TimeCamp Review – Simple Time Tracking

• 
  
• Tweet
• Sharebar

• 
  
• Tweet

If you’re like me you’re looking for the perfect time tracking tool. A tool that will track your time, but you wish you didn’t have to constantly switch to the application or the site, log your time, and switch back – in some cases this can waste even MORE time. The goal here is to extract value… information, extra cash, etc. from our day, not to waste it by spending precious moments tracking time.

I think I may have discovered just such tool – but there is a twist.

TimeCamp “keep[s] track of the hours automatically.” It’s a combination installable program and web app that automatically tracks your computer behavior, and after you’ve assigned categories and productivity measures to those categories, provides invaluable information to you for tweaking your habits.

What TimeCamp Is

Before you get too excited let me explain exactly what Time Camp is… and then what it isn’t so that you aren’t disappointed. TimeCamp is a tool to automatically track your habits on your computer. As such, it is limited in what it can track. It does track open and used programs, and time spent on individual sites. It does this via a program that runs in the tray, sending your account data back to its servers.

What TimeCamp Is Not

TimeCamp will not allow you to individually track client time. It is not a replacement for a program like basecamp. Rather than allowing you to say you spent 15 minutes on client XYZ’s file, TimeCamp will simply provide you a metric on how much time you spent in basecamp in the last day, or week, or whatever timescape you input.

TimeCamp Pros

• Easy to use – really after the install and setup, you do nothing… a dream!
• Setup is pretty easy – just assign things categories, and categories productivity scores. For example, Basecamp.com was assigned the highest productivity value because when I’m in it… I’m doing work work.
• Tracks EVERTHING
• Great information - what you learn from your data is invaluable, it is tracking every moment, so you can see how distracted you get by those mass emails with links to youtube videos.
• Ability to manage a company - This I didn’t get to experiment with, but it was very interesting. You have the ability to add accounts and track those two. Meaning you can watch every moment of your company time that is wasted on Facebook for example. Extremely valuable, but potentially big-brotherish.
• Online App Easy - Easy to navigate through your data and see where you’re wasting time.
• Account removal was simple – I find this important, particularly with a site like this (one that is tracking so much intimate data) account deletion was found in 1 second, and removal was simple.

TimeCamp Cons

• Tracks EVERYTHING! – Particularly when it comes to websites, know that everything is tracked. If you’re using it in a work environment this could be damning if you’re visiting sites you shouldn’t. (Google’s Incognito window won’t help you here!)
• Doesn’t allow you to track client time – Although it wasn’t built for this purpose, in the future combining some kind of a tool or addon to track client time would be nice.
• Data accuracy questionable – I noticed that some of my numbers for the time I spent in applications didn’t seem to be correct. It seems timecamp may be tracking when the computer isn’t idle – ie, keystrokes, mouse movement, etc. So when reading something long for example, the time was shortened. This is just a 5000 foot observation, not sure how accurate my own predictions are.

Overall, this is a great tool. At this time I think the price is too high for such an automated tracking app. Although it provides great value, as a business owner I wouldn’t shell out the asking price. Also, the website doesn’t mention the price of the service on the outside – you’ll have to first sign up for the 14 day free trial. Definitely worth the install and trial however, if nothing else you can get an idea for how you’re spending your days on your computer… automatically.