When searching for the best time-tracking software, it is important to not only consider what it offers and how much it costs but also look at the features that set it apart from others. All time trackers may not be created equal. It’s crucial to compare and decide which of the competitors is worth a shot.
We must not forget to consider our personal feelings. The final decision you make will affect your personal feelings and impact the productivity of your team.
Time Doctor is one of the most popular apps in today’s productivity market. It has both teams and single users in a stupor for its task- and time-monitoring capabilities. But has it caught us the same way? Read this comprehensive review to find out.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Frank on his YouTube channel Franklin Rivera. To get a comprehensive overview of Time Doctor, you may still want to check out our article below.
A Closer Look at Time Doctor Fifth Doctor Timeline
Time Doctor is a time tracking and project-monitoring tool that’s best suited to small and large businesses, freelancers, remote teams, and freelance workers. Its lineup of tools and features aims to help teammates and individuals improve their productivity by an average of 22%.
Launched in 2012, around a decade earlier already, Time Doctor has slowly gained a large following, becoming a popular time management tool among companies everywhere, whether they’re established or just starting in the industry. The client portal feature has made it a favorite among freelancers, who frequently work for multiple clients.
Time Doctor has accumulated a user base that exceeds 250,000 over its 20-year history. Apple, Ericsson and the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Verizon and Boost Media are just a few of the many companies that have used Time Doctor for employee and time management issues.
Some of the features Time Doctor has been renowned for are its robust time and activity tracking functions and advanced capabilities, such as setting reminders for when to start and stop the timer. These features alone may be enough for the platform to position itself way ahead of other time management apps. However, it is unable to do so because of its lack of consistency in user useability.
We believe Time Doctor can be a great addition to any team or individual looking to increase their productivity. Continue reading to learn more about the unique platform’s other features and how they work! Fifth Doctor Timeline
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The pros
- Time Doctor is best recognized for its excellent, easy-to-use time and activity management tools and functions.
- It includes outstanding features like pinpoint-accurate reports, idle alerts and automatic reminders.
- Its accessible and comprehensive client portal makes freelancer-client interactions a convenient experience.
- It allows for a large and seamless integration with third-party platforms.
The Cons
- The platform’s confusing user interface makes navigation difficult for many users, particularly first-timers. Fifth Doctor Timeline
- Its mobile apps are not as flexible as its web and desktop counterparts, despite their potential.
- It does not allow for smooth switching between web-based client apps and desktop apps, particularly if you are both the administrator or the user.
- You can only access the time tracking feature if you download and install the desktop app or web extension.
Pricing and plans
Let’s first discuss the plans and their cost. Time Doctor currently has three paid subscription tiers. Each tier offers a unique set of tools and features that get more expensive as they become more complex.
Pricing will increase depending on how many users are added to a team. Let’s check out the following three available plans in the Time Doctor platform.
- Basic – $70/user annually or $7/user monthly
The Basic tier of Time Doctor includes access to core platform features such as task and project management and time and activity tracking. It also allows unlimited screenshots. However, you can only use them if you download the desktop application or web extension. You can only store one month of data.
- Standard – $100/user annually or $10/user monthly
Standard plans allow you to access advanced features such as tracking your team’s apps and URLs, the payroll tool, reporting and 60 additional integrations with third-party applications. The Standard plan also has a new time limit for its customer support hotline, which is now limited to three days instead of 24 hours.
- Premium – $200/user per year or $20/user per month Fifth Doctor Timeline
The Premium tier is the most complete yet out of the three. Subscribers to the Premium tier have access to all the Time Doctor features. They can explore the client portal and take screen recordings.
Paying annually will get a complimentary charge for the first 2 months. Unfortunately, Time Doctor does not offer a free plan; however, each of the three plans has a limited 14-day free trial for those who want to test the waters and see if it’s the perfect tool.
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The User Interface
Despite being filled to the brim with robust time and activity management tools, Time Doctor may be highly notorious for its clunky and poorly-designed take on the user interface and experience. It can be a pain to navigate the platform. This is especially true if you are just starting to explore the dashboard and other features.
Many users of Time Doctor, for instance, have had difficulty accessing the various functions. Many users have complained about the inability to centralize their data within the app, which would have saved them a lot of time. Users can access the time tracking feature via the web extension or desktop app. Project management, reporting, and other admin features are exclusive to the website version. This is why switching between the portals is easier – it’s not possible to do this with other time management platforms.
