A few ideas for the free version

zack · February 1, 2020, 7:08pm

After using the free version for about 6 months give or take, here are the top things that I find distract or take extra time out of my day.

When I create a new project on the fly (Windows app), it doesn’t let me set the default hourly rate. This means I’m constantly having to open the main interface, track down projects, open them one by one and enter the rates. This is the only field that would be nice to have at the time the project is created.
Any time I need to bulk edit many projects, I have to go through a long roundabout procedure. First I open the Projects screen, then I set up the filters needed to find my project list. Then I click on one to edit it. But now when I go back, all my filters are gone and I have to filter my projects again to select them.
The only way around this is to open every project in a new window and edit it there so I don’t lose my filters.
What would be nice is if opening a project simply happened in a popup or slideout page or something so that I don’t loose my filtered list.
I do realize that some features need to remain in the paid version only, but I’d say the number ONE feature that would make time entries so much better on the free version, is to allow single running timers that don’t track start and end timestamps.
For example, if I work on 4 projects today, then all I need is 4 timers that I start and stop as needed. I don’t want to keep creating new entries every time I start and stop a clock. Then instead of 4 entries at the end of the day, I end up with 24 entries and I have to sit there adding all of them up to figure out the total time.
Knowing the exact start and stop timestamps is of zero use to me. All I want is total time spent on the particular project.
It would be hugely beneficial to allow this more basic way of tracking time. I’d even go so far as to say, it would be a paid feature to track all the start/stop timestamps in separate entries, while the basic/free way would be only tracking total time per project without timestamps. That’s just me though.
Again, it seems odd to consider this a pro/advanced feature to get a more simple/basic functionality, that doesn’t make sense.
I only track time so that I can a total number to invoice clients. Neither the clients nor myself care about every timestamp of starting and stopping entries. It is quite a hindrance actually.

For example, let’s say I start a project timer, but 3 minutes in I get a phone call about another project. I have to stop this timer and begin another one. The phone call lasts 10 minutes. Now I start the other timer again. I end up with these little 3 minute and 5 minute time entries all day long which are really annoying to deal with. All I want to do is click the “play” button from project to project and track a single counter. I hope this could be something to allow in the free version, as it’s really making the timer more basic in nature.

I highly consider buying the paid version, but I feel that your pricing is incredibly off. For example $30/month for bulk editing and project templates, just for myself to enter time, is way too expensive. Even $10/month just for myself to get time rounding and reminders is a lot of money.
I feel like most all your paid features involve managing things for many users, but as a single user trying to track my time, most of these features aren’t needed, and therefore I can’t justify the expense.
I would love to pay a reasonable yearly fee like maybe $20, so that I can enter time in a useful way (ignore timestamps, rounding, extra fields, targets/reminders).

In other words, it makes sense in my mind to allow single (free) users to have all the features of entering time for themselves, and save the paid features for companies that use this for managing workers and multiple people.
This is just a thought, but really I could not justify $10 a month only to get rounding for example. That should just be in the free version by default, and instead have people pay for multiple-user abilities and other corporate features.

Thanks for your consideration and a great tool so far!

jovana · February 3, 2020, 4:17pm

Thank you so much for the feedback and welcome to the Clockify forum, Zack! I’ll try to respond and provide more clarity for each of your raised points as best as I can.

I can see how adding project hourly rate while creating the project on the Win app would be useful. The mobile/desktop apps are designed to be really simple and focus specifically on time tracking so their purpose is to make time tracking more convenient. This is why it’s possible to create a project just on the fly, but not generally manage projects. In order to keep this simplicity and convenience regarding the time tracking, team and project management is reserved for the web app. While we don’t have such changes in mind at the moment, our product team will keep in mind your feedback for future development.
Opening the edit project screen as a pop-up or slideout is an interesting idea. However, I’m not sure how well would that fit in the current design of the Edit Project page which has multiple tabs (such as tasks, access, note, etc.) and for the mobile responsiveness of the web app. Moreover, bulk editing project is, as you already know, available as an extra feature on the paid plans. But it’s definitely an intriguing suggestion that I’ll be happy to share with the design team.
Many users need to have complete details regarding their tracked time (including the start/end time), but there are other users like yourself that don’t have use of this information, which is why we have both Summary report (which deals with totals, sums up entries) and Detailed report (which lists all created entries and their details).
We do have in mind to possibly give users an option to hide the start/end time from the UI, but even if start/end time is hidden from the UI, it will still be and needs to be recorded.
With “Group similar time entries” enabled, entries that have the same details (project, description, tags) will all be grouped together as a single entry on your Time Tracker and you can see the total time spent on it.
If you have different details for each time entry, these entries won’t be grouped on the Time Tracker but you can always check the totals for each project in your Summary report so you don’t have to add them up to figure out the total time. From the image attached you can see I tracked 2h on Project A and 1h on Project B on Monday, Feb 3rd. That’s the total summed up, but I have two entries for Project A on the Time Tracker, each 1h long.

So based on your needs, Summary report is the way to go.

