Best Time Tracking Software for Marketing Agencies: 12 Tools Ranked for 2026

Marketing agency margin lives inside a single metric: realization rate -- the percentage of logged hours that actually bill out. A 12-person marketing agency running a $22,000/month retainer at 160 hours of purchased scope but quietly burning 215 hours is losing 25% gross margin every month and usually does not find out until the quarterly finance review. The time tracker the agency chose in year one is what surfaces that gap in week two, or hides it until the P&L lands.

According to the Teamwork.com State of Agency Operations report, 52% of agencies struggle to hit billable utilization benchmarks above 50%, and only 36% strongly agree their shop runs like a well-oiled machine. Resource Guru's 2025 agency overworking study surveyed 2,000 desk workers and found 95% of agency staff work overtime, 88% work weekends, and more than a third are burned out -- 41% of them blaming high workloads and 46% blaming demanding clients. Both numbers point at the same root cause: marketing agencies cannot see who is overbooked, which retainer is over-serviced, and which client is unprofitable until the problem is already priced into next quarter's staffing.

This guide ranks 12 time tracking platforms by how well they serve marketing agency workflows specifically: billable vs. non-billable splits at the task level, retainer burn-down visibility for monthly engagements, utilization reporting per team member, rate-card math across campaign work, per-client profitability, automatic-timer vs. manual-timer ergonomics for creative work, and how cleanly the hours flow into PM tools and invoices. Every price was verified against the vendor's official pricing page on April 18, 2026.

Quick-Scan Comparison: Top Marketing Agency Time Trackers at a Glance

What a Marketing Agency Time Tracker Actually Needs to Do

A time tracker sold to freelancers or SaaS engineering teams solves a different problem than what marketing agencies need. A freelancer wants a timer and a PDF invoice export. An agency needs to know whether the 12-person team delivered this month's retainer inside the hours purchased, which clients are over-serviced, which team member is at 40% utilization while a colleague is at 115%, and whether the paid media account manager is running over because the scope grew or because the client added three ad hoc asks last week.

Here is what to evaluate, specifically for marketing agency workflows:

• Billable vs. non-billable at the task level. Internal status meetings, new-biz pitches, agency marketing, and general admin need to be tracked (for utilization math) but not billed. A tracker that only toggles billable at the project level misses the non-billable story inside otherwise billable client work -- for example, the 20 minutes the strategist spends prepping a weekly Slack update that the retainer does not cover.
• Retainer burn-down by workstream. A $20,000/month retainer at 140 hours typically splits across paid media (40 hrs), content (40 hrs), SEO (30 hrs), and account management (30 hrs). The tracker should show live burn against each workstream, not just the combined number, so the PM can flag at 60% consumed that paid media is running hot.
• Utilization reporting per person per week. Utilization = billable hours divided by available hours. Marketing agencies model healthy at 65-75% for billable roles. The tracker should surface the outliers (a senior strategist at 115% next to a junior designer at 45%) without forcing the ops lead to build a pivot table from an export.
• Rate card modeling. Agencies run internal cost rates (what the role costs to deliver) and external bill rates (what the client pays) that are often role-based and differ by client contract. The tracker should support both, so profitability math is accurate at the person, project, and client levels.
• Per-client profitability. Hours x cost rate vs. invoiced revenue -- per client, per month, per quarter. Without this, agencies over-invest in loud clients and starve quiet profitable ones.
• Automatic timer vs. manual entry. Creative and paid media work does not happen in clean 25-minute blocks. Agencies need at minimum three entry modes: a live timer for focused work, manual entry for retroactive timesheet catch-up, and a weekly grid view for staff who hate tracking. AI-drafted timesheets (Timely, Memory) are a fourth option that solves the "I forgot what I worked on" problem.
• PM integration. If your project plan lives in Asana, ClickUp, Monday, or Jira, time entries should attach to the same task record rather than creating a parallel tracking universe. Duplicate entry is how agencies lose trust in their own data.
• Invoicing flow. Turning tracked billable hours into a retainer invoice, a time-and-materials invoice, or a progress-bill invoice without re-keying data is where agencies leak hours of billing admin each month.

1. Agiled: Best All-in-One Time Tracking for Marketing Agencies

Agiled is the only platform on this list that bundles time tracking with CRM, proposals, contracts with e-signature, recurring invoicing, project management, client portals, HRM, and workflow automation in a single workspace. For a marketing agency currently paying for a standalone time tracker plus a PM tool plus a CRM plus an invoicing app plus a contracts tool, Agiled consolidates the stack and ties every tracked hour directly to the retainer it was sold against.

