Paymo—truly free time tracking

So, update from a previous post. Less Time Spent was in fact a limited time free trial. I just logged in one day and wasn’t able to use any of the timesheets I had collected! I am back to an old alternative and one that works quite well—Paymo.

Paymo has a paid plan for those who want to use the system for invoices or for multi-users. For freelancers or one person use—it’s perfect and free.

The benefits of Paymo:

• It’s free—really
• It has a desktop widget so you don’t need to worry about closing browser windows
• The desktop widget can track if you have been idle and gives you the option to remove the time spent during this idle period—perfect if you forget to click “stop”.
• Invoicing tool should you choose to use it
• Track entries by Clients » Project » Tasks
• Nice chart overview on the homepage
• Reports—as all systems have

With any productivity tool—it’s only as valuable as you make it. Here’s how I use it:

• I don’t track time for EVERYTHING—just the items that make sense to be diligent about such as projects that I’m billing hourly or projects that I really want to see how long they take for future reference
• I use the widget, this way I can be free with Firefox
• I don’t bother with task templates. I set up a project and add tasks as I go—for example, if I am working on a website my tasks will start out as initial meetings, homepage designs, edits…
• Once a project is finished I archive it so I don’t need to keep looking at it

Are there any issues with Paymo?

Well, the only annoying thing for me, is that the widget won’t let me add projects. To add a new project I have to login to the website. Not a huge issue, but a little annoying.

So, hats off to a truly free system that lends a hand to those who don’t want to pay yet another $10/month subscription fee!