Today, team organization and work culture are witnessing a fundamental shift worldwide, transitioning from an in-person paradigm to one of hybrid flexibility. Tech-enabled, outcome-driven, agile teams have their resources and employees spread across cities, countries, and even time zones. In many cases, operations are “remote-first” by default.

A tech company in San Francisco might have all their employees working from home. In such a non-co-located environment, how do you track tasks and keep your employees accountable without sacrificing autonomy? A time tracking software embedded in the workflow as the essential cog in the invisible infrastructure helps address the unique challenges of remote teams.

The modern workforce appreciates a mix of flexibility and accountability. Employees generally dislike being surveilled. Reports suggest nearly 70% of companies follow a hybrid or fully remote model in the post-pandemic era. Instead of constant monitoring, businesses prefer the ready advantages of automation and AI for strong reporting mechanisms, driving the adoption of time tracking software for teams.

The increased adoption of monitoring software fulfils the demand for compliance, audit, and a reliable way to measure productivity and success, beyond just ordinary time-tracking.

What is time tracking software?

Used by individuals, freelancers, and employees in modern hybrid, remote, and globally distributed teams, it is a software application that solves traditional time tracking challenges of manual task tracking and timesheets for managers.

It does this by capturing logged time to produce a verifiable and auditable digital record of employee work on specific tasks and projects. By generating automated reports and offering advanced analytics, it enables better project and resource management, accurate client billing, resource utilization, and efficient payroll processing.

Which time tracking software should you pick? There are many options available today, from free options to paid tools. Time Doctor, Toggl Track, Harvest, and Trutimer are some good options. Trutimer can be easily integrated with a custom HRMS for remote teams to streamline operations.

To choose the best one, firstly, you should have a clear idea of your requirements. It must be aligned with your needs. Do you need it for freelancing or your team? Are you looking for invoicing or payroll management? The right choice can help boost personal productivity or streamline workflow operations.

Before the use of employee time tracking software, businesses relied primarily on manual time sheets. Employees filled in their work updates each day or weekly. The record was vetted and approved for payroll processing.

Naturally, the system was a time sink and prone to errors, inefficiency, and even fraud. Managers had no real-time oversight and spent countless hours consolidating data for payroll. The downside: zero insight into what work was done or how long specific tasks took. A time tracking software eliminates these dark spots.

A good majority of modern organisations use some kind of time tracking mechanism making a time tracking tool a way to enhance team productivty.

evolution of time tracking software over the decades

What kind of teams rely on time tracking software?

Any team struggling with time tracking or team monitoring and looking for comprehensive visibility into outcomes or tasks can integrate time tracking software. We list here businesses that can opt for time tracking software solutions. Are you one of these?

Agencies and PMs (Consulting, Marketing, HR departments) that bill by the hour. Helps eliminate billing disputes by removing guesswork, proving ROI, and building trust.
For hybrid and remote teams, giving administrators and managers access to verifiable data on assigned tasks and productivity.
Globally distributed teams that span multiple time zones need a risk-aware security-first platform that consolidates data from local project management tools. A time tracking software helps validate asynchronous work typical of such teams.
IT/software development where engineering and product leaders can link time tracking to defined tasks and sprints for accurate resource forecasting and budget-to-actual analysis. Helps avoid scope creep, realign workload, and meet staffing requirements.
People Ops & HR gain a comprehensive micro-level clarity on engagement, which helps them optimize team health, reduce burnout, and review performance.
Security & legal teams can access transparent, audit-friendly reports via a time tracking software at any time.
Freelancers and small teams looking for simplicity and basic functionalities like tracking, reporting, and project handling.

Trutimer- The time tracking software for modern teams

In modern teams, visibility into outcomes matters as much as the hours. We were struggling with the in-house team monitoring. It not only created discrepancies but also affected how we quantified performance.

Developers at Proquantic envisioned a time tracking software that solved current issues and was more than just timesheets. The core idea was to create an application that helps us track productivity without surveillance.

Today, as we will explain further in the blog, Trutimer is a single source of truth for our company. We have a system that’s helping us refine individual operational efficiency and gain the trust of our clients as well as employees.

It is an all-in-one productivity intelligence platform for tracking work and outcomes, designed to

Give leaders real-time visibility into team performance and daily operations.
Provide data-backed insights for better decisions.
Enable compliance-ready reporting for legal/security audits.
Build accountability & focus without micromanagement.