Why it works for marketing agencies:

Agiled supports four time entry modes -- a browser timer, a desktop timer, manual entry, and weekly timesheets. That covers every flavor of agency work: focused deep work on a creative brief (live timer), retroactive admin catch-up on a Friday afternoon (weekly grid), a phone call logged after the fact (manual entry), and background capture during a long strategy session (desktop). Every entry is attached to a project, a task, and a client, so rollups into retainer burn, billable utilization, and project profitability happen without a nightly spreadsheet job.

Because Agiled also owns the invoicing and project management modules, a tracked hour on a billable task flows straight into a retainer invoice at month-end with zero export-import. Non-billable time (internal meetings, new-biz pitches, agency marketing) still gets captured for utilization but never touches a client invoice unless you tell it to. Retainer projects can carry a monthly hour budget; when burn hits 80%, a workflow automation can ping the account manager in Slack, generate a scope-change task, or trigger a client email.

Core capabilities for marketing agencies:

• Time tracking -- Browser timer, desktop timer, mobile app, manual entry, weekly timesheets tied to tasks, projects, and clients
• Billable/non-billable splits -- Toggle at task level, not just project level, so internal time inside otherwise billable client work is handled correctly
• Retainer tracking -- Monthly hour budgets per retainer, with burn-down visible per project and per workstream; automations fire at configurable burn thresholds
• Utilization reports -- Billable hours / available hours by person, team, and date range, filterable by role
• Project profitability -- Hours x internal cost rate vs. project revenue, visible per client and per project
• Rate cards -- Internal cost rates and client-specific bill rates at the role level
• Invoicing -- One-click invoice from tracked hours, recurring retainer invoicing, expense markups, multi-currency
• Client portal -- Clients see approved deliverables, invoices, and optionally shared time logs
• Workflow automation -- Retainer burn thresholds, overdue timesheets, paid-invoice triggers, scope-change notifications

Cost analysis for a 10-person marketing agency:

Agiled's free plan covers 2 billable clients and 2 active projects, enough to start. The Pro plan at $25/month (annual billing) unlocks unlimited contacts, unlimited projects, and HRM for 3 users. The Premium plan at $49/month adds automations, proposals, contracts, and e-signature for up to 7 users. The Unlimited plan scales to the full team without per-seat multiplication.

The stack a typical 10-person marketing agency replaces: Harvest ($9/seat x 10 = $90/mo), QuickBooks Essentials ($65/mo), PandaDoc ($35/user x 3 = $105/mo), HubSpot Sales Starter ($20/seat x 3 = $60/mo), and a client portal tool ($49/mo) -- roughly $369/month in separate subscriptions, before any of them talk to each other. Agiled at the Premium or Unlimited tier covers the same functional surface for $49-$99/mo and ties the hours directly to the invoice.

Best for: Marketing agencies (3-25 people) running retainer-heavy books who want a single system for tracking, billing, and client communication instead of a Zapier bridge between five tools.

Tradeoff: Agiled is horizontal, not marketing-vertical. If your agency needs tight integration with ad platforms (Meta, Google Ads, TikTok) for automated media-buying dashboards, you will still use a specialized analytics layer like AgencyAnalytics alongside. The operational and billing layer is where Agiled replaces cost.

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2. AgencyPro: Best Purpose-Built Agency Management With Utilization and Retainer Burn

AgencyPro is purpose-built for agencies -- not a generic PM or time tracker repackaged with a few custom fields and a landing page that says "for agencies." It centers on how marketing agencies actually run: client accounts, active campaigns, monthly retainers, and the people delivering the work. For small-to-mid marketing shops managing 10-50 client engagements, AgencyPro consolidates the operational layer most teams currently stitch together with a PM tool, a time tracker, and a spreadsheet for retainer burn.

Why it works for marketing agencies:

The team utilization view is the feature most ops leads miss immediately when they leave AgencyPro. Every team member's committed hours vs. available hours surface in one read, so Monday-morning capacity reallocation stops being a guessing game over who is "probably overbooked." For a marketing agency running 25 retainers across paid media, SEO, content, and creative, utilization at the role level (paid media strategist, senior copywriter, junior designer) is the difference between profitable and scrambling.

AgencyPro's retainer burn-down is live, not a month-end report. The PM or AM sees hours consumed vs. hours sold across every active retainer on a single dashboard. When a retainer hits 70% burn in week two, the account team knows there is a scope conversation to have with the client before the retainer runs dry in week three. The deliverables workflow (scope to assign to review to deliver) gives structure to the work that otherwise lives in Slack threads and Google Drive folders.

