Effortlessly track hours, leave, invoices and absence – wherever and whenever you want. Try TimeWriter free for 2 months and experience the convenience yourself…
Search for an employee tracker and you will be offered two quite different things. One records what people worked on and when they are available. The other records screenshots, keystrokes and idle time. They are sold under the same word and they produce opposite results in a team.
An employee tracker for hours, not keystrokes
TimeWriter is the first kind. It records hours against projects, activities and customers, and it records who is off, on leave or otherwise unavailable. It does not take screenshots, count keypresses or report how long somebody was away from their machine.
The distinction matters commercially as well as ethically. Hours booked against a customer can be invoiced, budgeted and reported on. Idle-time percentages cannot be used for any of those things; they exist only to be looked at.
That is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. An employee tracker built on surveillance answers questions no manager actually has, while creating one that nobody wanted: whether the people doing good work are the ones who look busiest.
Why monitoring tends to backfire
Activity monitoring measures the appearance of work. What follows is predictable: people optimise for the measurement, the measurement stops correlating with output, and the organisation has spent its credibility to learn nothing.
The cost is not only cultural. Continuous monitoring of employees carries real obligations in the Netherlands and across the EU, and the burden of justifying it sits with the employer. Recording hours worked, by contrast, is ordinary administration that nobody has to defend.
hours against projects, activities and customers
billable and non-billable distinguished as the hour is booked
approval by a manager before a period closes
leave, absence and availability in the same place
no screenshots, keystroke counts or idle-time reporting
What managers genuinely need to see
Almost every real management question is about allocation rather than diligence. Is this project consuming more than it was quoted at. Who is committed for the next three weeks. Which kind of work keeps overrunning its estimate.
Notice that none of them require knowing what anybody had open on their screen at half past three. Those questions are answered from booked hours, not from activity logs. Budget monitoring sets what has been spent against what was agreed, and reports break the same entries down per project, per customer or per employee – which is as granular as any of those questions require.
Availability is the other half
An employee tracker that only knows about worked hours will misread every quiet week. Leave management covers requests, balances and approvals, so planning rests on who is genuinely free rather than on a guess at the whiteboard.
Where it matters contractually, workplace registration notes whether work happened at the office, at home or at a client site. That is a fact about the work, recorded once, not a continuous stream of location data.
Trust as a design constraint
Any system people fill in themselves depends on them filling it in honestly, and that holds only while they believe the data will be used for planning rather than for building a case. Surveillance and self-reporting do not combine: introduce the first and the second degrades immediately.
It is worth being blunt about the trade. An employee tracker that watches will produce more data and less truth, because the people generating it now have a reason to manage how they appear. One that records hours produces less data that can actually be relied on.
The practical version is straightforward. Be explicit about what is recorded, keep it to what a decision actually needs, and let approval sit with the manager who knows the work. If that is the kind of employee tracker you are looking for, the product matrix shows what each version covers.
AT A GLANCE
Manage your time tracking efficiently and without errors
Clear time tracking is indispensable for every business. It provides insight into the performance of employees, the progress of projects and the total costs. With our software you easily keep an overview, prevent errors and save time. That way your records are always up to date and reliable.
Whether you work with permanent employees, freelancers or temporary staff: everyone can easily record their hours worked. The user-friendly interface and mobile app make it possible to log hours anywhere, both in the office and on the go. That way you always have current and correct data for invoicing and planning.
In addition to time tracking, you can also keep track of leave, sickness and other absences. Reports give a clear overview of the available capacity per week, month or project. That way you keep a grip on your organisation, avoid surprises and ensure an efficient use of time and staff.
Record your employees' hours accurately and effortlessly — per project, client or internal task. TimeWriter always gives you real-time insight into the hours worked, so you know exactly what time is being spent on. That way you prevent budget overruns and always invoice in full.
Track time quickly and without errors
With TimeWriter you track time in the way that suits you: automatically between two points in time or manually as a total. That way you record the time spent per task quickly and without errors — and you get the management information to structurally improve your planning.
Mobile and flexible working
With the TimeWriter app, employees log their hours anytime, anywhere — at home, in the office or on the go. All data is synchronised in real time, so as a manager you have immediate access to current and reliable hour data. No delays, no manual transfers, no errors.
Calculate and analyse hours
Want to know how much time a project really costs and what the return is? TimeWriter automatically calculates the hours spent per project — including the correct conversion of hours and minutes. That way you always have a grip on your project profitability and can adjust before it is too late.
Overviews per month and per project
TimeWriter gives you immediate insight into hours worked — per project, per employee or per month. See at a glance how many hours have been spent and how many are still available within your budget or planning. That way you monitor your capacity proactively and prevent costly overruns.
Keep professional time records
The system is ideal for time tracking within any organisation. Whether you have a small team or a large business: our solution makes tracking hours easy and reliable.
Example: a 40-hour working week
Does your team work a standard 40 hours per week? With TimeWriter you see exactly how those hours are distributed across projects, tasks and departments — accurate to the minute. No more unexplained hours, no more discussions about how time is spent. Just full transparency and a grip on your organisation.
Ideaal programma voor registratie van klanten op uurbasis, superpraktisch, intuitief, kortom, een kind kan de was doen. Mijn felicitaties voor de ontwerpers van dit onmisbare programma.
Heel gebruiksvriendelijk programma. Het bezit bijna alles wat ik nodig heb. Registreren van uren, klanten en activiteiten is super eenvoudig en overzichtelijk.
