You’ve just completed your first project, and you’re feeling proud. The work was challenging but it was also rewarding. Now that you know what you need and what you don’t, it’s time to start tracking your project budget and managing your resources effectively. It can be difficult to keep track of all the details, but we’ll do our best to help.
Project Management Software With Budget Tracking
1 monday.com
Best for customization capabilities
monday.com is a project management software with time tracking features that has done away with a lot of the trimmings of typical management tools and focused on simple, visually intuitive layouts that help clarify the sequence of work.
monday.com features for managing projects include resource and project management, time tracking software, collaboration, and reporting features. For example, users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, and more. It also offers a great project reporting dashboard that can collect data from multiple boards, allowing better tracking abilities of progress.
And while monday.com doesn’t offer a complete set of tools for project accounting and invoicing solution as other tools, you can use monday.com to track every billable hour, employee productivity, and invoices. More than being a time tracking solution, you can also use it for your employee productivity needs. Easily assign owners to new tasks, prioritize each item, set due dates and know exactly how every work hour is spent on each project and task. You can also keep track of time on their mobile app.
monday.com’s integrations include business apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.
monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.
2 Resource Management by Smartsheet
Best for mobile time tracking
Resource Management by Smartsheet, a high-level project and resource management software, helps modern teams make confident decisions about project planning, team capacity, budget forecasting, team utilization, and hiring needs in real time.
Its built-in timesheets, mobile time tracking, and expense tracking features, enable you to create rich project reports by filtering project data with just a few clicks, making it the best time tracking solution for a workforce with diverse operational setups. Get a detailed report that can give insight into historical data or offer a forecasted view of team utilization, actual vs. planned time reports, budget tracking, expense reports, and projects in the pipeline.
Over 1,000 of the most innovative companies in the world rely on Resource Management by Smartsheet, from 10-person shops and 100-person teams within global brands to 1,000+ person professional services firms. Resource Management by Smartsheet has been recognized for its design excellence with awards from FastCo, SXSW, IxDA + IDSA.
Resource Management by Smartsheet easily integrates with a variety of internal workflows and software suites. Additionally, it provides a flexible API and Zapier integration that can connect with top operational tools for analytics, communications, PM, ERP, and finance.
With a unique project and resource matching feature, Resource Management by Smartsheet helps match team members to the project’s requirements according to different criteria like disciplines, skills, availability, and more.
30 days free trial
From $25/user/month
3 Buddy Punch
Best online time clock for GPS and image tracking
Buddy Punch is a web-based time clock software. Its interface is fully customizable. You will be able to integrate the Buddy Punch with most of the payroll management products. It will help you with managing the projects by recording the time for a specific project and job codes.
Buddy Punch has a functionality of automatically splitting of calculated time into categories like regular time, overtime, and double time. The tool can also provide the flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use employee management, Buddy Punch will let you set up a unique overtime rule on a per-employee basis. Additional features include automatic breaks, vacation tracking, GPS tracking, and other time and attendance solutions.
Buddy Punch integrates with QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Paylocity, PayPlus, SurePayroll, and Workday. A paid Zapier account can get you access to hundreds of other tool connections.
Buddy Punch costs from $25.99/month for basic time and attendance solutions (billed annually). They offer a 30-day free trial. You can contact the company directly for the requirement of more than 200 employees.
4 Timesheets
Best for managing employee time off
Timesheets.com is a fully-featured time tracking software tool, complete with hourly time clock, project time, mileage and expense tracking, time off / vacation, and stacks of powerful HR functionality to support managing your team. Timesheets.com is easy to use and they offer the option to brand the service with your logo.
Timesheets.com integrates fully with projects and tasks and they offer flexible entry options with tracking projects in real-time using timers feature, single project entries daily, or fill in their timesheet at the end of the week. Budgets are easily managed and reporting is simple with the ability to use live, up to the minute data to drill down to separate out specific employees, projects, and dates.
