Almost every small company starts tracking time in a spreadsheet. It’s free, everyone knows Excel or Google Sheets, and a simple template with dates, projects and hours does the job — for a while. Then the team grows, clients multiply, and the spreadsheet quietly turns into a monthly headache. Here’s how to tell when a timesheet template has reached its limit, and what a time tracking app does differently.
Where timesheet templates work well
- One or two people tracking their own time;
- a handful of projects that rarely change;
- no need to bill clients by the hour;
- someone who enjoys maintaining formulas.
If that’s you, a template is fine. Keep it simple and fill it in daily, not on Friday afternoon.
Seven signs you’ve outgrown the spreadsheet
- Hours are reconstructed from memory. People fill the sheet at the end of the week, and the totals are always round numbers.
- Every person has their own copy. Merging ten files before invoicing takes an afternoon.
- Project names drift. “Website”, “Web site” and “Acme web” are the same project in three spellings, and the pivot table can’t tell.
- Rates live somewhere else. Someone has to look up which rate applies to which client and person.
- Hours get billed twice — or never. There’s no record of which rows are already on an invoice.
- Nobody knows the profit. Revenue is in the invoicing tool, cost is in payroll, hours are in the sheet.
- Permissions are all-or-nothing. Either everyone sees every row, including colleagues’ hours and rates, or you maintain separate files.
What a time tracking app changes
Time is captured as it happens
With a start/stop timer, the entry is created while the work is being done. Clocknico also lets people add or correct entries manually, and reminds anyone whose timer has been running for eight hours.
One shared structure
Clients, projects, sub-projects and tasks are defined once and picked from a list, so everyone tracks against the same names. Reports can then be filtered by client, project, department or person — and exported to CSV whenever you still want a spreadsheet.
A weekly timesheet that fills itself
The Timesheet view shows the week as a grid, built from tracked entries. It’s the spreadsheet you were maintaining by hand — except nobody has to maintain it.
Rates and invoices are connected
Hourly rates are set per client, project or employee, and the same rates are used in reports and on invoices generated from tracked time. Hours that are already invoiced are locked to that invoice, so they can’t be billed twice.
Roles decide who sees what
Members see their own time; managers see the team’s reports; cost rates and profitability are visible to managers and admins only.
“But a spreadsheet is free”
So is Clocknico, for teams of up to five users — with every feature included, not a cut-down version. Larger teams pay per user, from €1.50 a month on the yearly plan. Compare that with the hours spent every month merging sheets and chasing missing entries.
How to switch without drama
- Create your clients and projects using the same names as in your spreadsheet.
- Invite the team by email — they can sign in with Google or Microsoft.
- Ask everyone to use the timer for two weeks, alongside the old sheet if they want.
- Compare the totals. Most teams find they were under-reporting by a surprising margin.
Ready to retire the template? Start with Clocknico for free.