Ding – Straightforward Time Tracking

Time tracking tools are incredibly important for freelancers and small teams. Unfortunately, many of the time tracking applications currently on the market come with so many bells and whistles that users can get confused about how they really work. Ding is a dead simple time tracking application that works on every device.

Ding understands who its users are, and its features have been designed specifically for solo entrepreneurs and very small teams. Create your first project in Ding by entering the client name, project name, budget (hours), and the hourly rate. Ding gives you the option to log your time manually or by using the provided timer. Ding’s timer can be started, paused, and stopped whenever you’re done working for the time being. The time that’s accumulated will be added directly to the associated project. When your work on the project is complete, click on the project name to view a summary of the time you spent, along with the total money you earned. A color-coded bar demonstrates when you’ve gone over the budgeted hours for a particular job.

After you’ve invoiced the client, return to Ding and mark the project as “billed.” Ding provides you with a handy dashboard page that shows exactly how much money you’ve earned and how much time you’ve logged over the past day, week, month, year, or all time. Although Ding doesn’t offer an invoicing module, its founders recommend that users try invoiceto.me for that purpose.

Practical Uses:

• Use the timer to track how many hours you’ve spent working on a project
• Pause the automatic timer if you take a break for lunch
• Ensure you don’t go over the budgeted hours on a client project
• Quickly check how much income you’ve generated in the past day or week

Insider Tips:

• Red and green colors are used to show when a user has exceeded budgeted hours
• Ding encourages users to try invoiceto.me for invoicing
• Users can export their data to .csv or .pdf
• Ding offers a mobile application for iPhone users

What we liked:

• Users can rely on the comments section to break projects into tasks
• Ding doesn’t offer more tools than freelancers actually need
• Users can choose to time their projects or manually enter the time they spent
• Ding offers a free trial for new users

What we didn’t like:

• Ding doesn’t fully integrate with any invoicing applications

Alternatives:

• RescueTime – https://www.rescuetime.com
• WakaTime – https://www.wakati.me

Company Info:

• Launched: 2013
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Oslo, Norway
• Founded by: Gjermund Gustavsen and Anders Svendal ?
• Web site: https://ding.io

Costs:

• Free trial
• Solo plan is $10 per month
• Team plan is $25 per month