A No-Nonsense Review of Time Doctor

When managing remote or hybrid teams, you know the challenges of knowing what exactly your employees are working on or if they’re even working at all. The last thing you want is to micromanage instead of focusing on more critical tasks.

If you want to better understand what your employees are doing during work hours, there are many options. One is Time Doctor, a cloud-based time tracking and workforce productivity solution for businesses.

Aside from monitoring what your employees do while on the clock, Time Doctor can help you better understand your operation bottlenecks and time-wasting activities so you can eliminate them.

In this deep-dive Time Doctor review, we’ll discuss its sign-up process, web and mobile app experience, pricing, advantages, and disadvantages to help you decide if it’s the right app for your construction business. We even included some top alternatives in case you need more than what Time Doctor offers.

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What Is Time Doctor?

Time Doctor offers comprehensive employee monitoring and productivity tracking tools you can customize to your business’s needs. It’s also useful for budgeting, payroll, invoicing, and project management.

Its most notable features include job and task tracking, distraction alerts, app and website usage tracking, and work-life balance reporting.

Time Doctor Overview

Time Doctor allows you to gain actionable insights from tracked data to improve employee productivity and workplace efficiency, even if you’re managing field or remote teams.

Take a look at some of Time Doctor’s key features:

• Real-time dashboards and reports
• Automated time tracking (with offline mode)
• Web and app usage monitoring
• Productivity analytics and reports
• Time tracking, attendance, and work schedules

Sign-Up and Onboarding

You can create your free Time Doctor trial account using your Google SSO account or by completing the short online form.

To help customize your Time Doctor experience, you will answer a series of brief questions, such as your company size. Time Doctor will recommend features and settings best suited for your number of employees.

You will also be asked about your current business challenges and which area you’d like to focus on, such as productivity, time tracking and attendance, wellness, and payroll and billing.

The following prompt is regarding device ownership. Select whether your team members use company-provided or their own computers for work and what tracking method you prefer: silent or visible.

You can start inviting team members by entering their email addresses and assigning their access level (user, manager, or admin). You can also invite users by copying and sharing the link to the Time Doctor invitation. If you want to do this later, you can also skip it.

The sign-up process is quick and straightforward, and you can do it on your own with no hassle. If you have a larger team with over 20 employees, Time Doctor’s onboarding team can also help you get started.

The Web App Experience – For Monitoring, Reports, and Management

When you log in to the web app, you’ll see the dashboard and its many tabs and menus. On the top left, you’ll see how many days are left in your free trial and a checklist to guide you to finish setting up your Time Doctor account.

This includes adding employees and getting them to track time, adding projects and tasks, setting up employee groups, reviewing company settings, selecting which apps and websites are productive, and adding your credit card information.

You can select between the team and user dashboard views. The team view shows the onboarding video tutorial, an overview of your projects, and tracked time. It also shows trends, top users, and used websites and applications.

If you switch to user view, you can see your total time tracked, idle minutes, unproductive and productive websites and apps, manual time, and mobile time.

Next to the Dashboard tab is Reports, where you can access the activity summary, unusual activity, attendance, hours tracked, projects and tasks, timeline, web and app usage, and custom export.

Go to the Screencasts tab to find screenshots of employees’ online activities during work hours.

The Time Doctor web app does not track time. It only analyzes all tracked time and activities of employees via reports and the dashboard.

The Mobile App Experience – Only for Time Tracking

There’s not much you can do on the Time Doctor mobile app. You only use it to track work hours, select tasks, and pause tracking. It also doesn’t have GPS tracking.

Although limited in features, it’s simple and easy to use.

Once you receive the invitation or link to sign up for an account, you can create your account, view your assigned projects, and track your hours.

More construction companies trust Workyard for time tracking

Discover why

Time Doctor Key Features

Time Tracking

Time Doctor’s standout feature is its simple but flexible time tracker. It captures your employees’ worked hours and how they are spent.

You get complete visibility on all your team members, whether working in the office, on the field, or from home. Time Doctor can be used on mobile phones, tablets, and computers to track time online and offline.

You can create tasks and track time against them with just a click. When you finish one task, you can switch off the timer and switch it on again when starting a new one.

Time Doctor automatically monitors everything your employees do on their computers while on the clock. Users are also alerted when their computer becomes idle and asked if they’re still working. If you don’t answer the prompt, your computer goes into idle mode.

While this can be a good way to ensure you stay focused on tasks and productive during work hours, it can also become annoying quickly.

No internet connection? No problem! Time Doctor tracks time even in offline mode. Once you have a stable internet connection, your data will sync with Time Doctor’s servers and update your tracked hours.

It also allows manual clock-ins if you forget to clock in before starting work. If you set the access levels to Approval Needed, employees must get manager approvals before editing clock-in entries.

Productivity Analytics

Time Doctor gives insights into your tracked data through productivity reports, helping you improve your workflows and eliminate inefficient practices.

The hours tracked report gives you a closer look into all the hours logged and worked, including manually tracked hours on the web and mobile app and productive and non-productive time.

The project and task management reports keep updates you on the progress of tasks and projects, allowing you to provide realistic updates for time-sensitive projects.

You can see your employees’ work patterns and the most productive employees by their most used apps and websites. The detailed breakdown of timeline reports helps you spot areas for improvement in employee behavior and daily workflows.

Employee Monitoring

When you have remote employees, tracking their productivity is challenging when they’re not in the same location as you. But with Time Doctor, you can get real-time visibility of their online activities.

Screenshots are taken every three, 15, or 30 minutes. For privacy and compliance reasons, you can blur the screenshot content. You can also track apps, URLs, and keyboard and mouse activity.