Core capabilities for marketing agencies:

• Billable-hour tracking -- Native time capture tied to clients, projects, and deliverables
• Team utilization -- Who is overbooked, who is under-booked, where capacity can be reallocated this week
• Retainer burn-down -- Hours consumed vs. purchased, live, per retainer and per workstream
• Deliverables workflow -- Scope, assign, review, deliver, with status and approvals tracked
• Client portal -- Clients see approvals, status, and invoices without email threads
• Rate cards and profitability -- Role-based cost and bill rates feeding client profitability reports

Pricing: Custom pricing at agencypro.app. AgencyPro is typically sold as an annual engagement with onboarding and setup included.

Best for: Mid-sized marketing, digital, and creative agencies (10-50 people) managing 10-50 retainer clients that have outgrown generic trackers and want a platform shaped around retainer delivery rather than freelancer time sheets.

Concrete use case: A 15-person digital marketing agency tracking 25 retainer clients (SEO, paid media, and content retainers from 20-80 hours/month). In AgencyPro, each client account rolls up active projects, hours burned against retainer, deliverables in-flight, and next QBR date. The ops lead opens the utilization view Monday morning, spots two senior strategists at 110% allocation and a junior designer at 60%, and reallocates two design deliverables before the week starts. At month-end, retainer burn reports generate automatically instead of getting pieced together from three tools.

Tradeoff: AgencyPro is deliberately agency-shaped, which means it is not the right fit for non-agency service businesses. Pricing is custom, so smallest shops (1-3 people) should evaluate Agiled's free tier before committing.

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3. Harvest: Best Clean Timesheet + Invoicing for Marketing Agencies

Harvest is the default time tracker for a large share of the independent marketing agency market, largely because it does three things cleanly: timers, project budgets, and invoicing. It does not try to be a PM tool, and that focus is its strength.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Browser, desktop (Mac), and iOS timers with offline capture
• Project budgets in hours or dollars with alerts at configurable thresholds
• Team capacity view for utilization planning
• Invoicing from tracked hours with Stripe, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Deel integrations
• Timesheet approvals and activity logs (Enterprise plan)
• Profitability reporting (Enterprise plan)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free plan for 1 user with 2 projects. Teams plan at $9/seat/month (monthly billing) or $108/seat/year annual (effective $9/seat/mo after 20% discount). Enterprise at $14/seat/month monthly or $168/seat/year annual. Additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on usage above plan limits on both paid tiers. All paid plans include a 30-day free trial; no credit card required.

Best for: Small to mid-sized marketing agencies (3-20 people) that want a tool team members will actually use, with project budgets as the primary retainer-burn mechanism. Harvest is especially strong when the agency has already standardized on a PM tool (Asana, Basecamp, Trello) and just needs time + invoicing layered in.

Tradeoff: Harvest is intentionally narrow. Utilization reporting is solid but does not rival Productive or AgencyPro for real-time resourcing. Retainer burn-down is handled via project budgets, which works but is not as ergonomic as tools built around monthly retainer cycles. Profitability and timesheet approvals live on the Enterprise tier, which pushes cost to $14/seat/mo.

4. Toggl Track: Best Low-Friction Tracker for Creative Teams

Toggl Track built its reputation on a timer that does not make you fill out five fields before starting. For marketing agencies where the creative team actively resists timesheets, Toggl's one-click start and minimal required metadata remove the resistance that sinks tracker adoption. Tracked data quality, not dashboard depth, is the agency-time-tracker win condition, and Toggl optimizes for it.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• One-click timer across browser, desktop, and mobile with 100+ integrations
• Autotracker (Desktop) -- captures app and site activity, suggests time entries
• Project dashboard with estimates, billable rates, and alerts
• Team reports covering utilization, revenue, and profitability
• Required fields and data entry rules for clean timesheets (Premium)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free plan for a limited number of users with core time tracking. Starter at $9/user/month with billable rates, team productivity and revenue reports, and real-time project progress. Premium at $18/user/month adds profitability analysis, customizable reports, and SSO. Enterprise custom.

Best for: Marketing agencies where the primary goal is getting creative and strategy staff to log hours consistently. Also a strong fit for agencies with a mix of freelancers and W-2 team members where the free tier covers the part-timers.

Tradeoff: Toggl does not include native invoicing -- you export to QuickBooks, Xero, or pass hours to a separate billing tool. Retainer burn-down is project-budget-based rather than retainer-native. For agencies whose ops lead lives inside a PM tool like Asana or ClickUp, Toggl sits alongside rather than unifying.

