiles.
The benefits of implementing blind hiring practices include facilitating diversity recruiting, combating unconscious bias, and increasing recruiting efficiencies while reducing hiring costs.
Understanding how to integrate blind hiring practices into your existing recruitment strategy can help ensure your team gets the most out of the benefits of these tools.
• Anonymizes CVs and cover letters • Removes identifiable details like gender and ethnicity • Integrates with existing ATS systems • Customizable redaction parameters
No
On-demand
1. Toggl Hire
Toggl Hire shifts the focus from the candidates’ backgrounds to their qualifications.
Toggl Hire is a skills-first hiring software that offers access to over 20,000 pre-made test questions to assess qualifications for different roles. Users can create competency-based tests from pre-made templates, add custom questions, and set pass thresholds to pre-screen the best candidates for the interview.
In the context of blind recruitment, Toggl Hire helps evaluate applicants based on their skills rather than resume-listed qualifications and “bragging rights.” You can also create and send homework assignments to further evaluate the candidates’ competencies and make fact-based decisions.
Although Toggl Hire doesn’t offer full anonymization of candidate profiles, it shifts the focus from the candidates’ backgrounds to their qualifications. It also improves the candidate experience by helping companies reduce the time to hire and improve response times.
“For many roles, attitude and skills matters more than education or previous experience. Toggl Hire helped us quickly test those things before even talking to candidates”, said Emil Krzeminski, Head of International Sales at Listonic.
Using Toggl Hire test assessments, Listonic pre-screened a list of international applicants for its first remote position, prioritizing people with the right skills, attitude, and communication style.
You can try Toggl Hire for free, with a free trial available to experience advanced features.
2. Applied
Hiring managers love Applied for high-volume hiring and access to DEI analytics.
Applied is a predictive applicant tracking system (ATS) backed by behavioral science principles. The main features include an anonymous resume evaluation tool, a customizable test library, fair grading algorithms, a structured interview database, and predictive candidate shortlisting.
Like Toggl Hire, Applied provides access to a test library of behavioral science-based job simulation questions. You can also create numerical and cognitive tests to evaluate candidates‘ analytical and problem-solving skills.
All the test results are anonymized, and answers get randomized for scoring to minimize hiring bias among hiring managers. Customers positively rate Applied for high-volume hiring and DEI analytics. The downside is its high price, which is listed as starting at $5,000 per year.
Interviewing.io helps companies hire coders — totally anonymously.
Interviewing.io is changing the way companies hire engineers by leveraging data-driven insights and anonymous technical interviews.
This platform prioritizes candidates’ actual performance in live yet totally anonymous, rigorous interviews, offering a more reliable measure of talent than traditional resumes. By focusing on demonstrable skills, you are better able to identify and engage with top-performing engineers who align with their technical needs.
One of the standout aspects of Interviewing.io as a blind hiring tool is its true commitment to reducing bias through anonymous interviews.
By concealing candidates’ identities and using voice-masking technology, the platform ensures a gender-neutral and unbiased hiring process. This approach not only fosters diversity but also levels the playing field for all candidates, allowing their skills and abilities to shine.
Moreover, the platform’s all-in-one interview environment simplifies the process by eliminating the need for additional links or phone numbers, creating a seamless experience for both interviewers and candidates.
Pricing details are available on request, and you must sign up to the waitlist for information.
4. Pinpoint
Pinpoint helps teams have more control over the entire hiring process.
Pinpoint helps attract, hire, and onboard the right talent. It combines standard applicant tracking system features like online application forms, job requisition management, talent pools, candidate scorecards, and interview scheduling with cool add-ons like bling hiring, video interviewing, and online employee onboarding.
You can enable blind recruiting on a job-by-job basis and select which candidate details you want to anonymize and at what interview stage. Then, you can share anonymized candidate profiles with decision-makers with one click. This helps reduce hiring bias and create a more structured interview process.