The idea behind Trutimer

The Trutimer application, as a time tracking software, does not manage your projects; it tracks the effort spent on them. It is designed to integrate rather than replace project planning tools. Most teams use pre-existing business software. Trutimer is designed to integrate with the customer's existing Project Management System (PMS), regardless of the specific platform used (e.g., Jira, Asana, Monday).

PMS is not primarily designed for Auditing, Compliance, and Granular Activity Tracking. Trutimer, as a standalone entity, enables separation of concerns.

Teams can simply plug Trutimer into their current workflow and get started with accurate, auditable time data. That’s what you expect from a high-performing time tracking software for invoicing or assessing team utilization with the handy reports.

The Proquantic development team keeps on working on versions of the app, updating, debugging, and releasing new features and improved UI/UX from time to time. End users are prompted to update the app on the next login.

Features of Trutimer

Built for modern teams and partnership models, our product offers a privacy-first analytics advantage to optimize workflows and revenue.

Here’s a list of features.

Real-Time Activity Tracking: 24-hour timelines, top productive users, and live dashboards.
Flexible Time Logging: Automatic + manual, offline support, seamless sync.
Project & Task Intelligence: Multi-source integrations (Trutimer, Jira, Redmine, Azure DevOps).
Advanced Reporting: Custom tabular, graphical, and timeline views; export-ready PDF/Excel.
Activity Validation: Automatic detection of anomalies or suspicious patterns.
Screenshots & App Insights: Optional, privacy-first workflow insights.
Security-First Architecture: Machine fingerprinting, client certificate validation, token lifecycle management, obfuscated payloads.
Background Jobs & Automation: Track recurring tasks with historical visibility.
Settings & Configurability: Full control over tracking, integrations, and app branding

How do time logs influence project management?

When the project starts, completion time estimates are assigned to individual tasks. If actual logged time > initial estimates, it indicates scope creep. You have a problem with the planning or the task itself. The core problem is that there’s no way other than prompt checking and milestones to determine if the task is on track.

An efficient time tracking software solves the problem. The dashboard offers visual progress, based on logged times and activity, which helps to assess if the project is on-budget or off-budget.

You get to know how your resources are being utilized. Which team member is spending time on which projects? It helps to realign workload balance by shifting resources based on work prioritization.

Getting started with Trutimer – More than a time tracking software

We at Proquantic use a separate project management system (PMS) which acts as a central repository for project, work assignment, task updates, and management. It is a source of truth for projects and tasks. When synced with Trutimer as time tracking software, we get a specialized time and activity auditing layer built around the existing project workflow.

Let’s move to analyse how Trutimer goes beyond simple time tracking and gives you insights into team workflows. In the subsequent section, we will walk you through the working of Trutimer, helping readers appreciate the advanced features that come with it.

How Trutimer works?

The time tracking system operates on a client-server architecture. The Trutimer Desktop Application, which is installed on a user’s or employee workstation, is the client (data collector), and the Trutimer Web URL (https://trutimer.com/) is the server (data repository, analytics engine, and administration hub).

When a time-tracking software is integrated, it should talk and seamlessly share data with other software in the business ecosystem. This way, work executed by the user/resource gets tied to hours.

1. The connection between the two is established when the user logs into the desktop app with their Trutimer credentials. As a new project or task is created in the PMS, it is instantly synchronized into Trutimer's tracking list. The user simply opens the Trutimer desktop app, selects the task imported from the PMS, and starts the timer.

2. Data ingestion happens when Trutimer automatically imports the projects and tasks created in the PMS. This eliminates the need for users to manually create tasks (though Trutimer has the option to create from the UI). It helps to drive high user adoption.

3. As work progresses, the app constantly synchronizes the time and activity data back to the central server (the web platform). It sends all the information to the server.

4. The time tracking app captures the raw data (clicks, mouse movements, screenshots, etc) for any and every metric you see on the website. The website then processes and organizes this raw data into the meaningful reports you see.

In simple terms, the Trutimer app is the recording device. It tracks, observes, and captures the tiniest interaction, compiles it, and sends it to the web platform. The web platform acts as the analysis engine, aggregating the recorded data for reporting, team management, and billing purposes.

The user dashboard

From the web interface, on the dashboard page, users can also download the desktop version of the trutimer app and install it, and get started.