Timesheets.com has some pretty powerful HR tools if you’re looking for a more complete HR time tracking software solution that does more than just track time and expenses. The HR functionality includes powerful time off management with the ability to review accrued balances for vacation, and request approval for vacation time to manage and review the agency’s time off in a single view on a calendar. The HR functionality also includes a suite of standardized employee documentation including employee training manuals, performance reviews, staff communication, employee files, and notes.
Timesheets.com has a QuickBooks integration and the data can easily be exported for other accounting software.
Timesheets has a 15-day free trial for all users. Once activated, pricing starts at $4.50/user/month and $3.60/user/month for nonprofit organizations.
5 Toggl
Best free time tracking tool
If you’re looking for a simple and free time tracking software, Toggl is a great place to start. It’s beautifully designed and incredibly easy to use. If you’re looking for a solution to get started today and to simply track time against different projects and clients, then Toggl is great.
Toggl allows you to create projects, tasks and track hours using your browser, Chrome extension, mobile, or desktop apps. While it allows tracking of accruals, there’s no way to set budgets and track against them. If you want to track against an estimate or create an invoice, you’d need to use a 3rd party tool.
Toggl has some good functionality to support helping people do their time tracking properly with automated reminders to keep people on track, and you can create required fields for time entries, to ensure people always add comments or tags to their timesheet entries. You can also enable auditing tools where you can trigger alerts for suspicious-looking timesheet entries, like if someone claims to have worked 10 hrs straight on a single task!
Toggl has some good out the box, which make it one of the best free time tracking software options available with integrations for Jira, Asana, Basecamp, Freshbooks, GitHub, and Teamweek among many others. So even though it’s lacking in some of the budget tracking and invoicing functionalities, you can easily tie it in with other tools that specialize in reporting and invoicing.
Toggl is a free time tracking software tool although paid versions cost from $9/user/month.
6 Bill4time
Bill4time is the full package – a full-featured time tracking software tool with time tracking, expense tracking, billing & invoicing, invoice templates, and online payments supported by a client portal, it’s more than just time tracking but billing software too.
Bill4time has created some well-designed and good looking tools with mobile and desktop apps to enable some pretty flexible and powerful time tracking; you can simultaneously run timers, record multiple time entries in one screen and automatically convert appointments into time entries. All of this makes time tracking easy.
What’s really unique about Bill4time is really the powerful back-end management functionality that allows you to keep better track of users, projects, clients, and accounting. Using the rich data and dashboards you can easily track financial performance, identify trends, review payment history, productivity, and more so you can more easily optimize performance. Reporting is powerful and flexible so you can be sure to stay on top of the productivity and financial status of your clients and projects.
Bill4time doesn’t have a large back-catalog of integrations but they do have the essentials; Quickbooks, PayPal, and Stripe, so if you’re using those systems, you’re in luck.
Bill4time offers a free 14-day trial and costs from $29/user/month.
7 Timecamp
Best for integration options
TimeCamp is a great free time tracking software tool (with freemium upgrades) that includes manual and automatic timesheets, a time diary, and automatic task detection capabilities. It’s well designed and easy to use with a clean and fresh design.
TimeCamp is based around projects and tasks, and you can set budgets for either so that you can easily track accumulated hours against projects and tasks. Vacation tracking and accrual tracking are supported with attendance and absence analysis so you can track who is in and who is out at any given time, see when they start and finish work and track their holidays.
Timecamp integrates well with invoicing and is able to automatically (or not) produce invoices based on billable hours with worked generated in TimeCamp. There is an integrated payment gateway and helpfully you can get a notification when a client views an invoice.
A great feature within TimeCamp is their pretty unique time management tools which give some great insights on what are people are actually doing; the most time-consuming websites and applications they’re using, with productivity analysis and detailed history on how people spend their time by using automatic computer usage tracking – this also enables you to evaluate time spent on documents, even tracking offline activity and the ability to approve or reject timesheets.
