Tracking
We’re afraid not.
We’re trying to make time tracking better, not worse. We don’t believe in attaching time directly to tickets. Read our time tracking manifesto for more detail.
No. Clockk is not employee monitoring software.
You can not see any data that Clockk has tracked, even if you own the computer they’re using. Employees have the ability to opt in to Clockk, and can turn off tracking at any point in time.
You can see their submitted timesheets, just like any other time tracking software.
You can read more in our blog post on the topic.
The Clockk browser extension, which you installed in Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge, sends Clockk:
- URL
- page title
- date & time you accessed the page
- In certain web apps (see our supported list), Clockk uses content on the page, such as your logged-in Twitter user, to disambiguate which project you’re working on
- For Chrome users, Clockk also submits an identifier that distinguishes which Chrome profile you’re using
All processing takes place in your browser; no page contents, other than the project-disambiguating portions, are ever sent to Clockk.
We track and store as little as possible while still making your timesheets a pleasure to work on.
Complicated.
Short answer: No. At least not yet.
Long answers:
iPhone — No, and probably never. Apple doesn’t allow third parties to access an iPhone’s call history.
Android — Not yet, but eventually. When we develop our mobile app, we’ll be sure to include call history.
VOIP — Not yet, but theoretically yes. It will depend on the VOIP vendor and their software API. If this is a need you have, let’s talk.
Yes! Several of our customers have done this, and have learned a lot about themselves!
Create a Client & Project such as “«your company name» Time Wasters”. Then use the Web Activity view to assign your personal time wasters to this project:
- Go to the Activity view
- Click on the web activity indicator (you can see it by hovering over the time-of-day on the left-hand side of the activity view)
- Click “Assign URL path to project”
- Chose the “Time Wasters” project
- Specify the domain (e.g.
https://youtube.com
) that you’d like tracked.
From this point forward, any time you spend on what you consider time-waster sites will be tracked.
You don’t have to record this time in your timesheets. Just clear it out every day before you save. Or, go ahead and record the time. It’s entirely up to you what you do with this information.
Why don’t we do this automatically? One person’s time waster (e.g. YouTube, Reddit) is another person’s productive day (a social media marketer maintaining their client’s profile, or a graphic designer learning how to use their tools).
Yes, but with some caveats.
If you’ve installed the Clockk Desktop app, it can tell when you’re on a Zoom call.
However, if you do other work while you’re on the Zoom call, or you share your screen, Clockk will track the other apps, rather than the Zoom call. This is because the Zoom window is no longer the “active” window.
The Zoom call cannot be auto-assigned to a project. The window title only shows “Zoom Meeting”, which is not enough for us to identify that a particular meeting was for one client versus another. For this reason, every time you see a Zoom call in Clockk, you’ll have to assign it again.
We looked into integrating with the Zoom API, but it only works if you’re the host of the meeting.
There are lots of ways to keep your personal browsing private. We encourage all of the following:
- Use one browser (e.g. Safari) for personal and one (e.g. Chrome) for work.
- Use Chrome Incognito or Safari Private Browsing windows.
- Use multiple Chrome profiles, and save one (or more) for non-tracked browsing.
One thing you can do, which we don’t recommend, is to turn Clockk’s browsing on or off at the switch.

- It’s hard to remember to re-start Clockk’s tracking.
- When you turn the switch off or on, you’re only turning that profile’s/browser’s/computer’s desktop tracker on or off. All the others stay on.
The best approach is to use a different browser or profile for personal (non-tracked) browsing.
The Clockk Desktop app connects to your mail server (Gmail, Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, or an IMAP server) on your behalf. It notifies the Clockk server whenever a draft email is updated. This is how Clockk tracks the time you spend writing email.
From a security perspective: The Clockk Desktop app, which connects to your mail server, runs on your computer. This means that we, the administrators that run the Clockk server, never have any access to your email account. The Clockk Desktop app reads your email, and sends the date/time, to, from, cc, and subject lines to Clockk. The message body and any attachments are completely and forever unknown to us.
The Clockk desktop app, which you installed on your macOS or Windows computer, tracks:
- Active window — e.g. the Adobe Photoshop document you have open. Clockk stores the app, document name, and date/time. We do not take a screen shot of your computer.
- Files you save — e.g.
index.js
. Clockk tracks the file path and date/time of the save. - Emails you write
- Your calendar entries for the day
Each of these is completely configurable. If you don’t want Clockk tracking your email, just don’t set it up.
Clockk never accesses the contents of any file, nor does it take any screen shots.
Yes!
As long as your calendar is available in a .ics
feed format (most of them are), it’s no trouble. You can read the instructions for how to set up Google, Apple iCloud and Microsoft Outlook calendars.
Using Clockk
Clockk automatically recognizes not just that you’re using Twitter, but which profile you’re logged in as. Switch to another client profile, and you’ll immediately be tracking time for that client.
At Clockk, we use our time tracking app to track the time we spend tracking time! How meta is that?!?!
We think that if you use Clockk, you’ll have fun tracking your time. In fact, you’ll probably have so much fun that the time you spend will just disappear! Well, it would, if you hadn’t tracked it.

We suggest assigning Clockk Web App time to an “Internal Time Tracking” project. It could be fun to see how much time you spend tracking time.
