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The monthly expenditure of a hosted service seems like an unneeded cost. There just isn’t anything out there as good that I can find, compared to several of the best hosted services, maybe I missed something, but I did an awfully lot of googling last week to wind up with nothing that really quite fits the bill here.

@mjds The php color variable is pretty neat, in EE there might be something like a global variable to pull off something using the same concept.

Hosted services are useful if you need to give clients access to track hours for their own budgeting.

I use Slimtimer and am very pleased with it - it’s free (though there’s a premium version too), simple, no download necessary, and best of all is the great API so you can access your own data and build widgets to display live timers on your own website for clients to see how much they owe you.

It doesn’t do invoicing, but for me that’s a bit overkill.

James

ActiveCollab is the best one for your needs. And if I remember correctly EllisLab uses it for their project management console. It is very good.

Yup, we use ActiveCollab to manage a few internal projects, but we haven’t used its Time tracking features yet.

I have been using Billings for about a year and really like it. But as I thought there is no enterprise or server edition. Too bad as it pretty much rocks!

Too bad this fresh contender for hosted project management doesn’t offer any time tracking:
http://www.allworkeduphq.com
Just noticed this one via the portfolio site at:
http://www.hutchhouse.com who doesn’t love giraffes in space helmets, worth a look.

Premember is a set of time tracking tools that allows you to start/stop tasks with the click of a button. Additionally it also offers the ability to look back in time in case you forgot to clock your hours.

Plus it’s free, because Premember is still in beta status.

Premember is a set of time tracking tools that allows you to start/stop tasks with the click of a button. Additionally it also offers the ability to look back in time in case you forgot to clock your hours.

Plus it’s free, because Premember is still in beta status.

I can’t figure out is it installed on a desktop, server or is it hosted. What are the requirements, why are they so hard to find [pet peeve]. Looks good though.

It’s desktop software. Basically it runs in the background when you’re working, requirements are low, it runs on XP and Vista, but it does eat a bit of HD space over time since it records what you’re working on. But if you remember to remove the recordings every once in a while (one click) it shouldn’t be a problem.

It is still a beta though, so small issues may come up during use, but the turn around time on reported bugs is good.

I have used many different things to keep track of time and invoice clients.  For the last several months I have been using FreshBooks.  I love it so far!  Saves me a great deal of time and offers a lot of nice features like client access.

I have been using Freshbooks for some time now, and couldn’t be happier. It does all my timekeeping and invouicing, and, yes, it has a little “Start/Stop Timer” button. Free to test for up to three clients, I think.

Same here.  It’s far from perfect, but it works!  We need a web-based solution because of how spread out our team is. We tried quite a few other services before settling on Freshbooks.  I would call it best of its class.  But as I said, it has room for A LOT of improvement.

For my freelance projects, I use Billings.  I absolutely love it!