Marketing agencies offer professional marketing services to businesses to help them achieve their goals or meet their marketing needs. These services include market research, search engine optimization (SEO), performance marketing, branding, advertising, public relations, social media management, and content development.
The agency’s profits are based on the number of clients, so it constantly deals with multiple clients and offers them various services. The clients and the management mutually decide the deadlines for projects and deliverables.
Several employees work on several services for tasks that are often time-bound. If your agency fails to complete a task within a given time, it can lose client trust and, more importantly, profits.
But how do you monitor the time it takes for an employee to complete a task?
Top 5 Time Tracking Tools for Agencies
Time-tracking tools become valuable resources that help marketing agencies keep everything on track and optimize workflows. They may have employees in multiple locations, most of whom work remotely. Time-tracking tools help you track performance and keep everyone, including the clients, on the same page.
Curious about which one you should select? We’ve tested the top 5 time-tracking tools agencies can use to meet deadlines and satisfy their clients.
1. TimeBee
TimeBee is a time-tracking tool for agencies that provides real-time data and detailed productivity insights about individuals and teams working on a project.
It offers insight into employees’ working patterns and time spent on tasks and projects, helping identify inefficiencies. With this actionable data, you can improve workforce and client management.
TimeBee offers a comprehensive suite of features to enhance productivity, streamline project management, and ensure profitability.
Here is how its features can help your marketing agency.
Project and Task Time Tracking
Along with conventional time tracking, TimeBee also tracks time spent on tasks and projects. You can add projects, divide them into small, manageable tasks, and track time against them for in-depth insights. The intuitive interface and customizable tracking options allow you to select a particular period for tracking time for a specific task.
Project Progress Monitoring and Cost Tracking
TimeBee offers project progress monitoring and a cost-tracking feature that allows you to monitor time spent on a project and its progress. With these insights, you can also see the amounts spent on the project.
By monitoring project timelines and budgets, you can identify potential barriers and take proactive measures to keep projects on track.
Billing Hours Calculator and Accurate Invoicing
TimeBee simplifies the billing process for marketing agencies with its built-in billing hours calculator. This feature is beneficial for employees hired hourly.
Suppose you have hired a video editor for a specific client at an hourly rate. In that case, TimeBee’s billing calculator will calculate the exact payout amount based on time data without any hassle, ensuring accurate invoicing and transparent client billing.
Client Management
TimeBee offers a client portal through which clients can monitor the resources assigned to them. From their dashboard, clients can monitor the project’s progress and the hours spent, which builds credibility and promotes transparency, ensuring a long-term client-agency partnership.
2. Time Doctor
Time Doctor offers workforce analytics for distributed teams in one place. It lets you know exactly what your employees and teams are working on at a particular moment and how productive they are.
Time Doctor’s features cater specifically to streamline operations and enhance productivity so you can become more efficient and increase revenues. Here are some key features tailored to meet the needs of marketing agencies.
Easy Time Tracking
Time Doctor’s intuitive interface allows you to log hours accurately, switch between tasks, and track progress in real-time. The user-friendly design lets you track workday activities and get detailed insights about employees’ hours for a specific task, project, or client.
Reporting and Analytics
TimeDoctor offers detailed time reports to help you analyze productivity trends and workflow efficiency of individuals or teams working on the same project. With Time Doctor’s online dashboard and app monitoring, you can identify which digital marketing tools and sites employees visit and the total time spent on each tool.
Project Progress Monitoring
With TimeDoctor project progress monitoring, you get insights into how your resources are spent on a project. You can monitor task completion rates and the time the entire team spends on the project. This feature facilitates effective project management, particularly when clients require timely delivery.
Payroll Support
Time Doctor offers a payroll feature that simplifies calculating employee wages based on tracked time and attendance data. This feature allows you to accurately calculate hours worked, including regular hours, overtime, and any other relevant pay rates based on customizable settings.
3. Toggl Track
Toggl Track is a time-tracking tool that offers a simple way to track time and client billing. It can be specifically useful for agencies and other professional service businesses.
