How to Track Time in Trello — Tips & Ideas

Making the Trello app an even more powerful tool for freelancers

Amanda Adams
Freelancer’s Handbook
5 min readApr 19, 2022

--

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

As many freelancers can attest, Trello is a fantastic project management tool, making it easy to track tasks at a glance. But it’s tough to keep track of how much time you spend on each Trello card because the service lacks a built-in time-tracking feature.

Thankfully, there are add-on tools to keep track of your time while you’re on Trello. Yet, deciding which Trello time-tracking tool is best for your needs can be confusing because there are many to choose from, and each has unique features that are more helpful for specific purposes. This guide on will break down four of the best tools available to track time in Trello to better equip you in deciding on which option is best for your time-tracking needs.

It’s important to stress that I didn’t just randomly pick four time-tracking tools to analyze. I researched all of these because I needed to solve the time-tracking issue for myself. As is always the case when I try to add a tool to my work arsenal, I got into the weeds, comparing features as well as customer and expert reviews. Without further ado, here are the four best Trello time-tracking tools I found.

DeskTime

The DeskTime app is one of the best time tracking products because it doesn’t require much manual data entry; it automates most productivity-tracking processes. A great stand-alone addition to any freelancer’s arsenal because of its invoicing and calendaring features, DeskTime’s integration with Trello is a powerful way to plan, track and complete projects. Its robust performance will help you optimize your productivity and reduce time-related issues with work.

A major advantage of DeskTime for freelancers is that it can calculate how much time and money your project costs and what price you should charge by analyzing the time spent on projects. Below are some other features and perks of DeskTime.

Features of DeskTime

  • There is no need to copy and paste your cards and boards manually from Trello to DeskTime — they are all imported automatically.
  • Helps you determine which websites, programs, and apps you use most, then categorize them into those that are productive and those that are not.

The Private Time feature allows you to pause DeskTime’s monitoring of your online activity, allowing you to decide whether you want to track everything you do online or just work-related activity. When the Private Time feature is turned on, your time is not tracked and websites visited are not monitored.

Everhour

Everhour is a robust time-tracking software that works especially well with Trello. Everhour works by seamlessly integrating itself into the Trello interface, giving it a slew of new easy-to-use time tracking features. These add-ons allow users to stay up-to-date with the progress of their work. Aside from helping companies easily track project progress, it also can delegate different tasks and generate detailed reports with helpful insights.

Features of Everhour

Trello time tracking with Everhour is a wonderful integration for tracking projects and can help to streamline the way you do business.

  • With a design that focuses on making Everhour seamlessly integrate with Trello bug-free, you can rest assured that this time tracking software will work almost perfectly.
  • Everhour brings sophisticated reporting capabilities, allowing Trello users to generate customized time tracking reports suited to their needs.
  • Creating and sorting custom reports is another useful feature of Everhour. It helps users easily find and extract the information they need from time tracking reports.
  • Everhour makes determining accurate time estimates for projects possible in Trello.

Planyway

Planyway is an embedded Trello time tracking tool used to track your efforts for different tasks and keep tabs on where you spend your time while working with Trello. This information boosts your productivity and profit margins by getting accurate determinations of how much time extensive projects and assignments take so you can charge clients appropriately. Adding to this is Planyway’s feature, which lets you email time reports to clients detailing what you did and how long it took. Also, when working with a team, you can easily see who worked on what, when, and for how long. Below are some other prominent features and benefits of Planyway.

Features of Planyway

  • Connect it with your Google, Outlook, and Apple Calendar.
  • It helps ensure timely delivery of work.
  • You can prioritize projects to focus your energy on the work that requires the most attention.
  • It allows project managers to create project road maps and better manage team workloads by assigning jobs based on team-members’ availability as well as visually manage a team’s schedule.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is a Trello time tracking integration app created to provide users with everything they need regarding time tracking. You can start tracking time spent on projects and tasks, and employees can log hours with just a couple of mouse clicks. Managers also benefit from Hubstaff because they can easily generate reports that can help to improve job estimates, keep track of payment dates, see how staff use their working hours in Trello, and ensure projects remain on track. Some other popular features of Hubstaff are listed below.

Features of Hubstaff

  • Multi-monitor support tracks activity on all the digital monitors you use.
  • Add notes and comments directly from the Hubstaff desktop application or the cloud.
  • Hubstaff will regularly capture up to 3 screenshots every 10 minutes for each team member’s work screen, tracking activities and providing accurate records.
  • If working with subcontractors, Hubstaff’s automated payroll tools, allows you to input the subcontractor’s flat rate or hourly rate, and Hubstaff automatically pays them based on the hours they log.

Conclusion

There’s little doubt regarding the usefulness of Trello time-tracking apps. Each service on this list has advantages that can help you and your business. Even though Trello is a fantastic project management software, it has no built-in tool for time tracking, so it’s in your best interest to use one of the tools on this list. I hope that there’s enough information here to help make this decision easier.

--

--

Amanda Adams
Freelancer’s Handbook

I write about freelancing, horses, and hiking. Freelancing gives me the money for horses and the time for hiking.