TimeCamp has got stacks of powerful integrations which make it a very flexible time tracking software tool. Integrations include project management favorites including, Jira, Wrike, Trello, Podio, Basecamp, and Asana – invoicing including Xero, Quickbooks, and Free Agent, as well as Insightly, Wunderlist, and Zapier.
TimeCamp is free time tracking software although paid versions cost from $6/user/month.
8 Harvest
Best for agencies
Harvest is a very popular agency time tracking software tool used by thousands of agencies as their time tracking software solution. Its functionality covers everything from timesheets, invoicing, expenses, project budgeting, budget tracking, and reporting.
Harvest is popular because it’s easy to use and it’s been very well designed with a beautiful and intuitive interface that works across desktop and mobile. Harvest covers time tracking with clients, projects, and task tracking which power some powerful reporting so you can easily analyze your data including billable and non-billable time for specific staff, tasks, clients, and projects.
Helpfully, for complete budget tracking solution, Harvest supports expense tracking, invoicing, and timesheet approval; it’s a fully baked product covering the essential time tracking software tool functionality and stacks more. Harvest also has a sister product, Harvest Forecast, which has resourcing management features so you can schedule a team on projects, know who’s working on what and when and then easily compare estimates vs actuals and know exactly when a project hit its budget.
Harvest really excels at its integrations, offering more than 70+ integrations across project management with Jira, Asana, and Basecamp, accounting with Quickbooks, Xero, and Stripe as well as many others across issue tracking, CRM, productivity, communication, contracts and proposals, developer tools, and analytics and reporting. If you’re using industry-standard tools, you’re very likely to be able to plug in the Harvest add-ons to track time across your project workflow.
Harvest offers a 30-day trial and is a free time tracking software tool, although paid versions cost from $12/user/month.
9 ClickUp
Native time tracking feature built into all plans, free included.
ClickUp knows that time tracking is crucial for any business. This is why their native time tracking is available in all of their plans, including the free one! Tracking can be done within a specific task, or from any screen using the command center.
You can access the command center by going to the left menu and clicking on the lightning icon next to the search bar. Once you are ready to see time tracking reports though, you will have to upgrade your plan as the time sheet dashboards are part of the business and unlimited plans.
Note: you can still see time tracked in each task by looking at the activity log.
ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
ClickUp is free with limited storage for an unlimited number of users. Paid plans start at $5/user/month and offer a free-trial.
Best Project Management Software
1 ClickUp
Best for unlimited users/seats
ClickUp is a project management software tool with powerful features for managing and completing all your team’s projects in one platform. Users can plan projects, schedule tasks, and manage resources in a centralized workspace, as well as communicate and collaborate with team members and guests.
Task management features include task checklists, subtasks, and task templates, as well as the ability to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team. Users can also create Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks.
ClickUp also includes features for creating, sharing, and collaborative editing for Wikis and documents. Users can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members for increased communication and collaboration. Reporting features include the ability to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.
ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.
ClickUp’s free plan is robust and includes all primary features. The unlimited plan starts at $5/user/month and offers additional functionality.
Free forever with paid plans starting at $5/user/month
PROS
- Free forever plan allows unlimited members
- Unlimited file storage on all paid account tiers
- Can email (set-up) a task directly from Outlook
CONS
- Read-only guest permissions are limited to paid account
- Reporting suite is limited to paid plans only
- Granular customization options results in a time consuming set-up
2 Smartsheet
Best for flexibility & customizability
Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-like project management tool. It has won a few awards for quickly becoming a favorite business app. It’s a nice project management software if you’re comfortable working in Excel but wants a break from complicated formulas—Smartsheet performs all the calculations for you across multiple sheets. You can also add customized brand logos and set color themes for individual projects.