A user's dashboard from the time tracking tool, showing clear progress on work

The user dashboard gives an insight into personal work or team activity, if you’re managing a team.

You get a real-time overview. Here we have the foundational elements like real-time tracking, manual entry options, categorizations by projects/tasks, and timesheets. The best time tracking software has it.

Trutimer captures this data to support a wider business ecosystem like Project Management, Payroll, and Invoicing.
How are the users moving towards their daily goals? The snapshot gives a view into daily activity. There’s an option for weekly and monthly insights as well, or you can customize it.
The key metrics tell about the productivity, which is the end goal of any user and the team. It is linked to performance analysis.
You have an “Add my time” button that helps you to log time retroactively. Once you click it, you are taken to a new dialog box [ as seen in the image below] where you can input details. A request can be sent

The “My activity & Time” tab acts as a personal productivity widget.

You have key metrics here, such as –

Activity: It tracks the number of hours you have put into the work and how productive you were overall. The calculation is based on an 8-hour period for daily work within Proquantic. Gives you an insight into how engaged you were on a given day, as well as the team members you’re tracking [correlate with the image]. Were they optimally utilised, and was the degree of work completion satisfactory?
Time tracked- On a typical work day, or for teams using it independently, the user logins into the actual Trutimer app, which is already installed on the user’s workstation to track work. Ideally, for each user, it should be eight hours or more. Shows the effort that was put in by the user.
Trend Indicator (↑ or ↓): Shows whether your activity is increasing or decreasing compared to the previous period. Checking it during the work period keeps the user alerted. Also, a team manager can check it to flag sluggish progress on a task.
Goal Tracking: A motivational indicator showing you're on pace to meet your activity target based on the selected time range — daily, weekly, or monthly. So if the trend indicator is green and points upward, it signals positive progress and vice versa.
Activity distribution graph – represented as a bar graph, it takes a 3 hour slot where the different tasks are mapped. You cannot remember when you were highly productive. This section helps you visualise your peak productivity hours. Analysing the trend over time, one can gauge one’s daily engagement pattern.
Users can see a consolidated list of tasks by number 1. Active tasks, 2. Total tasks 3. Due tasks 4. Overdue tasks to keep the user focused, alert and showcase immediate priorities.

If the user is juggling multiple projects, the section shows content switching across different work streams under defined projects like Trutimer, Redmine, Jira, and Azure DevOps. These are the ones we’re currently using.

In the team activity section [refer to the above image], you get to see

How many total hours have been put in by your team
Your activity compared to the team activity
Quantified activity by each member.
Least active users.

It helps to assess team productivity, resource utilization, and accordingly optimising resource.

How does Trutimer track users’ work?

The next section, the employee tracking segment, gives you a comprehensive detail on each of your employees every single day, to the last minute, for granular management. It tells you clearly how and where.

The section offers managers and administrators a minute-by-minute visual audit of the team member’s daily engagement, broken down to detailed activity logs.

As can be seen from the panel, you get the following info :

Managers can filter information based on a specific employee, project, or date. This is essential when investigating discrepancies or preparing reports for specific clients.
Managers can manually add tracking time, which helps in correcting missed entries.
Tracking timeline spread over the entire working period, giving a clear colour-coded information on the start, end, break times, and time spent on specific tasks. This is an advanced feature of time tracking software. The activity score is based on mouse movements, key strokes, and app usage.

What do the different colours mean, and how should managers interpret them for maximised team outputs?

Red- [means minimal to low interaction] – especially important for remote employees, who are away from the work station, performing non-digital work, or simply inactive. Managerial review is required if tracked as active time.
Orange – [Moderate interaction] – The form of engagement usually expected when users are heavily interacting with the system, such as reading, research, or intermittent work tasks. Managers can look into deviations between expected levels of interaction and actual interaction for extended periods.
Green- [Denotes high interaction] - Indicates peak engagement, often during heavy typing resulting from coding or tasks like content writing, coding, or compiling reports.

There are two additional legends – manual (pending) and manual (approved) for those entries requiring validation or approval, and those approved and included in payroll and reports.

Advanced activity analytics and granular auditing- The core of time tracking software

This is the heart of the trutimer time tracking software application. Here, you get to see all the interaction points that would be expected for a user working on a task on a given day. Modern advanced time tracking software must fulfil the needs of audit-ready compliance, transparency goals, and performance analysis.

