Track your time automatically
Here at The American Genius, we’ve written about a number of different time tracking tools useful for freelancers and work teams. We may have hit the jackpot with Moonlighter, a time tracker currently available in beta form that promises to automatically track your time – you don’t even have to remember to start or stop the timer.
You can also forget about pausing to enter descriptions into your timesheet, as Moonlighter learns to fill in this information for you automatically as well.
Moonlighter is a “tiny application that hides in your menu bar,” and quietly observes your computer use habits to track your work time. Moonlighter’s advanced algorithm learns which files and applications you use for work, and for which projects, so that it can automatically start tracking your time when you start working, and automatically pauses when you get distracted scrolling your Facebook newsfeed or watching music videos on YouTube.
Moonlighter watches the names of the files you edit, but does not transmit any of the content of the files themselves, nor does it record keystrokes or web content; your private information remains private.
Get insights sent directly to you
You’ll also get a weekly report sent to your inbox, offering valuable insights about how you are actually spending your time. Amongst other data, the report lists each hour of the day, and what percentage of that hour you spent working.
This can help you learn about which times of day are most productive for you, and when you are most likely to get distracted or procrastinate. You can also use the information from these reports to gauge whether or not you will meet your deadline, or to estimate appropriate deadlines and pay rates for future projects.
What it costs to automate your time tracking
Moonlighter currently offers a free account, but that won’t last long. They consider the free accounts an investment they are using to help their algorithms learn more about how people work, but eventually the cost of maintaining these free accounts will outweigh the investment, so it might be a good idea to sign up for Moonlighter in advance if you want to get a free account.
The free account works for one user on a single project. The Pro account, at $49 per month, is appropriate for freelancers, as it tracks the worktime of one user, but unlike the free account, can track unlimited projects and data sources. The Agency account ($249 per month) is for teams of up to six people, whereas the Business account ($499 per month) is for organizations with multiple teams with 12 or more people.
Don’t waste time tracking your time – let Moonlighter do it for you.
#Moonlighter
Gabriel
September 30, 2015 at 9:14 am
Not a big fan of automatic time tracking. Will give a try, anyway. It would not be for myself, though. I do not believe tracking of software/page in use says much about what has actually been done. I use this one called Time Tracking by primaERP and I am quite satisfied with it. It is not authomatic, though.