Updated on December 21, 2023
Toggl is a cloud-based time tracking tool for small businesses and consultants. It offers simple tracking via the web, a desktop widget, and a mobile app (Android & iOS). Users can log hours for multiple projects, specify time as billable or non-billable, add tags for specific projects or tasks, and run productivity reports. It’s easy to set up an account–you can even authenticate with your Google login details.
Toggl was created by Toggl OÜ, an Estonian startup, and it operates under a subscription-based model. The free version packs a lot of features and it seems that the upgraded subscriptions are geared more towards team functionality (check out the feature list).
I stumbled across Toggl a few months ago while I was looking for something unrelated on IFTTT. I knew I’d need to track my time for the ILT internship so I decided to give it a try. From the start, I was impressed by how simple it was to use. The fact that I can access it on any device is a huge plus because I work on my internship from multiple locations and on multiple computers. It’s also nice that the app has an idle detector–so if you forget to turn off your timer (possibly because you’ve fallen asleep on the couch while reading late into the night), it turns itself off.
There are lots of features I didn’t really know about until I started looking into the app for this post. There’s an autotracker! You can program in apps or keywords that automatically prompt the timer to start running for a specific project–how cool is that? (Definitely going to try it out after posting!)
Here are some screenshots from the Android and iOS apps (thanks, Toggl Media Kit!):
Though Toggl is billed as a productivity tool specifically, one could argue that it also can serve as an educational tool. The Toggl blog has lots of useful information on project management, like this infographic about software development methods or this article about bringing up the idea of time tracking with a team who may not be too excited about it.
And even though Toggl’s content is rather specific, the app itself still serves as one tool in the learning toolbox. Take my Fall 2016 internship for example. The internship in and of itself is an authentic application of what I’ve learned through the ILT program, and time tracking is one requirement of the project–much the same way it might be in a professional instructional design setting. Toggl makes it infinitely easier to keep track of what I’m working on, and at the end of the project I’ll be able to export all my time entries to share with CU Denver faculty.
I’d definitely recommend Toggl to anyone who needs to track time for any reason. In fact, I’ve recommended it to a new member of my team, for two purposes: (1) to help her track the time she spends on her new projects in the future and (2) to help her track the time she spends on each onboarding task, since our team onboarding has recently undergone a redesign and needed some benchmarking. So far she’s been a fan of it.
Have you tried Toggl, or any other time tracking software?
