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Software & Service

Time Doctor Review

You might call Time Doctor a jack of many trades as it covers several categories of features, including time tracking, project management, and employee monitoring. A decent price and a nicely designed interface mean it's a good idea to put on your evaluation list.

4.0 Excellent
Time Doctor - Software & Service
4.0 Excellent

Bottom Line

You might call Time Doctor a jack of many trades as it covers several categories of features, including time tracking, project management, and employee monitoring. A decent price and a nicely designed interface mean it's a good idea to put on your evaluation list.
  • Pros

    • Robust employee monitoring functionality
    • Ability to create invoices from within the app
    • Ample integrations with services like Asana
  • Cons

    • Outdated user interface (UI)
    • Stopwatch feature needs desktop application or Chrome extension to work

Time Doctor Specs

Android App
Automated Alerts
Blurred Screenshots
Cloud Dashboard
Continuous Video Recording
Custom Tracking
Dial-In Clock-In
Document and File Tracking
GPS Monitoring
Granular Access Controls
In-App Messaging
iOS App
IP Address Monitoring
Keystroke Recording
Keyword Tracking
Location Tracking
Open API
Optical Character Recognition
Photo Check-In
Physical Agent Install
Policy Customization
Remote Desktop Control
Schedule Ahead
Screen Recording
Screenshots
Stealth Monitoring
User Privacy Settings

Time Doctor targets a broad range of time tracking customers, from freelancers running an operation of one person to software engineers at large corporations such as Apple and Verizon. To help that mission, it offers additional features across project management (PM) as well as employee monitoring. From the perspective of time tracking, however, while it was one of our better contenders, a clunky user interface (UI) and some usability issues keep it behind our Editors' Choice winners TSheets and Zoho Projects in our time tracking software review roundup.

Pricing and Plans

Time Doctor's introductory plan lacks access to the reporting and employee monitoring that you'll find on paid plans. You'll be able to use the desktop application only to track tasks and work hours but nothing else. A free plan that kicks in after the 14-day trial is over provides access to time tracking through the desktop app but no features available in the web app like reporting. When you create an account and invite new users, you'll be prompted to download the desktop app. If you decide to upgrade to the paid version, you'll find it's refreshingly simple: $9.99 per user per month. That's it. No other plans or tiers, just a per-user-per-month number for as many users as you'd like.

Time Doctor - Dashboard

Time Doctor's closest comparison is Hubstaff ($7.00 Per Month at Hubstaff) , which also offers a limited free plan and a Basic $5-per-month plan that gives you access to simple time tracking tools, an employee payment schedule manager, 24/7 support, granular user settings, and employee monitoring features. Hubstaff's $9-per-user-per-month Premium plan also provides access to an API, Hubstaff's scheduling tool, invoice creation, and automatic PayPal payments.

The project management solutions we mentioned previously will cost a lot more per month, but you'll be given access to a wide array of features such as cloud-based file sharing, task management delegation, project analysis, expense reporting, budget forecasting, invoicing, payments, tracking billable hours, and projections for future staffing needs. These tools will cost, at minimum, $25 per month when time tracking is included.

Time Doctor - Dashboard

Features and User Interface

To take full advantage of all that Time Doctor has to offer, you'll need to download and install the desktop app or add a Chrome extension, which is a bit of a drag. Within the desktop app, you begin tracking time by typing in the task on which you're currently working and pressing Play. This will automatically start tracking time and monitoring your behavior while you're on the clock. The Administrative dashboard, which is only accessible via the web-based client, shows how many hours employees have worked as well as the tasks to which they're assigned. Administrators can click into a time period to see what employees were looking at, if they signed in late, and if they were idle for certain periods of time. Similar to Hubstaff, which also monitors employee activity, the desktop app tracks webpages visited, keystrokes, and apps used. It can even take screengrabs and snap photos from your webcam. This is a great feature for Big Brother-level oversight, but it makes using the tool a bit annoying because you'll need to flip from desktop app to web-based app if you're a user as well as an admin (or you'll be forced to use Chrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world but still an annoyance).

Keystrokes and mouse movements are measured at intervals from three minutes to an hour depending on how you choose to configure the option. Time Doctor is so clever that measurements won't be taken precisely at that interval so people can't cheat the system by tapping random keys every third minute. The tool also monitors web and app usage, and can capture up to four monitors at once (be sure you aren't watching Grey's Anatomy on one screen while working on the other three screens). At this point, Time Doctor can't grab screenshots on mobile devices, but it can track worker location via GPS. Unlike Hubstaff, which also offers in-depth monitoring, Time Doctor's webcam shot feature lets admins snap images of remote workers in 10-minute intervals (make sure you slip on a robe if you plan to work from home). Companies can turn off behavioral monitoring or turn off specific aspects of behavioral monitoring. For instance, you can monitor web and app usage without taking screengrabs or you can do everything but take webcam shots.