It offers marketing agencies tools to manage projects, clients, and teams effectively while gaining valuable insights to optimize their workflow and profitability. It can help manage remote teams much more easily. Here are a few features that can stand out.
Intuitive Time Tracking
Toggl Track provides an intuitive timer, meaning users can start tracking time for a specific task or project with a single click. They can stop the timer whenever they’re finished or switch to a different task and start a new timer. Further, it tracks idle time, offers manual entries, and even offers a web-based tracker, should you not want to download one.
Project and Task Time Tracking
With Toggl Track, you can break down your marketing campaigns or client projects into smaller, tasks. This categorization helps visualize workflows and assign tasks to specific team members. You can track time against these projects and tasks to understand the current stage of the project.
Reporting and Analytics
Toggl Track also generates comprehensive reports showing time spent across different projects, tasks, and team members. You can use these reports to enhance overall team performance regardless of location. Furthermore, you can share these reports with the clients to promote transparency and build your credibility.
Billable Hours Tracking
With Toggl Track, you can bill your clients accurately. It captures every billable hour the individual or the team is working on. You can also export the data from Toggl Track easily. Further, it offers uncomplicated ways to generate and share invoices with employees and clients.
4. Hubstaff
Hubstaff was made specifically to manage remote teams. The app offers time tracking, reporting, payroll, and scattered teams.
Time Tracking and Activity Monitoring
Time tracking with Hubstaff offers insights into time usage, time wasters, and task and project time tracking. It clearly explains time allocation and project management, assisting in accurate billing and invoicing.
In addition, automatically generated timesheets based on tracked hours eliminate the need for manual data entry and save time for employees and clients.
GPS Time Tracking
For marketing agencies with remote or field-based teams, such as in event marketing, HubStaff’s GPS time-tracking feature can be advantageous. It allows agencies to track the location of remote employees in real-time, ensuring accurate time tracking for billable hours and working habits.
Client and Project Management Tools
Hubstaff allows you to create separate client profiles, store important information, and track project communication in one place. This tool helps streamline client communication with management and employees to create a seamless project workflow. Further, it allows integration with other tools to minimize tracking.
Reporting and Analytics
Hubstaff offers several reports for deeper insights into budgets, hours worked, and invoices. These reports show details of your employees’ hours worked and the cost of the projects and offer patterns through which you can predict future issues. You can schedule these reports or export them for quick reference.
5. Clockify
Like Hubstaff, Clockify helps manage remote teams. For a marketing agency, it assists in time tracking, billable time, projects and budgets, planning resources, calculating costs, and managing agency resources.
The app helps you manage individual teams and clients without communication barriers. It’s perfect for freelance workers, small businesses, and marketing startups.
Flexible Time Tracking
Clockify offers a convenient yet accurate method of tracking time. You can use the start-and-stop timer to track time against a specific task or project. Additionally, it allows you to add the time manually in case the employee forgets to start the timer.
GPS Time Tracking
Clockify GPS time-tracking tool assists in locating employees who have gone on fieldwork or just remote work. This feature ensures remote workers are working and not just roaming around during work hours. It offers accurate insights into remote and field workers’ productivity and work habits.
Project and Task Management
Clockify project and task management features offer a user-friendly method for assigning specific tasks to team members. It estimates how long tasks should take and tracks progress visually. Also, you can set a billable rate and later compare what you pay your team vs. what you charge clients to measure profitability.
Detailed Reporting and Analytics
With Clockify reports, you can visualize how your project is progressing and predict project performance. You can generate reports in the middle of the project to predict any discrepancies in project completion. Also, you can generate reports at the end to analyze results about the budget estimates, resource allocation, etc, and define metrics for the new projects.
Which Time Tracking Tool Should You Choose?
The choice ultimately depends on your organization’s unique needs. While each time tracking software mentioned offers unique features and benefits, TimeBee is the preferred choice for marketing agencies.
Its intuitive interface and focus on profitability empower agencies to streamline operations, optimize resource allocation, and deliver exceptional results to clients. It offers a fine balance between monitoring remote, distributed, hybrid, and in-house resources while also offering a suite of unique features that optimize client interactions and project management.