Another obstacle Time Doctor users need help with is the general look and design. Save for the desktop app, and the website-based dashboard sure does lack a few key intuitive features which would have made for a more convenient user experience. It also needs the diversity of data graphs used for reporting – sure, and the bar graphs are great and all, but what about the circle graphs? Pie graphs, as well? Line graphs, perhaps?
Time Doctor’s interface and design are already a problem. We’ll be reviewing that in a moment! However, despite their combined lackluster appeal, they’re not strong enough to fully soil the experience of tracking work activity, which the platform was designed for in the first place. Some users aren’t bothered by the UI problems, while others adjust to it quickly. Fifth Doctor Timeline
There’s still a glimmer of hope that the UI and UX issues in Time Doctor could be resolved and improved in the future. But for now, those new to the platform will have to go through a rather steep learning curve before getting used to its inner workings.
Time Doctor: Key Features
Now, let’s dive deeper into some of the features and tools you may want to explore if you log in to the Time Doctor platform.
Project and Data Management
Time Doctor’s project management capabilities allow individuals and administrators to create tasks and group them in a matter of seconds. Admins may also utilize this feature to assign their employees tasks to offload and maximize their teams’ productivity. Although you can set up standalone tasks, you may group them if you’d like into larger projects to keep things tidy and organized – a great idea for big companies whose stability relies on numerous departments beneath them.
Time Doctor knows that a clear workboard is a great way to get things done. With that in mind, admins may opt to limit access to select tasks or projects by assigning them to only a specific employee or group of employees within the team. You may want to see who is working on the task or project right now. You may monitor their progress through the dashboard by checking how long they’ve been working, among other things.
Time Doctor is unlike other time management tools. Users can create permanent trackable tasks that they can easily edit, delete, or modify without the need to add one each day. People who are used to repetitive tasks no longer have to deal with this problem every day. All they have to do is make them permanent! Fifth Doctor Timeline
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Alerts and Time Tracking
As already established, Time Doctor’s signature time-tracking tool can only be accessed through either its desktop application or Chrome web extension. Despite not being available in the web dashboard, its capabilities are surprisingly well-versed enough to make it stand independently. It’s quite straightforward – just add in the task you’re assigned to work on and click the timer’s start button to track your progress. It’s simple as that!
As the timer plays out throughout your task, all your actions and activity will be recorded in the background. They will then be logged and saved to the web dashboard, where admins may use this to check on their employees’ progress on the go. You may do it the same way if you are working alone.
Time Doctor’s time tracking tool is unique in that it allows users to set up their own setup until they are happy enough to work. This includes the reminders feature, where the software automatically reminds you when to start or stop your work hours. Another is the “idle time” function, in which users can convert the duration in which they haven’t been working and reassign it to work hours.
If no sign of user activity is detected after a few moments, the timer will automatically bring it to a stop. If you spot something similar and have gone to attend other things, you can manually click the play button in order to restart tracking. You can also pause the timer if you need to take a break from work. Time Doctor allows you to create time intervals between daily tasks if you feel you need some space.
Time Doctor may be able to track your work hours and progress online, but did you know that it could do the same offline, too? Time Doctor, like other time-monitoring apps like Hubstaff, can track your activities and record the hours spent on your task, even without an internet connection. Fifth Doctor Timeline
Monitoring Website and App Usage
It’s not just the amount of hours that Time Doctor is keen on monitoring, as it also applies to the other desktop apps you’ve visited, the websites you’ve explored, and even the keystrokes and mouse movements you’ve made as you work. If the platform sees that the mouse cursor or keyboard hasn’t moved for longer, it will pause instantly and stay that way until you do something with it.
It’s often difficult to determine if someone is productive until you know what they have been doing. It’s an easy relief to hear if they are focusing on their tasks. If they’ve been procrastinating by going to other platforms that divert from what they’re supposed to do, that’s a completely different story. Time Doctor lets you check out which websites and applications your colleagues have used during work hours, as well as how long they’ve been looking at them.
Among Time Doctor’s set of robust monitoring capabilities, there is a feature in which admins can easily spot if their employees have either been wasting time or attending to a task by the website URL or application name and the status given to it. This feature is available to managers and administrators to adjust the platform’s productivity rating to any one of the three ranks.
- Productive if it serves the purpose of a project/team as a key driver for its tasks.