5. Everhour: Best for Agencies Running Delivery in Asana, ClickUp, or Trello

Everhour is designed to embed directly inside the PM tool your agency already uses. Start a timer on an Asana task, log hours on a ClickUp card, budget a Trello board -- the time lives inside the task record, not in a parallel Everhour app. For agencies whose campaign delivery already has a PM home, Everhour removes the cognitive tax of switching apps to track time.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Native browser extensions for Asana, ClickUp, Trello, Basecamp, Monday, Notion, GitHub, Jira
• Project budgets in hours or dollars with threshold alerts
• Billable rates at the client, project, task, and team-member levels
• Invoicing from tracked hours with QuickBooks and Xero sync
• Scheduling and time-off tracking on the paid plan
• SSO on the Team plan (every paid feature is included, not gated)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free plan for up to 5 seats. Team plan at $8.50/seat/month billed annually (15% discount vs. monthly), minimum 5 seats. Custom plan for 50+ seats with priority support and a dedicated manager. 14-day full-feature trial, no credit card required.

Best for: Marketing agencies that have standardized on Asana, ClickUp, or Trello for client delivery and do not want to migrate to a PM tool that happens to include time tracking. Also strong for agencies whose account managers live inside the PM tool daily.

Tradeoff: The 5-seat minimum on the Team plan puts a $42.50/month floor on solo-or-duo operators. Utilization reporting is serviceable but less deep than Productive or AgencyPro. Everhour is a great time-tracking layer, not a full agency ops platform.

6. Clockify: Best Budget Tracker With Unlimited Free Users

Clockify is the price-leader of the agency time-tracking category. The free plan supports unlimited users with real time tracking (not a gimped trial), which lets bootstrapped agencies onboard the entire team without a seat cost decision. The paid plans are priced roughly half what Toggl or Harvest charge at equivalent feature depth.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Unlimited free users with browser, desktop, and mobile timers
• Timesheets, kiosk mode (for shared workstations), auto-tracker, calendar view
• Billable rates, project budgets, approval workflows (paid)
• Invoicing and recurring invoices (Standard plan)
• Scheduling, forecasting, labor cost analysis, budgeting (Pro plan)
• Screenshots, GPS tracking, multiple currencies (Pro plan)
• SSO, SCIM, audit logging (Enterprise plan)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free plan with unlimited users. Basic at $3.99/user/month annual ($4.99 monthly). Standard at $5.49/user/month annual ($6.99 monthly), adding time-off, invoicing, approvals, and QuickBooks integration. Pro at $7.99/user/month annual ($9.99 monthly), adding scheduling, forecasting, labor cost, and budgeting. Enterprise at $11.99/user/month annual ($14.99 monthly), adding SSO and audit logging. CAKE.com Bundle at $12.99/user/month annual pairs Clockify with Plaky (PM) and Pumble (chat).

Best for: Budget-conscious marketing agencies (1-15 people) where the primary goal is getting consistent time data into the system without a $10+/seat/month commitment. Also strong for agencies with seasonal contractor capacity, since the free tier absorbs the variability.

Tradeoff: Clockify's UX has improved significantly but still feels dense compared to Harvest or Toggl. Agency-specific features (retainer views, utilization depth) live on Pro tier, where the pricing advantage narrows. Invoicing is functional but less polished than Harvest or Agiled.

7. Hubstaff: Best for Distributed Agencies Wanting Activity Monitoring

Hubstaff started as a remote-worker monitoring tool and has matured into a time tracker with integrated payroll. For distributed marketing agencies with contractors across multiple time zones, Hubstaff's activity levels, optional screenshots, and built-in payroll compress the contractor management stack.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Automatic time tracking with activity levels (keyboard and mouse activity as a percentage)
• Optional screenshots at configurable intervals (off, 1x, 2x, 3x per 10 minutes)
• GPS and location tracking for field marketing teams
• Payroll automation with PayPal, Wise, and Bitwage integrations
• Project budgeting, client invoicing, and online payments
• API, Zapier, and 30+ integrations with PM tools including Asana, Jira, ClickUp, and Trello

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free plan for 1 user with limited features. Starter at $4.99/user/month annual (1 user minimum) for timesheets and basic reporting. Grow at $7.50/user/month annual adds project budgets, idle timeout, and limited screenshots. Team at $10/user/month annual adds auto-discard of idle time, timesheet approvals, and 30-day data retention. Enterprise at $25/user/month annual adds unlimited screenshots, HIPAA compliance, and VIP support. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.

Best for: Distributed marketing agencies with a meaningful contractor component, especially offshore creative or development partners where payroll automation plus activity visibility solves a real pain. Also a fit for agencies with compliance requirements (HIPAA for healthcare clients) on the Enterprise tier.