Time Doctor - Desktop App

Data Management

Time Doctor's data entry is broken down by projects or departments depending on how you plan to use the tool, and then is broken down by tasks within the given project or department. The software lets you set up permanent tasks that will always live on your dashboard. You access these tasks by clicking on the infinity symbol icon. This is beneficial for companies whose employees perform repetitive tasks and don't want to go into the system to create new tasks each time they want to be tracked.

The application can track any data entered into the software and pull it into any report you create by using its seven pre-built reports. Time Doctor even provides a "Poor Time Use" report that tracks how much time your employees spend on social media, news websites, or any other websites you deem off-limits. Unfortunately, this feature won't tell you if employees were doing something productive on another screen, so employees who like to listen to the news while performing data entry will be logged as time-wasters even though they still got their jobs done. Time Doctor didn't give me a list of all the websites it deems as time-wasting ones, but it did list Facebook and YouTube in my test account. If you want to micro-manage your micro-management capabilities, then you can submit a list of time-wasting websites to Time Doctor and the company will make this harsh system even harsher. To protect employees, whenever someone clicks on a "Poor Time Use" website, a pop-up message will appear asking if he or she really wants to watch the video or go to that webpage.

Time Doctor - Start Timer

Time Doctor lets its users create a client-based system that clients can use to monitor projects, project reports, and screenshots. This is, in essence, a read-only version of the tool that gives clients peace of mind by letting them oversee project progression. Admins can restrict which projects and people the client can monitor. You can even white-label the console and URL to make it look more like your company's website than Time Doctor's.

By connecting your Payoneer, PayPal (Free at Apple.com) , and TransferWise accounts to Time Doctor, you can pay employees for work registered within the system. These are organic integrations that require you to enter your user names and passwords (i.e., no coding required). You can set payments for any custom period you choose. You can edit rates or use fixed-rate payments. You can set up maximum hourly rate limits and maximum rates per payroll period (so that you don't pay more money than you've allotted). You can even mass-pay your entire staff by downloading the CSV file and uploading via the third parties' payment interface. With Payoneer, you can also use request payment from clients by pushing out automatically built invoices, either on a time interval or manually.

Time Doctor now integrates with services like Google Calendar, so you can add a Time Doctor tracking button within the Google app to track time. Time Doctor also offers bidirectional integration with services like Asana ($0.00 at Asana) , Trello, and Jira. The idea is to keep users comfortable in the environment in which they're accustomed to work.

Time Doctor - Add Time

Time Tracking

We added a task in the desktop app for a task called "Government Office Painting" and started the timer. There's a strange integration between the desktop app and the web app because when you select the dashboard we're led back to the web app. On the dashboard you can search Time Worked This Week, Time Worked Last Week, and Time Worked This Month.

The Edit Time button is key, and you'll find this floating in the middle of the screen. In the web app, there's an Add Time button in the top right corner or you can click the + sign for "Click here to add time manually." Under Add Time, you can choose which project for which you'd like to track time. When we tried to add a project name under Add Time, we got the message that you can only add new projects in the Projects and Permanent Tasks section.

When you click certain features in the desktop app, most of them will make you jump right to the web app, but it's the stopwatch feature for which you'll still need the desktop app. Seeing time elapsing is a key function in any time tracking tool, and not all of them offer this. You'll find this capability in our Editors' Choice TSheets. Like Time Doctor, Hubstaff offers this view of elapsing time in its desktop app. Once you track time, you can export time sheets as CSV or XLS.

Time Doctor - Screenshots

Employee Monitoring

As with Hubstaff and VeriClock (30-Day Free Trial at VeriClock) , Time Doctor is a time tracking tool that also has some built-in employee monitoring capabilities. The Screenshots, Timesheets, and "Web & App Usage" reports can all be incorporated into providing deeper oversight into what employees are doing during work hours and on company machines.

The first important feature to note is screenshots. You have to dig into Company Settings > Manage Users > Advanced Settings to find the configuration options. However, once there, Time Doctor has a few nifty capabilities. You can enable productivity-focused pop-up alerts such as "Are you still working?" and "Poor Time Use." You can also turn on web and app monitoring. Most importantly, this is where you can set whether or not screenshots are enabled, how often they're taken, and whether to blur screenshots to obscure data and text (for user privacy reasons).

Time Doctor - Advanced Settings

Once configured, the Screenshots tab will grab images at designated intervals, record data on keystrokes and mouse clicks logged per minute, and log details of whatever task or project for which the employee is currently tracking time. Time Doctor's webcam shot feature, which Hubstaff doesn't have, also lets admins collect images of remote workers in the flesh, not just their screens.