Unlike the other bling hiring software on this list, Pinpoint doesn’t offer skills-based assessments, but as current customers point out, it makes resume screening fairer.
Pricing details are available on request.
5. Pymetrics
Pymetrics uses science-backed behavioral assessments to create fair hiring processes.
Pymetrics uses data-driven behavioral insights and audited AI to create a collection of neuroscience-based games for assessing candidates’ cognitive, problem-solving, and communication skills.
Rather than looking at cover letters or a job candidate’s personal information, they use gamified behavioral assessments to produce a personalized profile highlighting the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. This profile benefits both candidates, who gain self-awareness and improvement insights, and companies, which can identify well-suited applicants for specific roles.
Users can also train custom AI algorithms to better identify applicants for internal mobility opportunities or upskilling opportunities.
MeVitae is a blind recruiting solution designed to eliminate unconscious bias from the hiring process by anonymizing CVs and cover letters. This is our most recommended tool if you need to remove identifiable details like gender, ethnicity, and other bias-prone information.
The platform’s standout feature is its customizable redaction parameters, which allow you to choose which details to hide based on specific roles or departments. This flexibility ensures you are able to tailor each hiring process to your organization’s needs while maintaining a focus on eliminating bias.
Additionally, MeVitae’s technology processes documents quickly, significantly reducing the time required for manual redaction and enabling recruiters to efficiently manage large volumes of applications.
Pricing details are available on request.
The benefits of blind hiring practices
While using blind hiring software can help facilitate diversity recruiting and combat unconscious bias, you might be wondering, “What else is in it for me and my company?”
If you’re asking yourself that, perhaps you haven’t understood the true power of blind hiring. There are numerous benefits of implementing a blind hiring process at every stage of the hiring process. Here are four of them.
1. Zapping unconscious bias
We’re all human, and consciously or not, we tend to favor people who remind us of ourselves. Unfortunately, this can lead to unintentional discrimination, which is most commonly referred to as unconscious bias in the hiring world.
Even the most well-trained hiring managers, regardless of their intent on improving diversity, bring implicit bias into the decision-making process. Until humans naturally learn to eliminate unconscious bias, blind hiring software helps make the recruitment process more fair.
Removing personal details from job applications keeps the focus on skills and qualifications, so the only bias is in favor of talent and the most qualified candidates.
2. Boosting diversity
With personal details off the table, you’re opening the door to a broader talent pool of diverse candidates. Blind recruitment software helps ensure that candidates from all walks of life are given equal consideration based on their capabilities, not personal identity markers.
This allows hiring teams to bring fresh perspectives and diverse experiences to their companies, which can spark great ideas and innovation.
According to recent studies, working to improve diversity isn’t just great for your company culture; building a more diverse workforce is essential to building an innovative business.
3. Fair play in hiring
Nothing feels better than knowing your hiring process is fair and just. Blind recruitment software levels the playing field, and candidates are assessed based on their skills and qualifications alone.
In essence, blind hiring is the epitome of fair recruiting, ensuring decisions aren’t influenced by factors such as race, gender, or age.
This allows you to tap into a diverse pool of top candidates that includes minority groups and workers with non-traditional experience or job gaps who have the skills needed to make a real impact in their jobs.
4. Efficiency and cost savings
As an HR manager, you’ve got a lot on your plate, and working to increase diversity is only one of the tasks you juggle daily. You also likely face issues such as improving hiring time, ensuring a good candidate experience, and making data-driven recruitment decisions.
Blind recruitment software can automate the preliminary screening process, allowing you to focus on finding the best fit for the role. This saves significant time and leads to a more cost-effective hiring process.
Using blind recruitment tools can help you automate and optimize your hiring processes.
How does blind hiring work?
If you want to implement blind hiring into your hiring process but aren’t sure how to start rebuilding your recruitment strategy around blind hiring software or similar hiring practices, here are a few tips to get you started.
Take a good look at those job descriptions. They should spotlight only the essential qualifications and skills required for the role.