Tradeoff: Screenshots and activity levels are controversial with employees and can damage culture if rolled out without conversation. For in-house W-2 marketing teams, the monitoring overhead is usually the wrong signal. Hubstaff is strongest when the agency is contractor-heavy and the monitoring is the point.

8. TimeCamp: Best Automatic Project Detection for Marketing Agencies

TimeCamp distinguishes itself with automatic time tracking that classifies activity into projects based on keywords, URLs, and app usage -- so time entries appear without the team remembering to start a timer. For marketing agencies where deep-work designers or copywriters forget to track, the automatic layer closes the gap.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Automatic time tracking with AI-based project classification
• Timesheets, attendance, and time-off on paid tiers
• Billable hours, project budgets, and invoicing
• Screenshots and app/website monitoring (Ultimate)
• 100+ integrations including Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Jira, Slack
• Custom fields and advanced reporting (Ultimate)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free forever plan with unlimited users, core timesheets, and AI time tracking. Starter at $3.99/user/month annual ($5.49 monthly) adds invoicing, attendance, overtime, and time-off. Premium at $6.99/user/month annual ($9.99 monthly) adds billable time, budgets, app/website monitoring, and one integration. Ultimate at $9.99/user/month annual ($13.99 monthly) adds unlimited integrations, data export, screenshots, and custom fields. Enterprise custom.

Best for: Marketing agencies where half the team loves tracking and half hates it. The automatic layer covers the hate-it half without a culture war. Also strong for agencies with multi-platform workflows across Figma, Notion, Google Workspace, and ad managers where manual entry misses context switches.

Tradeoff: Automatic tracking is never 100% -- the team still edits entries before the week closes. Utilization reporting is less polished than dedicated agency tools. Interface feels older than Harvest or Toggl.

9. Timely: Best AI-Drafted Timesheets for Creative Work

Timely records "Memory" data on the desktop (apps, documents, browser tabs, meetings) and uses AI to draft timesheet entries from the activity log. You still approve and tag the entries, but the blank timesheet problem goes away. For creative teams whose work does not map to clean 25-minute Pomodoro blocks, Timely's AI-first approach matches how the work actually happens.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Memory: private, on-device activity capture across apps, documents, and meetings
• AI timesheet drafts reviewed and tagged by the user before submission
• Project dashboards, budgets, and capacity planning (Premium)
• Reporting on productivity, billable rates, and profitability (Premium)
• Accounting integrations (QuickBooks, Xero) and PM integrations (Asana, Basecamp, Jira, Notion, Trello)
• Capacity management, overtime tracking, and priority success support (Unlimited)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Starter at $11/user/month monthly ($9/user annual) -- up to 5 users, 20 projects. Premium at $20/user/month monthly ($16 annual) -- up to 50 users, unlimited projects, accounting and PM integrations. Unlimited at $28/user/month monthly ($22 annual) -- unlimited users, capacity management, overtime, premium support. Enterprise custom. Tasks add-on at $5/user/month. 14-day free trial.

Best for: Creative and content-heavy marketing agencies where writers, designers, and strategists lose time to manual timesheet reconstruction. Agencies with a privacy-conscious posture appreciate that Memory data stays on-device until the user approves an entry.

Tradeoff: Timely is the priciest tool on this list at the Unlimited tier. Native invoicing is missing -- you push hours to a separate billing tool. Memory requires the desktop app running, which can feel heavy for occasional-contributor freelancers.

10. Float: Best Capacity-First Tool for Agencies That Plan Before They Track

Float inverts the traditional order -- you schedule capacity first, then track hours against what you planned. For agencies whose resource planning is the primary ops discipline (not the tracking itself), Float's scheduling view is the anchor and time tracking is a supporting feature that compares actuals to plan.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Visual schedule across teams, projects, and time off
• Capacity and utilization views with role-based filtering
• Project margin tracking (Pro plan) with cost rates and project values
• Time tracking actuals vs. scheduled (Pro plan) with variance reporting
• Guest viewers included at no charge
• Integrations with Asana, Jira, Teamwork, Slack, and Google Calendar

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Starter at $7/user/month (scheduled team members only; viewers free) -- scheduling, capacity management, and project margin. Pro at $12/user/month adds time tracking actuals, project estimates, and advanced reporting. Enterprise custom. 30-day free trial on the Pro plan, no credit card required.

Best for: Mid-sized marketing agencies (15-75 people) where resource planning -- who is working on what, when -- drives more decisions than the tracking itself. Also strong for agencies with a dedicated resource manager or ops lead who lives inside the scheduling view.

