The 10 best productivity software for busy people

Looking for the best productivity software for your business?

If you wish you could add more hours to your day, you aren’t alone.

In our fast-paced society, it seems we’re continually looking for ways to do more in less time.

Working smarter, not harder, is the key. To do this, you need productivity software tools to help you root out time-wasting activities so you can focus on the fruitful ones.

In this article, we’ll explain what productivity software is and highlight the ten best tools available, so you can choose the right one for you.

This article covers:

(Click on a link below to jump to a specific section)

What is productivity software?
Top 10 productivity solutions

Let’s get started.

What is productivity software?

Simply put, productivity software is a wide range of tools that help us do our jobs better and more effectively.

Productivity software is more than just database software that stores timekeeping and attendance records; it’s also meant to boost personal productivity and time management.

Here are a few benefits of business productivity software:

Facilitates team communication and team collaboration (even with remote team members).
Automates time tracking of working hours for in-office and remote work.
Helps streamline task management and project management processes.
Like the Kanban system, certain office productivity software helps you organize your workflow.
Provides business intelligence and helps with resource planning and strategizing, especially for knowledge workers such as architects, attorneys, accountants, freelancers, etc.

Top 10 productivity solutions

The best productivity apps help increase output, as well as improve the quality of work.

Here are the best solutions available:

1. Time Doctor for productivity tracking

Time Doctor is an excellent time tracking and productivity management tool. It’s preferred by major corporations as well as medium and small businesses to boost employee productivity.

Key features

If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution to boost productivity, here’s what Time Doctor has to offer:

A. Time tracking

One of the key features of this productivity application is the ability to track time spent on tasks and projects.

Users can click on the timer to start recording the time when they begin a task and stop the timer themselves, giving them control over the time tracking process.

Here’s how simple it’s to start tracking time manually:

After downloading the desktop application software, click the Time Doctor icon to open the app.
Enter the name of the task.
When you want to start recording time, click on the play button, and the timer starts tracking time automatically.
When you want to stop recording, click on the play button again.

There’s also an option to track time automatically the moment you turn on your computer.

B. Detailed real-time reports

With this great tool, you can also generate comprehensive productivity reports and download the document too.

Here are some reports you get access to:

Timeline report: Gain valuable insights into the amount of time spent on tasks and projects, as well as breaks over a specified time.
Project and tasks report: Shows the amount of time spent on a specific task or project.
Web and app report: Gain insight into time spent on various websites and applications by you or your co-workers.
Hours tracked: View amount of hours tracked per day, week, month, etc.
Activity summary report: Provides a summary (in real-time) of active minutes, productive and unproductive time over a period of time.

C. Productivity ratings

The productivity ratings feature allows you to classify apps and websites such as productive, unproductive, neutral, or unrated.

How does this help?

Other productivity suite software usually classifies social media sites like YouTube and Facebook as unproductive, but certain employees may be required to visit these sites as part of their work assignments.

That’s why Time Doctor lets you customize which websites and applications you want to classify as unproductive or otherwise.

In other words, it won’t just automatically classify some important social media sites (like LinkedIn, Twitter) as unproductive.

This puts you in control of deciding which sites your team should and shouldn’t be visiting during work hours.

D. Screenshots (optional)

You have the option of viewing screenshots of your employee’s screens to see how they’re spending their time.

Once you have enabled this feature, you can view screenshots for one user at a time.

Here’s how to do it:

Select the user whose screenshots you want to see.
Select the date interval.
Click on any screenshot thumbnail to maximize the image and view the keyboard and mouse activity for that time period.

Note: Time Doctor is not a keylogger, and the mouse and keyboard activity number is the approximate number of mouse clicks or strokers registered from the previous screencasts.

E. Idle time pop-up

You can keep your team focused with the idle time pop-ups, which will appear on their screen if they’re inactive for some time.

How does it work?

When Time Doctor detects there’s no keyboard or mouse activity on your employee’s computer for a specified amount of time during working hours, a pop-up will appear – prompting your employee to either start working again or stop the timer and go on a break.

This prevents your team members from logging in idle time at work.

F. Integrations and Chrome extension

With the Chrome extension, Time Doctor lets you track time directly from other leading software. For example, you can track how long it takes to create a Gantt chart in Wrike, create documents in Microsoft Word, etc.

Here’s what you need to do:

Visit the Chrome web store to download the Chrome Extension.
Once installed, you should see an extension button in your browser.
You will also see the “start timer” button in any task on your app of choice, for example, your Asana or Trello accounts.
Click this button to start recording time and click “stop timer” when you’re done.

The Chrome extension will sync with the desktop app, so time tracked using the Chrome extension will appear in the desktop app and in reports for your account on Time Doctor’s website.

Some of the tools that can be integrated with Time Doctor include:

Project management software: Basecamp 3, Jira, Todist.
Collaboration apps: Asana, Evernote, Trello.
CRM tools: Salesforce, Zoho, and many more!

Pricing

Time Doctor’s paid plans start at $7/user per month. You can also get a free 14-day trial without any credit card.

User ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (160+ user reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (320+ reviews)