Smartsheet has useful project management features such as workflow automation and visualization of tasks in Gantt, calendar and card views. Team members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminders, and status reports to keep everyone aligned and informed. The Critical Path feature highlights all the tasks which directly impact your project completion date to keep an eye on important milestones. Reporting is a strong feature of this tool, with editable summary reports that you can easily export to Excel.
Smartsheet integrations include Microsoft and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.
Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
30 days free trial
From $7/user/month
PROS
- Sheet-to-sheet linking
- Many project templates & resources
- Ease of sharing
- Easily customizable dashboards
CONS
- Jira, Salesforce, Dynamics connector limited to Premier plan
- Changes don’t update in real-time
- Can’t customize chart colors
3 Kintone
Best for building custom project workflows
Kintone is a customizable project tracking software platform used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Shiseido, and over 23,000 organizations worldwide. Their unique approach to project and task management lets you build a wide variety of customizable “apps” either from scratch, using templates or from your existing spreadsheets, for data management, business processes, and workflows. Kintone apps can be customized for project management, sales CRM, customer databases, expense reports, shared to-do lists, equipment management, product feedback, and much more.
Kintone lets you build no-code project tracking apps by dragging and dropping elements that you want to see onto the page: rich text fields, date fields, drop-down menus, number fields with built-in calculations, spaces for attachments, user or group selection menus, related data from other apps, tables, and more.
Once you’ve built the app you want, you can use it to more easily manage whatever data and tasks you and your team need to track. And with custom notifications and reminders as well as detailed permissions settings, your project tracking solution can look and work however you want it to.
What makes Kintone particularly great for project tracking are the features to filter and prioritize tasks by data field or team member to generate custom reports or dashboard views, as well as the ability to automate reminders and handoffs between team members for multi-step workflows.
Kintone’s built-in communication features also allow teams to discuss projects directly in the app and in topic or project-based threads. Dedicated “spaces” organize everything your team needs for your project, including task-tracking apps and searchable conversation threads.
There are so many ways to customize Kintone it can be hard to know where to start. Read the starter blog “What Can You Build with Kintone?” or watch Creating an App from Scratch for a quick look at how the drag-and-drop builder works.
Kintone lets you expand its capabilities with both free native plugins built by the Kintone team as well as integrations with other tools like Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eventbrite, WordPress, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and many more through a paid plan with Zapier or via API integrations.
Kintone costs $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and discounted prices for nonprofits and educators. Kintone’s team also offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.
30 days free trial
From $24/user/month
PROS
- Flexible pricing that includes special deals for schools and NPOs
- Admin accounts have access to tons of customization tools
- Data is easy to pull and manipulate into good looking reports
CONS
- No single-user plan available (minimum 5 users)
- Limited to 5GB/user storage on every pricing tier
- No native templates for common project types or documents
4 Forecast.app
Best AI-native project planning tool
Forecast is an all-in-one platform for resource and project management, used in 40+ countries worldwide, by agency, software, and consulting companies. It’s equipped with tools to manage everything from quote to invoice, plus it offers intelligent automation to predict project delivery dates, forecast capacity needs, and become more efficient. Their AI uses cumulative learnings from hundreds of thousands of projects and creates rules based on that user data.
Let’s talk about features. The Auto-Schedule feature is great for project scheduling, providing estimates, automatically assigning resources to tasks. It’s got a drag-and-drop module that lets you adjust plans and resources in an instant. Another cool feature is that the tool automatically builds a budget for every project with key financial metrics to track planned vs. actuals. It also supports various billing types (fixed price, time & materials) side-by-side and in real-time. It has advanced up-to-the-minute reports you can customize.
Forecast also introduced a one-of-its-kind feature to manage projects in a retainer setup. A dashboard with retainer periods and totals lets you track the financials of ongoing projects without losing sight of staff workloads and time spent on delivery.
Forecast integrations include several turnkey integrations with mainstream project management tools and two-way sync with Jira on the market. It also complements accounting systems like Quickbooks and Xero with PM capabilities.