The rest of Time Doctor's employee monitoring functionality is geared around activity and productivity reports. The Web & App Usage report gives you a basic breakdown of time spent on apps and websites, and the Timesheet, Time Use/Poor Time Use, and Projects reports will quantify monitoring data in terms of whether the employee's time was efficienctlyefficiently used when working on and completing tasks.

Time Doctor is a time tracking tool with some useful employee monitoring tooling built in. While it pales in comparison to the monitoring capabilities, advanced automation, and deep data analysis of a powerhouse employee monitoring tool such as Teramind (60.00 Per Month for Up to 5 Users for the Starter Edition at Teramind) , it offers significant added value for companies that need a bit more invasive oversight into employee activities while still maintaining a degree of privacy (with options such as blurred screenshots).

Time Doctor - Mobile View of Time Worked

Mobile Testing and Reports

Time Doctor offers both Android and iOS apps, and you can access GPS monitoring automatically on Android, but to use this feature on iOS, you'll need a company-owned device. If you have a company owned device, you fill out a form, and Time Doctor will then enable this feature on your phone. Time Doctor lacks geofencing, which is a feature that would automatically clock you in in if you were within a certain geographic perimeter of your work location. However, Time Doctor plans to add this feature in the future. If that feature is important to you, look for it in our Editors' Choice winner, TSheets, as well as Hubstaff and others.

Geofencing aside, Time Doctor is easy to use on the mobile side, and the timer works well. You get a convenient view of tasks worked for the day or week. From the left menu, you click on a project from your list and then you select a task within the project to start the timer.

As for reporting, Time Doctor includes this in the web app rather than the desktop app, which is mainly for time tracking. Time Doctor has added a Timeline report that lists the start and end times and which applications and websites have been used. The Timeline report has an attractive layout with the yellow color signifying that time has been entered manually, and green shows time tracked by the app.

Time Doctor can track any data entered into the software and pull it into any report you create by using its seven pre-built reports. Time Doctor even provides a "Poor Time Use" report that tracks how much time your employees spend on social media, news websites, or any other websites you deem off-limits. Unfortunately, this feature won't tell you if employees were doing something productive on another screen, so employees who like to listen to the news while performing data entry will be logged as time-wasters even though they still got their jobs done.

Time Doctor didn't give us a list of all the websites it deems as time-wasting ones, but it did list Facebook and YouTube in our test account. If you want to micro-manage your micro-management capabilities, then you can submit a list of time-wasting websites to Time Doctor and the company will make this harsh system even harsher. To protect employees, whenever someone clicks on a "Poor Time Use" website, a pop-up message will appear asking if he or she really wants to watch the video or go to that webpage.

Time Doctor - Timeline Daily Report

A Few Limitations

Unlike most of the tools we tested, Time Doctor doesn't allow for IP address restrictions. This means employees can say they're working from the office when they're actually on a ski lift. But, if you're really concerned about this level of slacking off, then you can just force them to turn on webcam snapshots.

The tool also doesn't provide advanced tracking. Most tracking solutions base their calculus almost entirely on time. There are 24 hours in a day, multiplied by seven days, multiplied by approximately four weeks, multiplied by 12 months. This is the logic that drives other time tracking systems. What TSheets and Wrike (100.00 Per Month at Wrike) do extraordinarily well is acknowledge that work can be done and measured outside of the hour/day/week/month/year calculus. TSheets and Wrike offer advanced tracking for quantities which, if you're a truck driver or an artisan, might actually be more beneficial than tracking the hours you worked. TSheets specifically can pull these into reports to give you a more dimensional view of how work is being done.

In addition, Time Doctor lacks the ability to track multiple tasks at the same time. Some vendors, like TimeSolv Pro, consider this ability unethical because they're focused on law clients. If you need it, look for it in platforms such as BQE Core and FunctionFox among others. One additional minor quibble is that the chat icon in the lower-right corner covers up some of the data when we're viewing the dashboard.

Time Doctor Time Sheet Report

Decent Time Tracking With Employee Monitoring

Time Doctor isn't the most attractive or easiest solution to use. By way of contrast, TSheets is a sleeker, smarter, more user-friendly time tracking tool. However, Time Doctor does an amazing job combining the basic aspects of project management software with the most advanced aspects of time tracking to provide a happy middle ground that many users should love. Although it doesn't earn an Editors' Choice nod for time tracking solutions, companies that are interested in monitoring employee behavior while tracking time should absolutely test Time Doctor before reaching out to TSheets. However, if tracking time is your sole requirement, then Time Doctor is adequate, leaving just a bit to desire.

Time Doctor Send Payments

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About Rob Marvin