Do you need to record the time you work on a project, or a series of tasks you work on? If all you need is a simple utility to record time, take a look at Project Timer. It's truly basic; not much more than a series of glorified stopwatches, but it's simple to use and does exactly the job required. If you bill out your time to multiple projects, I suspect you'll find this little program very handy.
An alternative is TimeTool. It's very lightweight, has an extremely easy to use interface and can save to CSV files for import into Excel, so it's a gem. It easily handled multiple projects and that it only needs to be running when you clock on or off.
An excellent alternative is Task Coach which goes much further than simple time-keeping. Task Coach is a fully featured task management package with the ability to create many levels of sub-tasks within tasks, and customizable color coded categories for different tasks. Tasks can have priorities and due dates set, and you can very easily track the time spent working on any task by simply right clicking it and then selecting either Start or Stop Tracking Effort.
Time tracked in sub tasks is totalled in the highest level task, and individual sub tasks, or entire trees of tasks and sub tasks can be marked as completed or uncompleted. Detailed descriptions, notes, budget and revenue tracking, file attachments and even date based reminders are all supported. Task Coach to be stable and reliable, as well as very easy to use. Data is stored in XML format so it can be easily backed up and extracted if necessary. Like TimeTool, Task Coach will continue to log time even if you shut the program down, so if you need to conserve the memory it uses shile working, you can start the application, start tracking time, and shut it down. Start the application again later and stop tracking time and you will have all the detail you need.
Product Details
Project Timer
Website: http://pc.revivalteam.de/index.php?site=timer
Download link: http://pc.revivalteam.de/index.php?site=timer
Author: Daniel Schulte
Version: 1.4.1
Date: 11/02/2002
Download file size: 311 KB
License: Freeware
Operating systems supported: Windows
64 Bit version available: Unknown
Portable version available: Unknown
Other languages supported: No
Additional software required: No
TimeTool
Website: http://www.cratchit.org/TimeTool/
Download link: http://www.cratchit.org/TimeTool/
Author: Cratchit
Version: 0.5
Date: Unknown
Download file size: 460 KB
License: Freeware (GNU)
Operating systems supported: Windows (perhaps also Linux)
64 Bit version available: No, but this 32 bit program works in a 64 bit environment
Portable version available: Unknown
Other languages supported: No
Additional software required: No
Task Coach
Website: http://www.taskcoach.org/
Download link: http://www.taskcoach.org/download.html
Author: Frank Niessink and Jerome Laheurte
Version: 0.70.0
Date: Mayaa 12, 2008
Download file size: 7.6Mb (Windows installer), 7.9Mb (Portable version), 1.1Mb (Source code zip file)
License: Freeware (GNU GPL)
Operating systems supported: Windows (2000, XP, Vista, others may be possible), Linux (.rpm, .deb, Gentoo Ebuild), Mac OS X, Unix may be possible given source code and appropriate libraries.
64 Bit version available: No, but this 32 bit program works in a 64 bit environment
Portable version available: Yes, available from http://portableapps.com/apps/office/task_coach_portable, however the portable version is often one or two releases behind.
Other languages supported: Yes
Additional software required: None for Windows, but Python source is available and you can run it from source if you have a Python interpreter and wxPython installed. For Linux you will need Python and wxPython windowing libraries.