If you’d rather not see it, just assign the work to “Ignore”.
You might see the client as synonymous with the project, but at Clockk we assume that a Client can eventually have more than one project, so we baked that in right from the beginning. A good project name is what you’re working on for them. e.g.:
Upshine Branding
Hemoda Medical Marketing
Tripcal Development
Tripcal Marketing
If you really don’t want to name your projects, you could just choose a name like -. e.g.
Motionlytics -
Tripcal -
Obviously you’ll want a client/project for each of your actual clients & projects:
- Tripcal Branding
- Tripcal UX
- Hermoda Medical Marketing
- Outshine iOS app
etc.
Then you’ll want some “General Administration” (or “GA” for short or “Internal”) projects as well.
- GA Sales & marketing
- GA Bookkeeping & accounting
- GA Human resources
Finally you’ll want some space for you:
- Professional Development Learning Elixir
- Professional Development Attending meet-ups
- Personal Downtime
etc.
At Clockk we’ve realized that not all websites are equal in terms of how our users engage with them.
We’ve broken them down into three groups: Websites, Client-work websites, and Web apps.
Only web apps appear automatically in your Activity view. You’ll have to use the Web activity assign feature to make client-work websites appear as well.
In our help documentation, we have a detailed description of the differences between the three types of websites, and how you should use them.
Clockk is for anyone who works in professional services where your time is being billed to clients.
This includes all kinds of agencies, architects, engineers, bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, etc. freelancers and consultancies alike. So long as you do the majority of your productive work on your computer, you can benefit from Clockk.
Features
Yes! Although not in the way you might expect.
Some people use tools like Rize or RescueTime to help them see when and how productive they are. These tools, although configurable, sort time into “productive” and “unproductive” buckets.
Clockk doesn’t work that way. It’s up to you to decide what “meaningful” work is!
- Sometimes emails are wasted time, and sometimes emails are extremely valuable.
- For bookkeepers and accountants, dealing with receipts and bookkeeping software is extremely productive. For a freelancer, it’s a necessary evil.
- For a social media manager, a day spent on Twitter is a successful day. For everyone else, GET BACK TO WORK! 😂
With Clockk, you can easily tell the difference!
Efficiency/productivity tracking is a side benefit of how Clockk works. You can tell you’ve had an efficient, productive day if you’ve spent a lot of your time on meaningful work.
These are some projects you might want to set up, in addition to your actual work projects:
- Internal Administration — Depends what you consider admin work. Maybe HR files, or bookkeeping, or dealing with the legal team?
- Internal Time wasters — YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter. You won’t have any trouble figuring out what goes in this project.
Clockk won’t tell you that you had a productive day, but when you look at the activity view, it will be pretty obvious if you were productive or not.
With magic! 🎩
Clockk watches your active window and the web sites you visit. Along with some clever machine learning and pattern matching, Clockk accurately tracks your work, even as you jump between projects.
If you want more detail, you can read the deep dive on how Clockk’s tracking works.
The only third-party tool Clockk currently integrates with is Slack.
Adding more extensions is on our roadmap, but for now we’re focusing on making our tracker the best it can be.
Setup
The Clockk browser extension uses its permissions for good 😇, not evil 👿.
The browser extension allows you to use Clockk to see what websites and web apps you used during the day. It makes your timesheets more accurate.
The extension sends the following information to Clockk:
- URL
- Page title
- Date & time of the request
- In some cases, content from the page that disambiguates which project you’re working on. e.g. the Twitter user you’re logged in as, or the project name selected in a drop-down. We only do this when the URL and page title are not enough to uniquely identify the project. You can see which sites are affected on our list of supported web apps.
- For Chrome users, we also include an identifier for which Chrome profile you’re logged in as. This allows you to use different Chrome profiles for different clients.
All processing is done in your browser — full page contents, login credentials, etc., are never sent to Clockk. We collect and store as little data as possible.
You can, however we strongly recommend installing both.
The Clockk Desktop app tracks your currently active window, the emails you write, and your calendar entries for the day. The Desktop app deliberately ignores any browser activity, because:
The Clockk Browser extension tracks the web apps you use and websites you visit throughout your workday.
Our competitors use a single tracker, whereas Clockk uses two. Separating the Browser extension from the Desktop app a) helps ensure your privacy and b) lets Clockk track the web apps you use as first-class citizens.
If you’re going to install just one, we recommend installing the Browser extension. This is particularly true for people (e.g. marketers) who have heavily browser-based workflows.
Mobile
Not yet, but it’s in our roadmap!
Billing
Clockk’s pricing is in US Dollars (USD), but is automatically localized, depending on where you’re browsing from.
You may notice a flicker as the prices are updated on our pricing page. You’ll also see different pricing when you get to the billing page in-app.
For instance, if you’re in Canada, you’ll see a price in CAD. If you’re in Germany, you’ll see EUR. About 30 different currencies around the world are supported automatically.
Furthermore, your price will be increased by the sales taxes in your jurisdiction. You might not get a final price until you’ve entered your country or postal code for local VAT or GST.
If you’re a European business customer, you can remove the VAT from your price by entering your business number.
All our billing, localization, taxation, and credit card processing, is handled by Paddle.