It lists all the granular snapshots, creating a holistic picture for any employee working through any mode, moving beyond simple time logging to offering a deep dive into behavioural analysis by capturing granular snapshots.

1. Average activity – Gives a clear comparison of the user's session activity to their historical average or the team's average. Helps in behavioral benchmarking and identifying unusual dips or spikes in engagement.

2. Activity- Managers get an objective metric for showing the utilization Rate that cannot be negated or rejected. Naturally, it can be regarded as a key compliance and transparency indicator.

3. Key Press / Mouse Move- During the tracked period, the key and the mouse interaction denote the engagement volume level. A high engagement for a task such as report preparation or coding is natural, while a deviation would suggest distraction or idle time.

4. Distinct Keys- Further diversifies key-level engagement. Is the user using a variety of keys typical in complex tasks involving prompts, coding, writing, and analysis, or executing a repetitive task? Low value can even indicate abnormal behaviour.

5. Screenshots- During the tracked time, the application automatically captures clear screenshots of the workstation window. When billing clients, it serves as irrefutable evidence of the work. Internally, it can be used for tracking compliance, adherence to organisational norms, and audit works. There’s no fixed time frame, which means the application captures at random times.

6. Apps used- Higher numbers indicate context switching, helping oversee teams or managers understand the trajectory or depth of work. There’s a dedicated section further down the page, listing all the apps used, time spent on them. It records even seconds of page dwell time.

7. Total Work Time- The time window for which all the above inputs were captured by the Trutimer. You also get a split of the activity in the form of a pie chart. The time tracking software also captures active time spent on calls or attending team meetings.

The above screen grab shows a combined graphical representation of keyboard activity and mouse activity.

Another pie chart representation of user’s activity.

Reports section

Reports, which you can use for performance assessment and gauge resource utlisation is a key feature of top time tracking software. What are the reports you get in Trutimer?

1. Time tracking report

The total work hours by each resource, as well as combined output day, week, and month-wise, with time distribution against each task. There are three display options.

The list view, which gives names/dates mapped with tasks and time duration, and the total sum of hours
A Chart view with colour-coded horizontal bars for a quick visual grasp of how many of your resources worked on which project and for what duration
A timeline view that shows day-wise distribution of total work.

2. User activity analytics

Here’s the part most project managers would be interested in. With high-level metrics display this section acts as a visual tool (Activity Heatmap) for managing team performance, efficiency, and resource planning.

You get a clear idea and actionable insights into collective team behaviour as well as individual team performance. Use it to tune productivity and staffing needs. With quick summaries of the team’s health and effort, here are the key takeaways from the top 4 metrics

Staffing context- Total employees and the total work hours they are clocking on average.
Workload and compliance – The team leads/ managers can assess if every person in the team is meeting expected work hours as per the contract. This further helps to gauge if the workload is too low or too high.
Efficiency benchmarking- The average activity score helps to set performance expectations and identify if the team is correctly utilized.
Wellness and burnout indicator- An abnormally high break time could indicate distraction, while an extremely low break time might mean burnout risk. In both cases, proactive intervention is required.

The Activity Heatmap and the Focus Tree report, when analysed together, serve as a powerful visual tool to understand who is putting in the most effort and when. Managers get a fair idea of:

Individual accountability- It is a critical assessment parameter during employee performance review or to correct deviant performers. Helps to optimise delivery and raises the overall team consciousness.
Work-pattern analysis- Helps resource planners determine if the standard Monday-Friday work schedule gets all the work done or the team stretches over to the weekend to deliver work.
Resource forecasting and alignment - The color saturation indicates the intensity of activity (higher activity = darker color) for a specific user on a specific day.

Other important modules in the time tracking software

There's a list of other modules that extend the features of Trutimer. Let's have a look at it to understand how Trutimer balances sophisticated administrative control with a seamless user experience.

Users Module

This centralized directory allows administrators to manage the entire team through status indicators, role assignments, and direct integration with tools like Jira or Azure DevOps. It streamlines everything from password resets to activity monitoring. User management never becomes a bottleneck for your workflow.

Clients Module

Organizing your external partnerships is simple. The dedicated module associates clients directly with specific projects and assigned employees. Admins can easily search, filter by active status, and manage access details. It takes care that every hour you’re billing for is accurately tracked and attributed.

