Work billed by the hour has an unusual property in this subject: the thing being measured is the thing being sold. Hours are the contractual unit, so recording them is not a proxy for value, it is the invoice.
That makes this the clearest case in the workforce market, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not cover.
What a record settles
Whether the hours were worked, against which project, on which days, and whether the invoice is consistent with them. Those are the questions that produce disputes with contractors, and a record answers all four without anybody's judgement being involved.
It also protects the contractor, which is the half usually left out. An hour recorded is an hour that cannot be argued away later, and in a dispute the party with the weaker position is generally the one being paid rather than the one paying.
What it does not touch
Whether the work was good. Whether it was the right work. Whether it could have taken half as long. Whether this person is doing well.
The class answers a contractual question, and buying it to answer a performance question is the mistake it makes possible. The temptation is strong, because the data is right there and it has numbers on it.
The capture question is separable
Recording hours does not require screenshots, keystrokes or window titles. Those are separate features, frequently enabled by default, and they belong to the class above this one.
The test is what the dispute needs. An invoice disagreement is settled by time against project. If somebody is arguing that no work occurred at all, that is a different and rarer accusation, and it is worth being explicit about whether the deployment is designed for the common case or the rare one.
Salaried staff are a different question wearing the same clothes
Everything above holds because hours are the contractual unit. Applied to salaried employees, the same tooling measures something the organisation is not buying, and the article on activity explains what happens next.
The distinction is worth defending inside a company, because the purchase usually starts with contractors, where it is coherent, and then extends to everybody, where it is not. The extension is presented as consistency and is a change of purpose, which the retention article identifies as the main risk in this market.
If it is extended, the assessment starts again, and so does the notice.
Time and project recording, no capture
- Best forThe great majority of hourly arrangements
- PricingThe cheapest tier in this market, with real free plans for small numbers
- StandoutSettles the billing dispute completely with none of the intrusion
- Watch out forRelies on the record being entered honestly, which is the objection people raise
Time recording with activity levels
- Best forArrangements where the honesty of the clock has actually been in question
- PricingSlightly above the base tier
- StandoutAdds evidence that the clock was running while somebody was present
- Watch out forActivity is not work, and the article on that is the whole reason to be careful
Proof-of-work with periodic screenshots
- Best forAgencies and platforms where the client demands visual evidence
- PricingMid tier, and generally the client is the one insisting
- StandoutProduces the artefact some clients contractually require
- Watch out forIt samples the working day at roughly one part in sixty and captures whatever was on screen
The contractor's own invoice and a conversation
- Best forSmall, established relationships with a working level of trust
- PricingFree
- StandoutNo tool, no data, no obligations, and it works for most of the arrangements it is used in
- Watch out forNothing to point at when it does go wrong, which is when people wish they had a record
Who chose the tool matters to the relationship
A contractor asked to install monitoring by a client is being asked to accept a condition of the engagement. Where the tool is heavy, that condition has a price, and experienced contractors either charge it or decline.
Agreeing the arrangement before the engagement, rather than presenting it after, is the difference between a term and an imposition. It also avoids the situation where the record cannot be used because its collection was never properly agreed, which the article on notice describes.
Retention has an obvious answer here
The dispute window for an invoice is finite and usually short. Raw capture beyond the point at which a payment becomes final has no purpose and carries the risks in the retention article. This is one of the few places where the retention period follows directly from the business question, and it should be set to it rather than to the vendor's default.
What we cannot verify
Contractual and employment characterisations differ by jurisdiction and by relationship, and nothing here is advice; whether somebody is a contractor at all is a legal question with consequences. Pricing tiers change and we reproduce none. No product is named or ranked.
The short version
- In hourly work the thing measured is the thing sold, so the record is the invoice.
- A record protects the person being paid at least as much as the payer.
- It settles four contractual questions and touches no question about quality.
- Recording hours does not require screenshots; those are a different class.
- Agree the arrangement before the engagement, or it is an imposition.
- Retention here follows the dispute window, which is short and knowable.