Be mindful of your language and keep job ads and descriptions neutral, avoiding language that may unintentionally discourage certain individuals from applying.
Using gender-neutral language and focusing on the candidate’s skills instead of a person’s background can not only help remove hidden biases in the hiring process but also help you attract diverse candidates who can make a significant impact in their roles.
With dozens of applications rolling in, it’s time to anonymize them all. With the help of blind hiring tools and other recruitment software, you can scrub personal identifiers like candidate names, addresses, graduation years, and even school names.
Instead of looking at what doesn’t matter (and what could potentially lead to hiring bias), each applicant gets their unique identifier or code. This way, you’re leveling the playing field, ensuring that every candidate gets assessed on skills and qualifications alone.
3. Skill-based assessments
Now, it’s time to introduce standardized skills assessments into the mix. These can be anything from coding tests for tech companies hiring senior software developers to sales pitches for software companies looking to fill sales positions.
Should the process progress to include interviews, it’s good practice to stick to a predetermined set of questions to ensure the hiring process is similar (if not exactly the same) for all candidates.
Some businesses implementing a truly blind hiring process even use voice modulation tools during phone interviews to mask hints of a candidate’s identity to focus squarely on capabilities.
Finally, when it comes to face-to-face interviews, ensure your panels are as diverse as possible. Having a range of perspectives can significantly reduce bias and ensure a more balanced selection process, ensuring you hire only the most qualified candidates.
Hire the best candidates
Blind recruitment software helps ensure you hire people for their skills, not their lofty credentials. Because with personal details off the table, you’re opening the door to a broader talent pool.
If you’re not ready to commit fully, implement progressive blind hiring by replacing resume screening with skills-based assessments. This strategy will attract more diverse hires and candidates and give you confidence in their fit for the role.
With Toggl Hire, candidates can take a short 10-15-minute skills-based quiz showing their practical knowledge and aptitude for the role they’re applying for. Learn more about how we do it by checking out our skills test library.
Hire the best talent for the job, no matter their background
Try Toggl Hire for free and assess candidates on their skills, not their resume, ethnicity, or where they went to university.
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur, writer, and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses, including two of her own, and shares Toggl's mission of challenging traditional beliefs about what building a successful business looks like.
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Billing clients is always a little annoying for small businesses and freelancers alike (heck, it’s even annoying for large businesses with full finance teams).
The need for accuracy, speed, and detail make invoicing a tricky experience. However, it does become more manageable when you know how to do it efficiently, giving you more time to code, write, design, or do whatever you need to be doing to actually grow your business.
Basically, streamlining your invoicing process with the right tools turns an unproductive time sink into a minor task. Many invoicing tools are available, but this quick guide focuses on one of the most familiar: MS Excel.
Read through for tips on how to quickly and accurately create an invoice in Excel. If you stay tuned ’til the end, we’ll also provide plenty of tipsto fine-tune your small business invoicing strategy.
TL;DR—Key Takeaways
While tedious, invoicing clients is a critical business task. Invoices record the hours and resources spent on a project and explain how and when clients should make payments.
Microsoft Excel is a popular invoice-creation tool. Windows and Mac Excel users can create professional invoices using ready-made or custom-built templates.
Essential invoice information includes the invoice number and date, client contact details, your business contact details, payment methods, and an itemized list of billable services. Every invoice must include a subtotal, which is often repeated 2-3 times during the document.
Tips for efficient invoicing include recording billable hours, tracking time accurately, and communicating transparently with clients about payments before projects begin. Automated invoicing tools are also available to save time and cut errors.
Specialist time tracking tools like Toggl Track may be better than Microsoft Excel. Users can automatically generate invoices from weekly reports, improving billing accuracy and reducing the need for manual data entry.
Want to get started invoicing straight away?
Skip Excel and sign up for a free Toggl Track account to generate invoices from tracked time!