Roles Module

Not everyone in the team has to have access to all data types. This is essential to preserve security and privacy. Here, a hierarchical permission system defines exactly what each team member can access. By creating and editing custom roles, your sensitive data remains secure while giving your team the autonomy to perform their tasks.

App Log Detail

This module provides a transparent, tabular view of application events, complete with date filtering and a deep-dive search by username. Administrators can view full log details in an easy-to-read format. This helps to simplify audit specific actions or troubleshoot technical performance.

Web Log Details

Focused on web-side interactions, this tool tracks everything from successful actions to system errors with robust keyword and date-range filtering. It serves as a comprehensive audit trail, providing the "irrefutable proof" required for high-level compliance and operational transparency.

Activity Validation

This is a critical component for maintaining trust, as it uses pattern detection to validate work activity without resorting to invasive surveillance. Managers can review detailed activity results and JSON data to verify that recorded time is genuine and free from suspicious irregularities.

Background Jobs

Automation is the engine behind Trutimer, and this module tracks every scheduled task and historical job execution to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. It provides a clear view of background job configurations, ensuring that critical data syncs and reports are always running on schedule.

Settings Module

The global control center gives you total command over the app’s behavior, from uploading your company logo to fine-tuning idle time parameters and tracking settings. It also manages the technical backbone of the platform, including SMTP email configurations and webhook integrations for real-time data connectivity.

Auto-generated email notification feature on work activity

As a compliance-focused time tracking software, Trutimer ensures optimized resource management by flagging abnormal or deviant behaviour. The system algorithm is intelligently designed to use all your interaction/non-interaction inputs and match the "activity" level with the acceptable threshold set in the system. The mail is sent to the user as well as the reporting manager when the day’s timesheet fails to meet threshold levels.

So, as a manager, if you miss checking the dashboard, the emails keep you informed. It helps managers or administrators take a quick review of under-utilization or low-performance issues.

For example, If a mail reports an activity of 20.73%, it should be considered significantly below the acceptable threshold for active computer engagement.

Qualitatively interpreting it means very hour the employee tracked, they were only actively interacting with the keyboard or mouse for roughly 12.4 minutes (20.73% of 60 minutes). The other 47.6 minutes of the "tracked time" were spent with low or no recorded input.

By observing these inputs, managers can go back to the dashboard for the specific day and investigate if there’s a potential issue with efficiency, billing accuracy, or a non-compliant activity.

How to choose time tracking software for your business?

Most teams have moved from a manual time tracking system to integrating time tracking software. Organizations are choosing productivity and efficiency. The most common challenge is: which time-tracking software to pick?

As discussed before, you have many options today, but the best time tracking software is one that aligns with your organizational needs. A time tracking app for accounting needs will not serve a transportation and logistics business that requires GPS-based digitalized real-time monitoring for their field technicians.

Factors to consider when selecting a time tracking app

Do you need free software for starting initially and moving to a tiered pricing model later on?
Does your time tracking software talk directly to your key systems: Project Management (Jira) and Payroll?
Does it protect sensitive data on remote devices with advanced features like device verification?
Is it reliably available on the desktop and mobile devices your distributed team actually uses?
Is the interface easy to use for your employees every day without confusion or friction?
Are you tracking Activity (for office roles) or GPS Location (for field roles)?

Trutimer, with its Screenshots, Activity Score, and PMS Integration (all centered on the desktop), is clearly an Activity/Productivity Tracking tool.

Why should you choose Trutimer for your team?

If you bill clients, manage vendors, or track internal utilization, Trutimer is clearly your productivity tracking tool, redefining your organizational culture with greater transparency and unforced accountability. The easy-to-use interfaces, frictionless adoption, and all-in-one nature make it a single source of truth for your business operations, bringing all your internal resources on the same page.

Our time tracking software amalgamates the best features focused on user’s pain points, data-centricity, and scope for future AI enhancements. Our product brings the best features available in some top time tracking software.

For example,

Time Doctor offers employees screen recording, and we have it.
We bring Everhour’s advanced reporting and integration with PM software.
In simplicity, we match and even exceed Toggl Track.

Go beyond time-sheets, bridge the trust gap by leveraging privacy-first analytics to optimize workflows and revenue. Currently, Trutimer is free for all users and available across platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, and Web app). So go ahead and use it.

If you want to know more about how it can help your business, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to take you through a free demo of Trutimer.

Time Tracking Software for Global Teams- A Guide to Trutimer