Free Time Tracker is a free iPhone productivity app developed by John Rouda. Designed to help freelancers track time spent across a range of client projects, it can also be useful for tracking your time on various tasks for a single employer.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Free Time Tracker allows users to maintain a list of clients (with contact info), track time spent on the tasks needed to complete various projects, and even compile reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Pros

• Easy to navigate
• Great compatibility with older iPhone models
• Task library stays populated with old tasks until you delete them, making it easy to go back and see when you worked on a certain project

Cons

• Ad-supported, with placement of banner ads that seem to be constantly in the way at the bottom of the screen
• Exporting/sharing reports is not made easy for users
• Every task must be assigned to a client, slowing down your pace

Discussion

Free Time Tracker is free, and for that reason I feel inclined to cut it a little slack. It’s a serviceable enough app, ideal for a single freelancer to track the hours spent on certain projects for clients. But it definitely has some room for improvement.

While Free Time Tracker’s ability to store client info is helpful, it only stores email, name, and website. For many freelancers, that is enough, but not being able to store a phone number is kind of silly.

But more problematic is Free Time Tracker’s inability to easily export your weekly reports. If you want to make a report, chances are you’re doing it to share with the client, or at least put in their file. It seems weird to have a report feature that isn’t robust at all.

That being said, having a stopwatch timer built in to a tracking app does make Free Time Tracker good for monitoring both personal productivity, as well as time spent on client projects. Free Time Tracker can keep track for time using the stop watch while the app is in background mode. If you’re still rocking an older 2 or 3 series iPhone, good news: Free Time Tracker will keep the clock running even after closing the app.

Free Time Tracker is perhaps just a bit too streamlined for its own good. It needs a bit more functionality to be truly worth purchasing. And honestly, with a few basic upgrades, I’d be willing to pay for this app.

Conclusion and download link

Free Time Tracker is free, so there’s no risk in downloading it and giving the app a spin. It may suit your needs perfectly, or it may clash with your work and organizational style. But the bottom line is this: Free Time Tracker is nothing special. Chances are, it won’t fit your needs as well as similar apps that are already out there.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.7

Requires iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, iOS version 3.0 or later

Download size: 3.6 MB

Free Time Tracker on Apple App Store