Designers of the world, we hear you. You need to track all the time you spend on projects, and you want a beautifully intuitive tool to do it for you. It’s the very reason Timely exists – the first automatic time tracking tool to be created by a designer.
The time tracking app for designers
Timely was created as a direct response to founder Mathias Mikkelsen's experiences as a designer. Time tracking was the worst thing about his work and he felt an urgent need to design a solution to get rid of it.
Good design should inspire action. For Timely, that means getting back to what actually matters. Its clean interface and simple functionality are enough to make any creative swoon, but the real beauty lies in its robust design purpose as the world's first fully automatic design-led time tracking tool. You never have to manually track time ever again.
⏱ Records all design work automatically
Timely integrates with almost every professional design tool – Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Lightroom to name a few – so you can track all your design work. It also supports work management tools like Asana, Trello and Todoist, so time spent managing your design projects is also captured. The best bit? Timely works automatically, so it will track all your data for you without interrupting your day. Get stuck into your work knowing every second is accounted for.
Tracks retainers, performance and profitability
Timely gives you a real-time overview of how much time you’ve spent on a project, which is essential if you bill project work by the hour. It shows how much project budget remains, and breaks down exactly where that project's time went. Everything can be shared with clients in a single click using customized reports with personalised branding. By tracking all project costs in one place, designers can proactively update their clients, quickly adjust team effort to stay within budget, and understand which projects are actually profitable.
Shows how design projects go over budget
Are you spending most of your billable time designing and altering a project, or managing a mess of design files in task managers? Does your team spend too long exploring and refining concepts? Are you actually focusing the majority of a project budget on the crucial problem? By breaking down exactly what happened for a particular project, Timely shows designers what caused them to go over budget – improving project management and future estimations.
⚖️ Helps balance your design workflow
From research, first sketches, layouts and prototypes, to iterations and testing, Timely breaks down exactly how long you spend on each step of the design workflow. Designers can identify inefficiencies and rebalance their priorities to ensure everything is given its just deserves. By tracking time spent in client meetings, project management and marketing, designers can also see where administrative processes and communication needs to improve.
Boosts team productivity and collaboration
Timely helps you manage your team’s workload, allocate resources intelligently and avoid burnout. It shows you exactly who has too much work, who needs support, and who has capacity for a bit more. You can also identify the biggest drains on team time, like spending too long on small tasks or taking on too many minor projects. Oh, and did we mention it works automatically? No more wasting productive hours on tracking time manually.
Captures all billable hours
Designers rarely work in one place on one device, and frequent multitasking makes it hard to remember everything worked on. Timely completely solves this problem by tracking everything you work on across macOS, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Android. It tracks GPS location data to capture work on-the-go, and even logs billable time spent on the phone with call tracking. However chaotic and irregular your working day, every billable hour is captured and logged in one place.
Why designers love Timely
Thousands of freelance designers and design agencies use and love Timely – from graphic designers, illustrators, UX/UI designers and typographers right through to motion designers, web designers, architectural designers and game designers. But don’t just take our word for it:
“Keeps track of what I'm actually working on so I don't have to.” – Joanne
"Time tracking from the year 3000." – Katie
"I know exactly what capacity I have and I can plan future projects accordingly.” – Jani
“Researching improvements to my current tool (Toggl), I found Timely and immediately fell in love with the visual day/week reporting view and overall UI. Two days later, I decided to try Memory, expecting it to be a gimmick. The moment I logged my first entry with Memory, I realized the greatness of this tool. Not only does it take a load off my brain by remembering my day for me, it also gives me much better insight into how I spend my work days. Timely has upgraded my time reporting process to the next level in terms of speed, joy and value. It’s the best time reporting solution around.” – Erik
“Great interface, very easy to set up and use – not another time drain.” – Dominic
“Excellent for keeping real-time on jobs…invoicing clients or tracking project costs.” – Lyndsey
“Best time tracking app ever! It tracks what I do without me having to add anything manually.” – Sohan
There was an immediate payoff in trying it after a week, with a cumulative effect of feedback on time management over time as I set goals and budgets for myself. Timely has shown me broader value and better detail in howI spend my time. It allows a more widespread feedback loop for both the client and internal projects that I work on. I’ve actually already pitched you to an engineer friend! – Jonny
“The way the program works is just how I would design it.” – Kay
Timely is a cool and simple tool that saves us a lot of time tracking boring things. – Emiliano
"One of the best ways to manage your hours and bill your clients per project." – Jody
"A beautiful way to visualize the one thing you can never get back." – Camaal
“I needed something super slick, beautiful and easy to track my hours and produce reports. Timely just does it all, and does it very, very smoothly. The visual element of the time card thing is completely brilliant.” – Krister
"Nicest time tracking tool for freelancers and teams working on multiple projects concurrently." – Samo
"Potentially QOL-changing." – Rodger
"I've finally found an app that manages my time sheets in the easiest way possible. I no longer dread the process of preparing invoices at the end of the week." – Tracy
"The only really usable tool to monitor your productivity." – Alessio
“The only product I’ve found that allows me to work naturally.” – Samantha
"The app that does all the time keeping admin for you automatically without the need for a stop start button. If you have forgotten to track your hours, Timely hasn't." – Alexandra
