stpwtch, for knowing where the time went

stpwtch

stpwtch is a time tracker sans frills and fluff. It tracks and categorizes your time and outputs it to a spreadsheet. It's useful for freelancers and anyone who just wants to keep track of what they spend their time on.

If you've seen other time trackers, you'll notice they are complicated and, frankly, not very good at time tracking. Most of their features are about billing, oversight (other people tracking your time), and integrations with programs no freelancer uses. stpwtch doesn't do that stuff. It tracks your time, and it has a number of practical, pragmatic features that make it easy to do so. stpwtch outputs your time in a universal format (plain CSV files, i.e. a spreadsheet, or an HTML table) that you can send wherever you need to.

stpwtch does not assume you are a robot who never forgets to stop the clock, or that you never start the clock but then have to deal with something else for fifteen minutes. It makes it easy to quickly adjust the time with single button clicks. It's highly forgiving and practical. stpwtch makes it easy to "fix it in post".

How do I know it works? I wrote stpwtch for me and used it personally for almost five years before deciding to release it. Its features are essentially a collection of solutions to various problems I ran into when I was trying to accurately track my time. So, it's practical and solves real problems that at least one person actually faced.

Time-tracking is also something I do "off-the-clock" (so to speak) for non-work and highly recommend it. It's one of the few productivity tricks that I've found really works. Like counting calories to lose weight, tracking time is the key to making sure you're using it how you want to.

stpwtch is free to use. It has a couple premium features: custom reporting (useful for preparing client-specific reports), API access (which can be used to grab spreadsheets of your time on a schedule), and downloading CSV's (for backups/sending offsite). For a one-time payment of $6, you get the premium features—for life! No subscriptions! But everything else is completely free—so have fun trying it out!

And, yes, stpwtch's aesthetics rival Craigslist. But, like Craigslist, stpwtch works. It also has big, friendly buttons.