If you don’t want screenshots, you can set Time Doctor to continuously record until they stop working. It depends on how often you want Time Doctor to take proof of work.

Admins can opt for a combination of verification methods according to their business needs to ensure their teams are only paid for actual worked hours.

Workforce Management

Time Doctor’s workforce management tools ensure teams work at optimum levels and help reduce time-consuming admin tasks so you can focus on your employees, clients, and business.

You can easily build your team’s schedules and monitor tardiness or absences. Real-time email notifications also inform you of non-compliance, and these can be customized to your preferred performance triggers.

With its work-life balance metrics, you can also promote employee wellness by identifying employees or teams at risk of burnout.

Integrating Other Business Apps With Time Doctor

Time Doctor has over 60 third-party integrations through its Firefox and Chrome extensions.

You can add Time Doctor’s start/stop button to your favorite payroll, CRM, project management, help desk, and communication tools to track all work activities in one platform.

It also has integrations with payments and invoicing tools like ADP, FreshBooks, Gusto, PayPal, Payoneer, and Wise, as well as popular business apps like Slack, Zapier, Podio, and Asana.

Time Doctor Might be a Good Fit for You If…

• You have an in-office, hybrid, and remote work set-up.
• You want complete visibility over your team’s time usage and work activities.
• You want to improve workflows, boost productivity, and gain insights to optimize your processes.
• You need an efficient way to track billable hours with proof of work to clients.

You Might Not Want to Use Time Doctor If…

• Your employees value privacy and feel uncomfortable with extensive monitoring. Some perceive Time Doctor’s detailed tracking features, which use screenshots and activity monitoring, as invasive.
• You want to build a culture of trust and autonomy in your company.
• You’re a small business owner with a limited budget.

More construction companies trust Workyard for time tracking

Discover why

Time Doctor Cost/Pricing

Time Doctor pricing is straightforward. It only has three pricing plans: Basic, Standard, and Premium.

The Basic plan starts at $5.90 per user (or $7 per user if billed monthly). Its mid-tier Standard plan costs $11.70 per user per month ($14 if billed monthly). The most expensive plan, the Premium plan, costs $16.70 per user per month (or $20 per month if billed monthly).

Time Doctor’s costs can be a consideration for small business owners. However, if you purchase an annual subscription, you can enjoy two months free ( a total of 16.6% discount on its monthly price).

Time Doctor Reviews

Time Doctor reviews on the App Store and the Play Store are nothing to write home about. With just a 2.8 rating for the iOS app from 28 reviews and a 2.4 rating for the Android app from over 100 reviews, one can’t help but expect a “just okay” user experience.

However, it has a solid rating of 4.5 on Capterra and received over 500 reviews on the platform. See some of Time Doctor’s below.

iOS user Mountain Man Joe gave the iOS app a two-star rating because of its limited functionality. The mobile app only stops and starts the timer.

So much potential, yet so far to go ⭐⭐
This app and company have so much potential to truly be great! However, all their software is buggy and works sporadically. The mobile app is basically unusable for trying to manage remote workers and stay on top of time worked. If only works for starting/stopping a timer, nothing more. If you need any other functionality besides that, then you have to use a computer.

Android user Lych Bane gave it one star because of inaccurate or deleted worked hours. The reviewer also expressed concern about how it can be used fraudulently by erasing captured worked hours.

⭐ 
If you people haven’t fixed the problems in four years, then you never will. Use the first app (if it still works), not this one. I keep having to recreate logins every few months. It disconnects while the phone is charging. It displays more hours worked than is available during the day or erases hours worked. THIS APP CAN BE USED FRAUDULENTLY. If your employer uses this app, be wary and take pictures of the PC version to protect yourself. It can be used to wipe away all worked hours.

But for this senior software development engineer, it’s a five-star rating because of its ease of use and effortless time tracking.

Great time manager ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 
In the development of our software operations, we have a conventional and specific production line. The program has given us a broader look at what we should improve to reduce time costs and expand production. It has been very helpful in this sense, and it has been worth every peso that we approved for acquisitions.

Pros: It is easy to use. It allows us to keep track of the time in each software development task that we need to take into account. It gives us data to be able to optimize the tasks. It has a very good development in this sense, and that is why we love using it.

Cons: Nothing so far. Everything has been fine with the program. Technically, it has been very constant. So far, we have not received delays, and we have not lost any.

Our Score (and Why We Chose It)

Time Doctor is more than a time tracker. Its range of features can reduce your admin work and all the stress that goes with it.

However, it’s not without its flaws and limitations, which, unfortunately, impact user experience and daily workflows. Here’s how we rated it.

Alternatives to Time Doctor

While Time Doctor has a good suite of tools to monitor employee productivity and more, you can still shop for similar software to support your business better.

Let’s look at some of the best alternatives to Time Doctor.

Final Thoughts

Time Doctor is a solid productivity tool for many businesses. It offers accurate time tracking, productivity insights, and flexible monitoring options. It also integrates with different payroll, project management, and business tools.

However, it’s best to consider your specific business needs, employee preferences, and company culture, especially if you work in construction.

Time Doctor is well-suited for remote, hybrid, and in-office teams, but its mobile app has limited capabilities and is not specifically designed for construction or field service businesses.

Workyard, on the other hand, is workforce management software built for the field. It has been tested by thousands of contractors and has features like GPS location tracking, automatic clock-ins and clock-outs, job tracking, and labor cost reporting.

Learn more about its specialized features for construction businesses, or sign up for a free trial today!