Invoices kickstart the payment process so businesses and freelancers can get paid on time for the work they’ve completed. For this reason, it literally pays to get your invoice details right.
If there are any inaccuracies, clients may ask for revisions. But naturally, you don’t want to spend any more time than necessary double-checking your hours and completed tasks. You want a streamlined system that works like clockwork.
Using an Excel invoice template is one of the most popular ways and easiest ways to solve this problem.
Microsoft Excel comes with many free invoice template options. You can use them as they are or customize templates to suit your needs. Customization is fine (and recommended, honestly); just remember to include all the details clients demand.
Top tip:
We recommend using an invoice template as a base, but don’t stop there. Build off of that base and customize it to fit your needs. It should include all the critical details you need to invoice accurately and effectively.
With that out of the way, let’s run through the easiest methods for building an Excel invoice for Windows and Mac users.
Windows
Start by loading a blank workbook on Microsoft Excel as normal.
Check your internet is active. Microsoft stores many templates on cloud servers instead of hosting them locally.
Now look for the search bar at the top of the screen. Type the word “invoices.” This loads a list of invoice templates.
The list is easy to scroll, so take some time to look around. You’ll find invoices for shipping, professional services, sales — the whole spectrum of billing options.
Find a professional invoice that suits your needs. There are many layouts and styles, and hopefully, one for your personal or business brand. Remember, you can preview every Excel template to make sure.
When you’ve found a template, press the Create button to open the Excel template on your device.
Once the template loads in Excel, you can start customizing it with your invoice details. We recommend adding your business logo (if applicable), your individual or company name, and contact information.
If you’re creating a template for an individual client, you should also add their contact details to the template.
Include fields for the invoice number, the due date, the completion date, payment terms, and a subtotal for the order. Most invoices also include an itemized list of billable tasks.
When you have included all relevant information, save the sales invoice in XLS format. Store templates in folders separate from completed invoices. To keep everything organized, create directories for each client and project.
Check you can save your invoice as a PDF file. Most clients expect to receive PDF invoices, so this is an essential capability.
You’re now all set to use the template in routine billing!
Top tip:
To make your invoice even more efficient, consider creating an Excel Macro to automate invoice numbers and dates. This involves using the Code group in the Developer tab of your spreadsheet to record any repeatable mouse clicks and keystrokes you use to create an invoice.
Mac
The process for Mac users is very similar. Start by loading a blank spreadsheet in Excel, then choose the “New from Template” option on the top menu bar to call up the invoice generator.
You should now see a menu of invoice template options, but not all of them will relate to business projects. For example, some invoice types deal with taxes or personal bills.
Clicking on a template brings up a preview. Click the “Create” button to download and open the template in Excel.
You can now edit the spreadsheet however you wish. As before, add vital details like your company logo and fields for the invoice date, payment terms, and headings for every itemized task. Remember the subtotal field at the base of the invoice and contact details for you and your client.
When every detail is present, save the invoice in XLXS format. Again, check you can easily convert invoices to PDF for sending to clients.
Store the Excel invoice template in a logical folder so it’s ready to use when needed.
Using ready-made Excel templates is fine for most users. In other cases, creating a completely new invoice is a better strategy.
For instance, you may want to focus on branding and use complex graphics. Or you may not be happy with the standard headers and data entry fields.
Whatever your reasons, creating your own custom invoice is an option. It’s a little more complicated, but following the step-by-step guide below should make the task manageable.
Start by opening Excel and creating a blank worksheet.
We recommend removing gridlines to make things easier to see. Go to the menu and choose “Page Layout.” Choose the “View” tab and click the untick option under gridlines.
Your canvas should now be clear. Start by adding an invoice header to communicate critical information, such as your business name (and company logo). Add:
An accurate company address
Your telephone, fax, and email information
The invoice date
Space for an invoice number
Remember to include the word “INVOICE” at the top.
Next, add a section for client details. Include the client’s postal address, phone number, and email address. You may also need to add a named contact (for example, in the accounting department).