Forecast costs from $31.76/user/month (€27/user/month) with a 10-seat minimum requirement. They offer a 14-day free trial.
14 days free trial
From $31.76/user/month
PROS
- Predictive tasks for spreadsheets
- Can manage resources across multiple projects
- Easy to plan projects and timelines
CONS
- Milestone data is lumped together rather than separated
- Additional fee for onboarding/training
- Higher learning curve
5 GanttPro
Best project management tool for planning and scheduling projects with an online Gantt chart
GanttPRO is a project management software based on Gantt charts and useful for managing all kinds of projects and teams from different spheres. It stands out for its intuitive interface and powerful features.
The software includes features for breaking down projects in an efficient manner into subtasks, sibling tasks, and subprojects, as well as set dependencies and milestones. To get more visibility, users can choose between the Gantt chart, Board views, and task dashboards. GanttPRO also offers handy task management features such as statuses, priorities, duration & estimation, progress, dates and deadlines, assignees, and more.
The Gantt chart maker allows teams to collaborate in real-time using comments, mentions, and attachments. Resource management and workload features for monitoring team members workload and tasks are also included.
You can integrate your projects with Jira, Google Drive, Slack, and other applications. GanttPRO is widely used in software development, construction, healthcare, finances, events, education, and many other spheres.
Basic plans for 1 user start at $7.99/month if billed annually.
14 days free trial
From $7.99/user/month
PROS
- Intuitive interface with a short learning curve
- Multiple and flexible project views
- Professional Gantt chart templates
CONS
- Light on integrations
- Lack of options to create recurring tasks
6 Zoho Projects
Best for unique team collaboration features
Zoho Projects is a project management application that can handle projects of all sizes and levels of complexity. The tool comes with features that imitate social networking sites such as feeds, forums, and discussions and is available on mobile for iOS, Android, and other systems.
For project planning and monitoring, Zoho Projects’ Gantt chart features let you break large projects down into manageable sections and actionable tasks, plan and visualize different tasks and milestones, and create tasks lists to help you plan in better detail. Zoho Projects’ Gantt charts can also be used for resource allocation, so you can visualize your project schedule and the team’s workload. The resource usage table tells you who is available, who is busy, and who is overloaded.
With Zoho Projects, you can define dependencies between tasks and assign them to the right people, schedule events in your calendar, and monitor the percentage of work that’s been completed once the work has begun. Automate routine tasks at regular intervals by setting up a recurring task, and set reminder emails for tasks.
You can also create or download project documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, as well as upload and share files for team collaboration. Record the hours spent on tasks and compare them with what you had originally planned. This can be done manually or with the help of an integrated timer. Entries are automatically recorded in your timesheet, and generating invoices from this information requires only a few clicks.
Being part of the Zoho ecosystem allows you to connect to several of Zoho’s other services such as Zoho Books and Zoho’s finance suite. The new Zoho marketplace allows 3rd party integrations as well, like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. Integrations via Zapier and Zoho Flow are also supported.
Zoho Projects costs from $5/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial. Zoho Projects also offers a free plan for up to 3 users and 2 projects.
10 days free trial
From $5/user/month and offers a 10-day free trial
PROS
- Unlimited number of projects
- Easy workflow automations
- Robust communication features
- Time-track multiple tasks at once
CONS
- Does not integrate with Quickbooks
- Lacks some reporting features
- Lack of file type export options
7 monday.com
Best for building custom workflows across teams
monday.com is an award-winning project management software used across diverse industries by companies like Hulu, BBC Studios, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal Paris, Adobe, and Deezer.
monday.com features for managing projects include resource and project management, time tracking, collaboration, and reporting features. For example, users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, and more. It also offers a great project reporting dashboard that can collect data from multiple boards, allowing better tracking abilities of progress. And while monday.com doesn’t offer a complete set of tools for project accounting and invoicing solution as other tools, you can use monday.com to track hours, timelines, and invoices.