- Unproductive, if it otherwise serves zero purposes and, therefore, a time-waster
- Neutral, if it’s neither considered productive nor unproductive.
These three productivity statuses are assigned to any website or app and can be adjusted to be limited to one user, group/team, or company. The ability to track website activity and customize productivity statuses per user makes it highly convenient for teams who work in jobs requiring a strong focus on specific tasks, like content writing, for instance. For what it’s worth, Time Doctor may be lucky this time to have this crucial function included, unlike other time-tracking software. Fifth Doctor Timeline
Activity Screenshots and Screen Recording
We told you earlier about Time Doctor’s ability to track your activity and time in the background, while posting it to the web dashboard for administrators to view. Its built-in screenshot capabilities are there for this reason.
Administrators can specify a time period for screen capture across their project/team. It could be set to 10 minutes, 30 or even 30 minutes. They can also choose to allow access to any of their colleagues if they wish.
As a measure of user productivity, each image includes additional information about the mouse cursor activity and keystroke activity. Premium subscribers have unlimited access to screenshots. Those who subscribe to Time Doctor’s Standard and Basic plans have unlimited access to screen shots. However, premium users can record video screens. The platform captures three minutes of actual work activity, instead of just taking photos of the monitor.
There may be rare instances in which someone from a project/team may be at risk of a breach of privacy caused by serious circumstances. If this happens, they may be allowed to delete screenshots or screen recordings within the Time Doctor platform for their safety. However, this will likely result in the deduction of work hours listed on the day of recording.
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Productivity Reporting and Analysis
Time Doctor lets users view, edit and save pre-built reports. Each contains data and insights collected by the software during their tracked work hours, all presented in the form of decent visuals and summaries. Users can request reports to determine which time management and productivity practices are working well and which ones need to be improved.
Time Doctor’s report collection has so many options for you to explore. Its Web and App Usage report, on the one hand, lets you see how many hours you’ve spent and how active you’ve been on any website or app that’s classified as productive. The Poor Time Use report shows how long you have sat on sites that have been flagged inappropriate for work. Multi-screen work setups can lead to problems, such as the possibility of one person being able to jam out to their favorite music on one screen, while working on their task on the other. Poor Time Use also includes being able to set pop-up windows on off-limits websites, so whenever someone decides to go to YouTube, for example, they’ll be instantly met with a reminder if they want to continue or go back to focus on their assigned task.
The Timeline report displays all of your hours tracked in chronological order. It is divided into two colors: yellow for manual time recording and blue for automatic. The Project and Tasks report shows hours spent on tasks and/or projects. Finally, the Activity Summary allows you and your admin to view your total work hours and all percentages from all reports. Fifth Doctor Timeline
While Time Doctor’s accurate reporting tools may be impressive and all, some of its users have historically not liked experiencing certain issues while generating them. Firstly, the formatting of most reports is generally clunky, further affecting how they’re exported. Second, XSL and CSV are the only two options Time Doctor has made available and nothing else – some may be simply okay with that, but others won’t like this lack of export file diversity as much.
Client Access and White-labeling
If there’s one thing about Time Doctor that dedicated freelancers or solopreneurs can’t get enough of, it’s the ability to share the progress of their tasks with their clients, even if they are not exactly their teammates or don’t share a Time Doctor account.
You may find it helpful to know that the Client Portal feature of the platform allows you to accept commissions from many clients.
You simply send in the link to the portal to a client of yours, and once they gain access to its dashboard, they may be able to take a good look at how long and how far you’ve worked, the tasks you were able to finish beforehand, and even the library of recorded screenshots and reports. You have complete control over what your clients see through the Client Portal, which results in smooth, tasteful interactions.
If you own and manage a well-established business – and have enough money to pull it off – you may also take advantage of Time Doctor’s white-labeling feature by integrating its tools with your own branding.
Payroll
You want to pay your employees according to how much time they have dedicated to their tasks. You can do that within the Time Doctor platform through its built-in payroll feature. You can turn on payroll deep within the settings of your web dashboard and your team will be automatically billed. Your teammates may be paid based on their hours worked or on a fixed rate.
Time Doctor’s payroll software supports all currencies. You can ask employees to send their salaries through PayPal, Payoneer or TransferWise. For batch payments, you can export your payroll information to a CSV file if you work for a larger company. Multiple payments are sent at once.
