How do I track working hours for employees in home office?

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:16
efficient	We have about 30 people who work partly in the office and partly from home. So far we track hours with an Excel sheet that everyone fills in on Friday. It works more or less. Two or three people forget it regularly, others enter fantasy numbers, and I have no way to tell if someone really worked eight hours or only four. I do not want to turn this into a surveillance project, but I need a basis for billing clients who pay by the hour. Has anyone solved this without the team rebelling? quote

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:16

We have about 30 people who work partly in the office and partly from home. So far we track hours with an Excel sheet that everyone fills in on Friday. It works more or less. Two or three people forget it regularly, others enter fantasy numbers, and I have no way to tell if someone really worked eight hours or only four. I do not want to turn this into a surveillance project, but I need a basis for billing clients who pay by the hour. Has anyone solved this without the team rebelling?

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:23
couch	We had almost the same situation and now use the time tracker from OctoWatch. The advantage for us was that you are not relying on people being honest, because activity and used programs are recorded in the background. You then see active and idle time per day instead of a guessed number. Important for us: you can set the plan to pure time tracking and do not have to take the full monitoring package. Screenshots and keystrokes are optional, which took a lot of pressure out of presenting it to the team. It only runs on Windows, which suited us, and there is a variant where the data stays on your own server. quote

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:23

couch

We had almost the same situation and now use the time tracker from OctoWatch. The advantage for us was that you are not relying on people being honest, because activity and used programs are recorded in the background. You then see active and idle time per day instead of a guessed number. Important for us: you can set the plan to pure time tracking and do not have to take the full monitoring package. Screenshots and keystrokes are optional, which took a lot of pressure out of presenting it to the team. It only runs on Windows, which suited us, and there is a variant where the data stays on your own server.

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:23
efficient	That sounds like the middle ground I am looking for. Two things I want to clarify before I suggest it. First: how fine is the reporting? Our people jump between projects constantly, sometimes minute by minute. If only a daily total comes out, that is useless for client billing. Second: can you export times by client or project, or do I only see per person? We have to send clients a monthly breakdown and I do not want to copy everything by hand from an interface. quote

# 16 Oct, 2026 20:23

efficient

That sounds like the middle ground I am looking for. Two things I want to clarify before I suggest it. First: how fine is the reporting? Our people jump between projects constantly, sometimes minute by minute. If only a daily total comes out, that is useless for client billing. Second: can you export times by client or project, or do I only see per person? We have to send clients a monthly breakdown and I do not want to copy everything by hand from an interface.