Overall, it’s a highly customizable tool that lets you work in whatever methodology—Kanban or otherwise—that fits your project and team. You’ll also find some useful workflow tools for automating parts of your process. Read our in-depth monday.com review for a complete overview of the tool, as well as a short video tutorial of basic features.
monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.
monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.
14 days free trial
From $6/user/mont
PROS
- Huge focus on collaboration
- Long list of supported integrations
- Easy to customize a workflow or board
- Helpful visual/color coding customization
CONS
- Complex pricing rubric
- Gantt charts locked to mid-level plan
- May be too robust for small teams
8 Asana
Best online task management software for complex projects
Asana is a task management solution with automation tools, a rule builder, and other workplace management items. Asana’s Timeline lets users create a plan that shows how the pieces of a project fit together and help keep work on track as things change.
Asana has a colorful, rich, and inviting user interface with everything from compartmentalized productivity items to playful cartoon animations that “zoom” across the screen to celebrate finishing a task. This scored them very well in the UX category of the evaluation criteria.
Integrations include Jira Cloud, Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, Tableau, Slack, Microsoft Office 365, Gmail, CSV Importer, JotForm, EverHour, OneDrive, Zoho Cliq, Box, Mailbird, Instabug, DRopbox, Gitlab, Trello, VElocity, Tick, and many more per their website. Additionally, users can connect Asana to Zapier, Automate.io, and others to integrate with hundreds of more available apps.
One minor gripe is that having an active, real-time chat function would benefit this app in particular. Asana bills itself as more of a holistic solution to the project and task management but communication is limited to cumbersome comment sections.
Asana starts at $10.99/user/month and has a freemium version of the software.
30 days free trial
From $10.99/user/month
Used by Amazon and Netflix, TeamGantt is a project management tool with a freemium version for smaller groups and teams who don’t yet need an upgrade to a paid plan. Obviously, TeamGantt specializes in Gantt charts and other task planning but they also track workloads and team availability, collaboration features like chat and tagging, and customizable alerts.
Project managers should be aware that TeamGantt works best for simple projects but the software struggles to handle more complex projects across multiple teams. For example, it is not easy to gauge project status at a quick glance.
TeamGantt scores well in the Usability segment of the evaluation criteria, as it is incredibly flexible to use. The tool is accommodating to however you may want to set up and track your projects, no matter their structure or constraints. Additionally, providing an easy “read-only” URL makes it great for sharing with outside parties for input.
TeamGantt costs from $24.95/month and has a freemium version of the software for up to 3 users.
14 days free trial
From $24.95/month
PROS
- Flexible setup/tracking for projects
- Share charts without recipient logging in
- Easy drag-and-drop task duration
- Really easy to learn
CONS
- Dependency functionality can get complicated
- Doesn’t have in-app notifications
- Views lag behind changes
10 Workzone
Workzone is a great project management software for marketing, agency and operations teams of 5+ users. It’s powerful but it’s still easy to use and adopt. Organizations small and large run their projects and keep their teams in sync—it’s been used and developed for 20 years, so the company has built some really useful features to answer real-world problems.
Some of Workzone’s standout features include a useful all-projects dashboard, personalized to-do lists, and an interactive Gantt chart. Workzone also offers secure file management and creative review tools, customizable project intake forms, workload management, time and expense tracking, and powerful reporting. Flexible permissioning allows for giving different levels of access to different users, providing extra layers of security and control.
For new teams who aren’t used to working with a project management software, Workzone is a smart choice because they assist in implementing the software—their team helps your team build the foundation, processes, and discipline you need to get the most out of the software and use it to manage projects successfully. Their level of support is hard to find—they offer needs assessment, success planning, setup and customization, training, and ongoing coaching.
The tool integrates with standard industry software including various communication, IT, file sharing, time tracking, accounting, marketing, and CRM software. You can extend Workzone’s functionality through their extensive APIdeveloper API and Zapier.