Clockify was created because our team needed a time tracker but all the time tracking apps on the market were either too complicated or too expensive - especially for teams since they charge per user. So, we decided to create our own time tracker and offer it to anyone for free. Even our Plus and Premium plans are not charged per user, so it’s possible to have an unlimited number of team members per workspace on these plans.
While we have many users who don’t use Clockify within a team, the features in the paid plans are generally more useful to teams hence the pricing structure which we consider to be fair.
I completely understand why a paid plan would be expensive for a single user. If it helps, perhaps you can get the Enterprise plan just for yourself. This is a full-featured plan charged per user, so you’ll get all features Clockify can offer, including rounding, bulk editing, project templates, etc. for just $9.99 per month.

Thanks again for such extensive feedback, we really appreciate it!

zack · February 3, 2020, 5:31pm

Thanks for the detailed followup. If you’ll permit me one more round

This makes perfect sense, but the keyword here is “convenient”. I work for a few agencies, and most of the work they send me are project-based, and they want me to invoice them based on projects. So I create on-the-fly projects all the time. But because the hourly rate isn’t entered, this means I have to go in the dashboard constantly to update every new project one by one, or just ignore doing that and loose all ability to make the income reports useful.
So basically, it’s entirely NOT convenient to leave this one field out when creating projects. Either I have to do a lot more work going in and entering this bit of data, or ignore it and leave an entire part of the app and reporting useless.
And it’s very easy to accidentally miss one or two projects that don’t have the income value in there. Considering item #2, without bulk edit, it’s also very inconvenient trying to edit more than one project at a time.
I don’t think it would really take away from the simplicity of on-the-fly project creation just to include the rate field. It could always be ignored and left blank if people didn’t use it.

Further, even if I were on the paid version, this is still inconvenient as I still have to go into the web dashboard and find all my projects with the field missing, in order to do a bulk edit. And different projects have different rates, so I can’t edit every one at once anyway.
I’m all for finding ways to be more efficient and save time, and right now, whether free or paid, this small detail wastes a lot of time, and even leads to entire parts of the app/reporting to be ignored because it’s too much hassle to keep up with manually editing the field later.

For #2, another idea would be to simply remember my last filters so that if I click the back button it just goes to the same view/list I had. But instead it completely resets the page. Remembering filters could be an easy-button fix.

For #3, I understand what you mean. Again this is all about convenience and efficiency.
If I work on 6 projects in a day, I don’t want to pull reports for all my clients and have to go in and get summaries from the dashboard. All this could be done with a glance at the desktop app and I’d be done without wasting a ton of time. All I need to see is “Project 1 — 1:45” and then I update my notes without going to the dashboard or pulling reports, etc.
For example, just today this morning I started a project, only to get hit with their service requiring 2-factor auth. So I had to text them and wait for the code, but they didn’t get back to me. So after a couple minutes I switched to work on another project. But then they got back to me, so I switched back again. Then switched again when done with that.
This kind of 5 and 10 minute switch around happens all day. I seriously hate seeing little 4 minute and 7 minute time entries cluttering up the UI. All I want is the rollup in the UI. Even if you made it so that by default I see the rollup, and then there is a little dropdown arrow or something to see each individual start/stop time, that would be fine. All that matters is that the UI shows the summary.
Toggl does this:
toggl

On that same note, I very often begin a task later. For example a client calls me, I start talking to them for a bit and then realize this is part of a project or they want it to be clocked. I turn on a timer, but it’s 10 minutes later than it needs to be. When I’m done with the call. I have to stop the timer, edit the beginning time. But then I might have more to do, so I start the timer right back up again, creating another entry in the UI.

I can’t stress enough, this one little thing about not having rollup is reason enough alone to consider going back to Toggl. Not because it’s a better or worse app, but just because it presents the rollup time entries which is all I need to bill my clients on their projects. Without having to log in to the dashboard and pull reports, which is a daily chore, and it would add up at the end of the month.

I also need to stress, my suggestions aren’t because these things can’t be done in some way. I can also get into my car by opening the trunk and climbing through to the driver’s seat, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a door there.
These things would save a lot of time and frustration by making daily tasks easier and faster in the app. And that’s what matters, efficiency, convenience! Not simply that is can be done in a roundabout way somehow.
This is a time tracking app, I don’t need to spend ANY extra time in here if possible. All I want is to click start and stop a few times throughout the day and then write down a number. So in some way, I’m asking to make the app simpler, not more complex

Thanks again!

jovana · February 10, 2020, 1:04pm

Glad to hear from you again, Zack!

As I mentioned, the desktop/mobile apps were designed to be convenient specifically for time tracking (start/stop the timer, enter time manually), while project creation and set up fall more under project management. Previously, it was not possible to create a project from desktop/mobile apps but based on user’s feedback we decided to add this quick option. Also, project rate is one of 4 types of hourly rates in Clockify, which one would be most convenient to add via mobile/desktop app would most likely depend on the user’s workflow.

However, we hear you and I can see why this would be useful in your workflow. While we haven’t had a similar request yet, if other users also report such need we’ll definitely take adding project rate into consideration for the future development.

For #2 Saving filters wouldn’t be optimal in the technical sense. So for optimization purposes, we decided to go with option to open the project in the new tab/window.

For #3 This refers back to what I said about having “Group similar time entries” enabled. This type of time entry grouping is what we do in our web version, macOS, iOs and Android app, unfortunately, the Win app is just not there yet, but we plan to add grouping there as well.

It is possible to edit the start time of the running timer without stopping it first, simply click on the start time and edit field will appear where you change the start time.

Hopefully, this helps. And once again, thank you so much for such thorough feedback, we always love to hear what our users think!