Agency Time Tracking Software: 9 Tests Before You Buy

An agency can record every hour and still have three different answers to a simple question: what should the employee be paid, what did the project consume, and what can the client see? Choose agency time tracking software by testing those answers against the same corrected, approved time record.

The table is a purchasing test for a remote service agency, not a claim that any one product passes it. Use an actual recent project with permission to reproduce its data in a trial, or use a clearly labelled sample record. Put the person who owns each downstream decision in the room.

Keep pay, delivery and client evidence separate

One time entry may feed three decisions, but those decisions have different owners. Finance needs worked time and the approved pay-period version. Delivery needs project allocation and the reason work exceeded scope. An account lead needs a client-safe explanation of work delivered. “Billable” is a commercial label; it must not silently decide whether worked time is paid. Set that boundary in your own policy before evaluating software.

The trial should follow one record across all three destinations. Compare totals and record IDs at each handoff. If a correction changes the approved source, decide who can reopen the pay file, the project view and the client report. A product demo that shows three attractive dashboards without this reconciliation has not answered the agency's buying question.

Vendor documentation gives useful examples of what to ask, but it does not prove a fit for your process. Toggl Track documents submission, approval and rejection states on Premium and Enterprise. Hubstaff documents a timesheet approvals report with status filters and CSV export. We checked those documents on October 1, 2026. Ask each shortlisted vendor to demonstrate what a correction does to its approval state and exports in your chosen plan.

For a deeper payroll integration exercise, use the QuickBooks time handoff tests. For an agency's separate definition of capacity, use the billable utilization guide. Neither calculation replaces the source time record.

Test the report a client will actually receive

Do not send the raw management view because it is easy to export. Have an account lead produce the report required by one real contract: the covered period, agreed project or service lines, and enough explanation to resolve a disputed charge. Remove fields the client did not need to see. Then ask a second lead to find an excluded client's work or an employee-only note in the output. If either appears, the report fails even when its hour total is correct.

Screenshot or activity evidence requires its own access decision. A client time report does not automatically entitle the client to a worker's screen. For teams operating under UK rules, the ICO's worker-monitoring guidance calls for careful consideration of purpose, worker privacy and transparency. Other jurisdictions may require different checks. Give workers a clear account of what is collected, who can view it, and how they can contest an inaccurate record.

The related client time report checklist focuses on the shareable output. Use it after the internal time record is settled.

Make the purchase decision from one completed cycle

Have the worker, approver, finance reviewer and account lead mark each test Pass, Needs proof or Fail. Keep the failed record and the vendor's explanation beside the result. A failure in pay accuracy, organization access or client data separation is a hold, even if the timer is pleasant to use. For other gaps, name a process owner and a retest date; a roadmap promise is not a passing result.

KordanoTime plans customer access for December 1, 2026. Its owner-confirmed first-release scope includes online and offline time tracking, daily timelines, schedules, attendance, breaks, leave, approvals, and payroll-ready integrations or exports. The planned Early Access allowance is 500 screenshots per team per month; the Team plan is committed to unlimited screenshots. These are pre-launch commitments, and working-product QA remains pending.

For the planned screenshot flow, inspected implementation requires a signed-in viewer with the view-screenshots permission, organization and target-visibility checks, and blurred images for authorized viewers when the blur policy is on. The planned default storage for screenshot and recording media is Cloudflare R2. Cloudflare documents automatic AES-256 encryption for stored R2 objects and TLS support for client transfers; on a custom domain, blocking plaintext HTTP requires its Always Use HTTPS setting. Kordano's planned media path uses TLS. Storage encryption, encrypted transport and permissioned access each answer a different question. Working-product and deployment QA remain pending; the inspected screenshot controls do not establish recording-viewer behavior.

If your agency is selecting its next time-review process, join the free Founding 25 waitlist and bring these nine tests to its first working cycle. A Founding spot depends on company qualification and availability; joining the waitlist does not reserve one. The judgment stays yours: you set the pay boundary, the project labels and the client-safe report.