Workzone pricing starts at $40/user/month for up to 5 users. Price per user lessens with the number of users…for instance, for 15 users the price per person starts at $24/user/month.
Free demo
From $24/user/month
PROS
- Allows creation of templates from existing projects
- Easy to customize tasks using flexible notes system
- Email reminders to keep things flowing
CONS
- Completed projects aren’t automatically archived.
- Delayed tasks negatively affect independent tasks on the timeline.
- Better file access permissions are welcomed.
Best Project Cost Management Software
Most businesses will want some kind of cost estimation tool. Different software can estimate costs in a variety of ways, so you can find a method that works for you (like using data from prior projects to create a cost estimate).
You’ll also want a budgeting tool that lets you track the actual cost of a project. Some software, for example, lets you set alerts when you get close to a project budget. Others send you regular updates on your budget and expenses.
Some businesses will need reporting and analysis tools. Reporting can help you see exactly where your budget is going and why―giving you the data you need to fix problems.
And in many cases, productivity monitoring and time tracking will come in handy. These will help you make sure your team stays focused on their projects, so you’re not paying for wasted time.
Depending on your preferences, you may also want to look for the following features:
- Integrations with other software
- Project management tools (like Kanban or Gantt boards)
- Invoicing/billing
- Team scheduling
Hubstaff: Best overall
Hubstaff is a heavy-hitting cost management tool that really packs a punch. It not only offers a plethora of project cost management solutions but also provides managers with a complete profile of employees’ online activity.
For example, Hubstaff lets you set budget limits based on time or cost. If a project’s budget is nearly at its limit, you’ll be notified so you can make adjustments. And to make sure the project stays on track, you can set weekly limits to prevent your team members from driving up project costs.
And since your employees can make a big difference in your budget, Hubstaff’s data will give you a glimpse of how your most productive employees spend their time. That way, you’ll know you (and your clients) are never paying someone to browse Reddit.
That’s just the tip of the Hubstaff iceberg though. Aside from its powerful cost-management and productivity tools, Hubstaff also offers payroll, invoicing, and scheduling features. As the cherry on top, Hubstaff has great customer reviews and competitive pricing.
So for most businesses in need of a cost management solution, Hubstaff provides the best option.
DeskTime: Most affordable
The whole point of project cost management software is to save money, and DeskTime understands that better than most companies.
If you go with its cheapest plan, you’ll get time tracking (for workers and projects) as well as productivity tracking. For some businesses, that’s all the cost management tools necessary. But if you want more (like invoicing and scheduling), you can choose one of DeskTime’s higher-tier―but still competitively priced―plans.
No matter what DeskTime plan you choose, you’ll get solid cost management features at an unbeatable price.
TimeCamp: Best customer support
Do you usually have a bunch of questions about software? Do you want to know that you’ll always be able to get answers quickly? Then you’ll like TimeCamp.
See, TimeCamp has all the tools you need to manage costs. You can use historic data to predict futures costs, track time, monitor productivity, create invoices, and more. (Some features, like invoicing, require TimeCamp’s more expensive plan.)
But just as important, TimeCamp has out-of-this-world customer support. If you want to talk to someone, it has a 24/7 customer chat line. If you’d prefer to find the answer yourself, TimeCamp has a vast knowledge base that includes tons of articles and videos about how to set up and use TimeCamp. And if you want hands-on help, TimeCamp even offers training for just you or for your whole team.
In other words, TimeCamp makes it easy to get all the help you need―meaning it’s easier to successfully manage your project costs.
Harvest: Best third-party integrations
If you own the sort of business that uses lots of different software and wants it all to play nicely together, then you’ll like Harvest and its hundreds of integrations.
Like all the other project cost management software on this list, Harvest offers time tracking, reporting, invoicing, and more. It also (like Hubstaff) lets you set budget alerts so you can keep costs where you should be. As we said, though, Harvest really excels when it comes to integrations.
