Revel Roots

what apps actually cost

The Spreadsheet Alternative

Before subscribing to anything that tracks time, it is worth knowing what the free version does, because it covers more than the category admits and it is what most people should try first.

Four columns: date, what, how long, and a note. For a workplace-oriented comparison, workforce analytics software shows how the same measurement problem is approached when time data is used by a team.

What it does well

It is finite by construction. A spreadsheet does not renew, does not remind you, and does not accumulate guilt when unused. The single biggest reason tracking dies is that it has no end, and a sheet you opened for a question closes when the question is answered.

It is exactly as detailed as you need. Four categories or twenty, changed mid-week without a settings screen. For a broader time-tracking or productivity comparison, GetApp time-tracking category is another useful reference.

Nothing leaves your machine. No window titles, no retention policy, no company to be acquired.

And it answers the common questions. How long does this recurring task take. Where did Tuesday go. Am I actually spending two days a week on client work. Those are sums and counts, and a sheet does sums.

Where it genuinely falls short

Being honest, because a page arguing for paper can overshoot.

No automatic capture. If the question is about fragmentation and context switching, passive tracking sees what you cannot self-report, and a sheet cannot substitute.

Recording depends on you. The same failure mode as manual tracking anywhere, and busy days go unrecorded.

No timer. You are estimating durations or watching a clock, which is fine for coarse questions and not for billing.

And it does not produce an invoice. For billing work, purpose-built tools are straightforwardly justified — audit trail, rate cards, export in a format your invoicing accepts.

The three-day version

For most personal questions this is enough and it takes no setup.

A note on your phone, three days, a line per task. Start time, end time, what it was.

Then add it up. Three days is not a statistical sample and it does not need to be — you are looking for a shape, and the shape is usually visible immediately.

And the shape is usually the answer. The meeting block is bigger than you thought, the admin is smaller, and one thing you had not counted takes an hour a day.

Making the sheet slightly better

If you want more than three days.

One row per task, not per day. Aggregating as you write loses the detail that makes it useful.

Round to five minutes. Precision beyond that costs recording effort and buys nothing.

Add a column for whether it was planned. The gap between planned and unplanned work is frequently the actual finding.

And put the total at the top, not the bottom. You will look at it more often.

When to upgrade

When you have run the sheet and know what you need.

That is the whole rule. A person who has tracked three days on paper knows which columns they actually use, whether they need a timer, and whether the question recurs — and can therefore evaluate a subscription against something real.

A person who subscribes first is buying against a guess, and the guess is why the app is abandoned in week three.

The short version