The following short section includes space for the due date.
After that, you need room to add an itemized list of services (or goods) provided. We recommend using a table structure here. Add a column for work done, the date completed, and the unit price for each task. This generally involves hours worked and your hourly rate.
Add up every item at the bottom to create an invoice subtotal. This section tells clients the total amount they owe and should also detail acceptable payment methods.
Adding together many orders can be demanding, but this is no problem with Excel. The Excel SUM function works in invoice templates, just like standard spreadsheets. Use it to avoid embarrassing numerical snafus.
Top tip:
At this stage, we’ve covered the fundamental elements of a professional Excel invoice template. The beauty of creating your template is you don’t need to stop there.
Now is the chance to customize your headers, font, and logo. Try to avoid cluttering the invoice with unnecessary graphics. The trick is to preserve a clean, professional look while adding your personal touch.
Should you use a free Excel invoice template?
The standard invoice templates available via Excel are fine for many tasks but aren’t ideal for freelancers and client-based teams. We decided to fill this gap by creating our own invoice template.
The catch is that…you’ll have to log into Toggl Track to use it. Sorry, we know. It looks a bit gimmicky. However, creating invoices in Toggl Track is super easy and intuitive.
You can add custom data in custom fields as well, such as the billing details for who gets billed, where the payment should be made, purchase order number, invoice ID, new invoice item, tax, and a custom memo at the footer of the invoice. The screenshot below highlights all the sections & fields you can edit.
Time-based billing tips for freelancers and small agencies
Before you start creating personalized templates or completing invoices, we feel it’s important to sit you down and talk a bit about accuracy.
Invoicing provides accurate information about work done, payment rates, and how clients should pay you. Get one element wrong, and the entire payment process grinds to a halt.
Toggl Track has been in the time-tracking business since the early 2000s, so we know how important accuracy is. Here are some quick tips to master the details and ensure smooth payment every time.
🧭 Establish clear guidelines about your payment rates (publishing them on your website or profile is a good idea). If you aren’t sure, check out freelance marketplaces to compare rates with similar professionals.
⌚ Decide early whether you charge for time and materials or use project-based rates. Hourly time and materials billing is more complex, requiring careful time and resource tracking, but it often delivers a more accurate picture of your business costs. Fixed costs are better when competing for contracts but require careful monitoring to stay within project budgets.
💸 Define what counts as billable and non-billable hours. Understanding what you can charge will shape your project estimates and work schedules. Never start a project without knowing what items should appear on your invoices.
🧑💻 Technology is your friend when billing clients. Invoicing software like Toggl Track lets you create weekly timesheets and start timers for daily tasks. At the end of the week, you can generate invoice data automatically, cutting the need for labor-intensive spreadsheet recording.
💬 Always communicate transparently with clients about fees or payment terms. Clients should know how to pay, the cost of your services, and when to make payments. Failure to provide payment information guarantees client queries and (eventually) late payments.
With this, you should be all set to send your first Excel invoice if that’s your preferred method. But…wait a second before firing up a blank workbook.
Excel is powerful and familiar, but it’s not the only invoicing software in town. It’s probably not even the best option for invoicing hourly work.
Toggl Track is a great alternative. Our time tracking software makes it easy to record time spent on every task. You can itemize tasks by client or project, divide tasks between team members, and, most importantly, automatically generate invoices when required.
Excel invoicing involves time-consuming manual data entry. Toggl Track is different. Our automation features reduce human error and save valuable time for more important tasks. Even better, users can seamlessly integrate Toggl Track with QuickBooks accounting systems (plus over 100 popular business apps).
Basically, we think (and others do, too!) that Toggl Track provides a hassle-free way to combine time tracking and invoice creation. Discover more by creating a free account today.
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur, writer, and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses, including two of her own, and shares Toggl's mission of challenging traditional beliefs about what building a successful business looks like.
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