Right now, Harvest offers more than 100 integrations with other software. That means that Harvest almost certainly works with whatever accounting, project management, or communications software you use. And on the off chance that Harvest doesn’t have an existing integration for something, it gives you the option to create integrations with either a simple widget or its API (if you’re tech-savvy).
That makes Harvest the best cost management software for integrating with other types of software.
actiTIME: Most customizable
Like having things just so? With actiTIME, you can customize your project cost management software however you like it.
From the moment you start using actiTIME, you can choose how you’ll use it. If you want a painless subscription, you can choose to use actiTIME Online. If you’d rather have more control and a one-time purchase, you can use actiTIME Self-Hosted on your own server. But that’s just the beginning of your choices.
Plus, actiTIME lets you customize different fields in the software to match your business’s vocab (so you can change “Customer” to “Client”). It also lets you define a standard schedule (for easier overtime calculations) and create custom statuses for your projects. Plus, actiTIME lets you turn off features you don’t plan on using, so you won’t have to see scheduling features if you just care about time tracking.
It all adds up to make actiTIME a very flexible and customizable project cost management software.
Easy Projects: Most user-friendly
Easy Projects is a solid project cost management tool for organizations that crave a user-friendly interface. While it’s not the fastest software system, Easy Projects does offer the core tools for project cost management—what it lacks in speed, it makes up for in its well-rounded features and easy navigation.
Some key Easy Projects features include interactive Gantt charts, resource management, visual reporting, task scheduling, app integration, and more. And you can gain unparalleled visibility on project progress by seeing the completion percentage of tasks.
Avaza: Best for tracking spending
Lots of project cost management solutions let you track billable hours, but Avaza also lets you track other project expenses. Team members have to travel for a project? They can forward the receipt to Avaza to get the cost tracked and reimbursed. Had a working lunch to finish up your project? Just upload a receipt to Avaza to record the spending.
As an added bonus, Avaza’s expense tracking works with its invoicing features, so you can easily add expenses to invoices. Plus, Avaza offers reporting features that break down your expenses by employee, merchant, or type of expense. So if you’re trying to manage costs outside of billable hours, Avaza offers an easy way to do so.
aPriori: Best for manufacturing
Software from aPriori provides enterprise-level cost management solutions for businesses in the manufacturing industry. It performs real-time cost analysis throughout the product life cycle, from the design stage all the way through production.
With aPriori, you can monitor costs starting from the design phase. You can also easily compare a product’s calculated cost to its target cost by the week or month, making it easier to understand your company’s profitability. Choose aPriori if you work in the industrial machinery, aerospace, tech, or automotive industries.
Toggl: Best time tracking
Toggl is a simple yet powerful time tracking tool that provides real-time insights on project and employee profitability. Toggl offers the full spectrum of time-tracking features, including easy time entry deletion, time-tracking reminders, idle detection, and an offline mode so you can easily track time wherever you are.
And unlike many other time tracking software out there, Toggl also lets you choose your preferred unit of time. So whether you bill in six-minute increments or you want the precision of seconds, Toggl lets you track time in the way that works for your business.
mpower by monitor: Best for engineers
As Monitor’s flagship product, mpower is a scalable cost and project management software designed for engineering, construction, and maintenance and operations industries. The software covers everything from budgeting and planning to time writing and billing.
Not to be confused with the student loan program of the same name, mpower’s project cost control software easily tracks labor, equipment, and materials (LEM) data. It’s targeted at members of the operations, construction, and engineering industries, so if you need cost management software that speaks your language, mpower is it.
Conclusion
Managing your resources effectively is important for any business. By estimating the cost of your project and managing your resources wisely, you can create a successful project. Use the right resources efficiently and stay organized in order to avoid potential disruptions to your schedule. Be prepared for volatility in the market and manage your resources accordingly. Thanks for reading!