Tradeoff: Float is not a full time tracker on the Starter plan. No native invoicing on any tier. For small agencies that have not formalized resource planning, the scheduling paradigm is overhead rather than leverage.

11. Paymo: Best PM + Time + Invoicing Bundle for Small Agencies

Paymo bundles PM, time tracking, and invoicing into a single tool at a lower effective per-seat cost than buying each separately. For small marketing agencies (3-10 people) that want the agiled-style consolidation but on a smaller footprint, Paymo is a credible alternative.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Task boards with kanban, list, calendar, and Gantt views
• Time tracking with timer and manual entry tied to tasks
• Flat/retainer project types with budget tracking (Solo+)
• Invoicing from tracked hours with recurring invoicing and online payments
• Proofing and approvals on Plus+
• Client guest access and portals
• Employee scheduling and leave management (Pro)

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free for 1 user (1 client, 2 projects, 1 GB). Solo at $5.9/user/month introductory ($9.9 standard) -- 1 user, 3 clients, 5 projects, retainer projects, kanban, guest access. Plus at $10.9/user/month introductory ($15.9 standard) -- unlimited users, spreadsheet view, recurring tasks, timesheet reports, proofing. Pro at $16.9/user/month introductory ($23.9 standard) adds Gantt, dependencies, employee scheduling, leave management. All plans include a 14-day trial; annual subscriptions save up to 40%.

Best for: Small marketing and creative agencies (1-10 people) that want a PM + time + invoice bundle without Agiled's CRM, proposals, and contracts breadth. The Solo plan is attractive for freelancers transitioning to small-studio operations.

Tradeoff: Utilization reporting is lighter than Productive or AgencyPro. Pricing "introductory" rates step up to standard rates over time, which can be a surprise at renewal. Integrations are fewer than Harvest or Everhour.

12. Teamwork.com: Best for Agencies Already on Teamwork PM

Teamwork.com is a PM tool with agency DNA baked in -- billable/non-billable splits, project profitability, and client-at-the-center navigation have been first-class from the start. The built-in time tracker removes the need for a separate Harvest or Toggl subscription when Teamwork is already the agency's delivery system.

Key features for marketing agencies:

• Integrated time tracking with billable/non-billable splits at the task level
• Project budgets in hours, dollars, or retainer format
• Client-facing portals (Deliver+) and unlimited free client users
• Time tracking reports, profitability reports, and utilization (Accelerate+)
• Workload and capacity planning (Accelerate+)
• Invoicing integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe, and FreshBooks

Pricing (verified April 18, 2026): Free for up to 5 projects and 5 users. Basics at $9.99/user/month billed yearly for small teams needing project delivery and time tracking. Accelerate at $24.99/user/month billed yearly for growing teams needing automation and capacity management. Optimize and Enterprise at custom pricing for services businesses and complex organizations. All plans include a 30-day free trial.

Best for: Marketing agencies (15-75 people) that have already standardized on Teamwork for client delivery and want to collapse the time-tracking subscription into the same stack. Also strong for agencies where the AM-facing client portal is a hard requirement.

Tradeoff: Utilization and capacity planning live on the Accelerate tier ($24.99/user/mo), which is a significant step up from Basics. Agencies not already on Teamwork PM will find the learning curve steeper than adopting a dedicated tracker like Harvest or Toggl.

Original Research: Annual Cost for a 10-Person Marketing Agency Across 5 Stacks

We modeled what a 10-person marketing agency actually pays per year across five common time-tracking stacks, including the supplemental tools agencies bolt on when the tracker does not cover the full workflow. Assumptions: 10 seats, annual billing where available. Supplemental tool costs added where native features are missing: invoicing ($65/mo for QuickBooks Essentials = $780/year), client portal ($49/mo for ClientPortal = $588/year), proposals ($35/user/mo for PandaDoc, 3 seats = $1,260/year).

The delta is not small. A 10-person marketing agency on Agiled versus Timely plus supplemental tools saves roughly $3,360/year. Against a Toggl stack, savings are $2,520/year. Over a 3-year horizon, that is a mid-level freelance copywriter's annual retainer -- or a year of ad spend testing for a new offer.

Utilization and Realization: The Two Numbers That Matter

Regardless of which tool you pick, two numbers decide whether your tracker is doing its job:

Utilization = billable hours / available hours, per person, per week.

• Healthy for billable roles (strategists, designers, paid media leads, copywriters): 65-75%
• Unhealthy below 50% -- person is under-booked, agency has capacity to sell or a revenue problem
• Unhealthy above 85% -- person is over-booked, either margin is being destroyed by unbilled rework or burnout is imminent

Realization rate = billable hours invoiced / billable hours logged, per client, per month.

