Kimai cost advantages for agency time tracking

Kimai provides agencies with a way to avoid the rising costs of per-user subscriptions. While Clockify allows unlimited users in its free version, it requires a paid subscription for invoicing or GPS tracking. Clockify was founded in 2017 by Nenad Milanovic because existing tools were too expensive. Its parent company, CAKE.com, employs more than 470 people and serves large clients such as Hewlett Packard and American Express. Clockify has millions of users and provides unlimited users and unlimited projects in its free plan, a feature that many other time tracking apps do not provide. However, Clockify’s paid plans include GPS tracking and scheduling. Kimai provides a Professional SaaS tier at €3.99 per month or €47.88 per year per user. This tier includes expense tracking, task planning, and custom fields. The Standard tier costs €2.99 per month or €35.88 per year per user and provides billable and non-billable hour tracking, invoicing, and audit logs. For an agency with twenty employees, the difference between a per-user fee and a self-hosted solution creates a significant budget shift. Agencies using the self-hosted version pay nothing for licenses because Kimai uses the MIT license. This allows for unlimited users and projects without any recurring fees. Clockify attracts users with mobile apps, desktop apps, and browser extensions. It connects with over 80 tools including Trello, Asana, Jira, and Google Calendar. It uses a Pomodoro timer and inactivity detection to help teams work. If you manage a large team, will you find the server maintenance for a self-hosted Docker installation worth the savings?

Toggl Track focuses on ease of use with one-click timers and automatic reminders. It organizes time by client, project, or tag and pulls calendar events into time entries. This helps agencies keep records neat without manual data entry. Toggl provides detailed reports that help users see where their time goes. Toggl allows users to organize time by project, client, or tags and pull in detailed reports in a few clicks. Clockify users find the interface dated and the support sometimes slow or impersonal. Kimai provides more customization for data-heavy companies.

Kimai Professional includes single sign-on with SAML, custom domains with SSL, and access restriction via IP. The Professional tier, which is the most popular option, also includes an overtime account, public holiday tracking, vacation management, and sick leave tracking. The Standard plan includes industry-specific translations and audit logs. It also provides daily backups for download and custom fields for more detailed data. Agencies choose between the ease of a managed SaaS and the control of a self-hosted environment.

Agencies require precise data to ensure they do not lose billable money. Kimai generates reports in CSV, PDF, or HTML formats to show hours spent per customer, project, or action. Users can also view recorded activities on a yearly, monthly, daily, by customer, or by project basis. You should know that Kimai requires some technical knowledge to set up on a local workstation or via a virtual machine. It runs on a Symfony and Bootstrap stack and works on a lightweight server infrastructure. Kimai also manages a hierarchy of customers, projects, and activities. Kimai enables users to start a timer when they begin a task and stop it when they finish, which allows for the accurate tracking of billable hours for various agency clients. Users can also manually enter time if they forget to start the timer. This system uses a RESTful API and various modern web technologies like Webpack, ES6, and Doctrine to maintain a responsive interface. Kimai remains mobile-friendly and desktop-friendly due to its reactive web design and AdminLTE components. Users can install it as a web service or a single-user program on a local workstation.