Guide · 5 min read
Time tracking best practices for teams
Teams don't fail at time tracking because they're lazy; they fail because tracking is fiddly. These practices remove the friction.
Summarize with your AI
Eight rules
- Make the timer impossible to forget (menu bar, keyboard shortcut).
- Keep projects and task types few and meaningful.
- Decide billability per type of work, not per entry.
- Allow adding time to past days — gaps happen.
- Review weekly, not monthly.
- Approve and lock before billing.
- Never monitor screens — track time, not people.
- Show people their own data; it's useful to them too.
Frequently asked questions
Should time tracking be mandatory?
For billable work, usually yes. Make it easy first; mandate second.
Is employee monitoring the same as time tracking?
No. Time tracking records what people choose to track; monitoring records their activity. Hourtick does only the former.
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