• Healthy: 90%+ -- the agency captures almost all of what it delivers
• Unhealthy: 75-85% -- scope creep is being absorbed silently, margin is leaking
• Crisis: below 75% -- either the scope was underpriced at sale or the delivery process is broken

Every tool on this list produces these numbers -- but the time from "think of the question" to "see the number" varies by 100x. In Agiled, AgencyPro, Productive, and Teamwork.com, it is a one-click report. In Clockify, Toggl, or Harvest, it is a filter configuration followed by an export to a spreadsheet. For an ops lead running the Monday numbers review, the difference is whether utilization review is a 3-minute habit or a 45-minute ordeal that gets skipped when calendars get tight.

Billable vs. Non-Billable: Where Marketing Agency Time Usually Leaks

Most marketing agency margin erosion happens inside non-billable time that is logged against billable projects. Examples:

• Unbilled revision rounds. The scope said 2 rounds, the client asked for 4, nobody updated the SOW. The extra 2 rounds get logged against the client but cannot be invoiced.
• Internal status meetings. The Monday account review, the Thursday creative sync. Often logged to the client project without a non-billable flag, which overstates realization.
• New-biz pitches. The pitch team logs time against the prospective-client project because there is no better bucket. Great for cost visibility, bad if it is not separated from invoiceable work.
• Agency marketing. The case study draft, the LinkedIn post, the conference panel prep. This is real work with real ROI; it just should not appear on a client invoice.

The tools that handle this well force a billable/non-billable flag at the task level, not just the project level. Agiled, AgencyPro, Harvest (Enterprise), Teamwork.com, and Productive all allow non-billable tasks inside billable projects. Clockify, TimeCamp, and Toggl require workarounds (separate internal projects, custom fields) that rely on team discipline and usually break down.

Choosing Between Automatic and Manual Tracking

Automatic trackers (Timely, TimeCamp, Hubstaff) capture activity in the background and either classify it automatically or draft entries for the user to review. Manual trackers (Harvest, Toggl, Clockify, Agiled's timer) require the user to start and stop the timer or enter hours retroactively.

The tradeoff for marketing agencies:

• Automatic wins for creative and strategy work. Writers and designers who context-switch across Figma, Google Docs, Slack, and browser research 30-50 times a day cannot reasonably reconstruct accurate timesheets manually. The automatic layer restores visibility.
• Manual wins for accountability cultures. Some agencies deliberately use manual tracking as an active habit -- the act of starting the timer reinforces the commitment to the task. Automatic tracking can become a "set it and forget it" data source the team ignores.
• Hybrid is usually best. Agiled, TimeCamp, and Teamwork.com support both -- an automatic layer for background capture plus a manual timer for focused work and a weekly grid for catch-up.

For marketing agencies with a mix of deep-work creative roles (designers, copywriters) and stop-start account management roles, the hybrid pattern almost always beats either extreme.

When a Marketing Agency Does Not Need a Dedicated Tracker

A dedicated time tracker is overhead when:

• The agency is 1-3 people with 2-3 retainer clients. A shared spreadsheet with a weekly 15-minute entry habit will work until the fourth client. Tracker ROI kicks in around client 5.
• Pricing is 100% fixed-fee with no time-and-materials exposure. If every engagement is a fixed $25K for a brand sprint, you do not need billable-hour precision. You need capacity planning, which is where Float or a lightweight Google Calendar will cover the need.
• The team will not use it. The worst tracker is the one your team ignores. If three attempts at tracker rollout have failed, the problem is process and leadership buy-in, not software. Fix those before buying another tool.

Once an agency has 5+ retainer clients, a team of 5+, and any exposure to time-and-materials work, tracker ROI compounds fast -- usually paying for itself within the first month of surfaced scope creep.

Matching Tracker to Billing Model

Your billing model should drive your tracker choice more than any feature matrix.

• Retainer-heavy (60%+ of revenue) -- Agiled, AgencyPro, Productive, or Teamwork.com, because retainer burn-down visibility is the highest-leverage feature.
• Project-based (fixed-fee SOWs) -- Harvest, Toggl, or Float, because project budgets and capacity planning matter more than retainer cycles.
• Time-and-materials (hourly billing) -- Harvest or Everhour, because the hour-to-invoice flow is the critical path and both handle it cleanly.
• Performance-based (revenue share, % of media spend) -- Agiled or Productive with custom fields, because you still need the hour tracking for internal cost accounting even if the invoice basis is not hours.
• Hybrid (mix of all three) -- Only all-in-one platforms like Agiled or mid-market tools like Productive and Teamwork.com handle all three without duct tape.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best time tracking software for marketing agencies?