Integration with Third-Party Services
Time Doctor offers a wide range of integrations to various third-party platforms. These integrations are primarily focused on work, business, and productivity. Time Doctor has over 60 integrations to make it simple for you and your team to manage their work together in one interconnected ecosystem.
Such includes connections with project management platforms like Asana and Trello, payment services like PayPal, work messaging apps like Slack, and CRM platforms like Salesforce. On top of all this, a public API tool is made available for integrations with other apps beyond the given list – you may utilize this if you or your teammate know a thing or two about coding.
The Time Doctor Mobile App
Time Doctor’s desktop program is available to download and install on Windows PCs, Mac OS devices, and Linux OS computers. At the same time, its recent web extension is offered exclusively on Google Chrome. However, the time-tracking software also offers its users unlimited access through their smartphones: Time Doctor currently offers not one but two mobile app versions, both of which you can download on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
You may be able track your work hours and progress no matter where you are. The classic version of the app allows you to view all tasks in a project and track your team’s location through GPS. This is on top of the basic tools for time tracking and the limited dashboard settings.
The latest version – Time Doctor 2 – has more or less the same functionalities as the previous iteration. Only two differences distinguish the two versions: 1) TD2 can only be used on Android devices and 2) you won’t have access to other features other than time tracking – a notable downgrade from TD Classic.
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How Safe and Secure is Time Doctor?
You may be questioning whether Time Doctor is worth using as a time management tool. You may also wonder if its surveillance tools could keep track of your actions, even as you pause your timer momentarily to catch a quick break. We are happy to inform you that the 1984-style work scenario is not something we find frightening. Your activities will not be saved to Time Doctor’s cloud database. You’re safe because it’s not spyware-like.
We want to remind you that screenshots and recordings can be used to track your work activity. Project managers may also use the webcam shot feature to see their coworkers right in front of them.
Ok, that might be a concern for some admins, especially if they are concerned about their privacy. But don’t worry, admins can disable screengrabs and webcam shots depending on how they feel.
Time Doctor assures that your likeness and activity will not be forced-shared in vain. The same sentiment can also be applied to payment information entered into the platform by yourself or your colleagues. These will then be automatically deleted after a while for privacy reasons.
Time Doctor further takes up drastic security measures to ensure that every user’s account isn’t easily breached. These measures include guaranteed protection by 2FA and a strong password policy, and all the data made within the platform is safeguarded by strong SSL encryption in maximum security facilities. Plus, since Time Doctor is cloud-based, expect all your stored data to be backed up regularly. In the case of a power or internet outage, you may have them recovered shortly, so your progress won’t be lost.
The Bottom Line: Should You Use Time Doctor?
Time Doctor is a time management tool that can be used by freelancers and professional teams. It offers both the simplicity of a task management system and the sophistication of an advanced time tracker. This creates a harmonious balance between them.
While its line-up of dynamic features has admittedly left us in awe, the experience would have been significantly better if it weren’t for the disorienting UI and UX, lack of functionality and cohesiveness in the mobile apps, and, to an extent, undersupply of report graphics options. These problems may have hindered other users as well as us from enjoying the experience to its fullest. Still, others don’t mind anyway because it works exceptionally in what it was originally designed to do – track time.
We believe Time Doctor is able to hold its own, even though it doesn’t offer the same ease of use as other apps. Besides, every time management platform shines uniquely, right?
FAQ Fifth Doctor Timeline
How do I contact Time Doctor’s customer support team?
Time Doctor’s customer service hotline can be approached either through e-mail or live chat. At this time, there is no telephone support. However, if you have an important matter and the best and only thing you think to solve this is through talking over the phone, you may leave behind your contact details and preferred call time through any of the available outlets. You will be notified by the hotline and can reach them any time.
You won’t find any tutorials or tips for Time Doctor anywhere else.
YouTube videos and how to articles by independent creators can be found. However, Time Doctor offers its users an alternative via its dedicated help center. Here, most of the information is provided by the team behind Time Doctor.
Do I need to add credit card details to apply for a free trial to any of Time Doctor’s paid plans?
No, you won’t need to use your credit card to sign up for a limited 14-day trial. If you are done with the trial period, you can bring it up again to purchase a Time Doctor subscription.
Does Time Doctor comply with HIPAA?
Yes. Time Doctor adheres to the standards and rules of the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Even though it can technically be used for a vast range of niches, industries, and professions, the platform can be a solid addition to healthcare teams.