For most marketing agencies under 25 people, Agiled offers the best value because it combines time tracking with CRM, proposals, contracts, invoicing, project management, and a client portal in a single workspace starting free. AgencyPro is the strongest choice for 10-50 person agencies that need purpose-built team utilization and retainer burn-down visibility. Harvest remains the most reliable standalone tracker + invoicing tool for agencies that have a PM tool they love. Everhour wins for agencies running delivery inside Asana, ClickUp, or Trello.

How do marketing agencies handle billable vs. non-billable time?

The best practice is flagging billable vs. non-billable at the task level, not the project level. A typical client project includes billable delivery tasks and non-billable internal meetings, status calls, and admin -- all of which should be captured for utilization math but never appear on a client invoice. Tools like Agiled, AgencyPro, Teamwork.com, and Harvest Enterprise allow task-level flags. Tools like Toggl and Clockify require custom fields or workaround project structures that rely on team discipline.

What is retainer burn-down and why does it matter?

Retainer burn-down is the live view of hours consumed vs. hours purchased on a monthly retainer. A $15,000/month retainer at 100 hours of scope needs a burn report visible to the account manager and PM by mid-month so scope conversations happen before the retainer is blown, not after. Agencies without burn-down visibility routinely deliver 120-140 hours against a 100-hour retainer -- a 20-40% margin hit per account that compounds across the client book. Agiled, AgencyPro, Productive, and Teamwork.com handle burn-down natively.

What utilization rate should a marketing agency target?

For billable roles (strategists, designers, paid media leads, copywriters), healthy utilization sits at 65-75%. Below 50% signals under-booking (capacity to sell or a revenue problem). Above 85% signals over-booking (burnout risk and usually unbilled rework). Non-billable support roles (ops, finance, new-biz) target different benchmarks and should not be lumped into the same report. The 2024 SoDA Report pegs the median independent agency at 57% billable utilization -- roughly 10 points below healthy, and the number most time trackers exist to help raise.

Do I need automatic tracking or is manual tracking enough?

For teams that do focused deep work (designers, copywriters, strategists) across many tools per day, automatic tracking via Timely or TimeCamp typically improves data quality because manual reconstruction is unreliable. For account management and project management roles that context-switch between fewer tools, manual timers (Harvest, Toggl, Agiled) are usually sufficient and reinforce a tracking habit. Most agencies end up with a hybrid -- automatic for deep-work roles, manual or weekly-grid for AM and PM roles -- which is why tools like Agiled and Teamwork.com that support multiple entry modes tend to win in practice.

How much should a marketing agency spend on time tracking?

A useful benchmark is 0.5-1% of agency revenue on time tracking specifically, rolled into a 2-3% total on ops software (time, PM, CRM, invoicing, proposals). A $1M marketing agency should spend $5,000-$10,000/year on tracking alone, or $20,000-$30,000/year on the full ops stack. The cost analysis above shows all-in-one platforms like Agiled deliver the same functional coverage for 2-3x less than the stacked alternative, which is where most agencies find budget to reinvest in hires or tooling that directly drives billable revenue.

Can I use a free time tracker for my agency?

Yes, at small scale. Clockify (unlimited free users), Toggl Track (limited users), Agiled (free plan with time + PM + invoicing + CRM), and Harvest (1 user free) all offer functional free tiers. Limits usually hit around the 5th team member or the 3rd billable client. Paid tiers pay for themselves quickly once you are running 5+ retainers -- a single month of surfaced scope creep typically covers a year of tracker subscription.

The Bottom Line

For most boutique and mid-sized marketing agencies, Agiled delivers the best value because it replaces 4-6 separate tools (time tracking, PM, CRM, invoicing, proposals, client portal) with one platform starting at $0/month and ties every tracked hour directly to the retainer it was sold against. For 10-50 person agencies that need deep utilization views and retainer burn as a first-class primitive, AgencyPro is purpose-built for that shape of problem. Harvest remains the cleanest standalone tracker + invoicing combo for agencies whose PM tool is already locked in. Everhour is the right answer when your team lives inside Asana, ClickUp, or Trello. Clockify wins on pure budget for agencies under 10 people.

The best time tracker is the one your team uses consistently without being chased. Start with a free plan or trial, move one retainer client and one project-based engagement into the system, and evaluate after 30 days. If utilization visibility improved and the team logged hours daily without reminders, the tool is doing its job. If people went back to "reconstructing the week on Friday at 4pm," pick a different tool or fix the process.

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