Time and Billing Software for Accountants: Top 10 Tools in 2025

While you’re making sure that your clients’ finances are in order, are you forgetting something important?

We’re talking about your accounting firm’s revenue, utilization, and profit margin. With time and billing software for accountants, you can make sure that your business is well-organized and financially healthy.

Keep reading to learn more all about the best accounting and CPA firm time and billing software, with their key features, pros & cons.

Productive is a comprehensive time and billing software for accounting firms of all sizes.

Productive offers features for managing the end-to-end workflows of a client project, from sending proposals to billing clients for billable hours worked.

This helps businesses in the accounting industry ensure that they’re scheduling their accountants correctly, maintaining a healthy cash flow, and managing every invoice.

In short, Productive helps manage accounting business operations.

A quick overview of Productive’s features includes manual and automatic time tracking, managing hourly rates and pricing models, creating invoices out of customizable invoice templates, and comprehensive reports.

Let’s check out Productive’s key time tracking and billing software solutions in more detail.

Different accounting firms have different ways of approaching time tracking. In fact, different departments or client teams within one business can vary in their approaches.

This is why Productive offers multiple ways of keeping track of your hours. You can:

Productive doesn’t include activity tracking, so you can be sure that your activites and data are private.

Some other useful features of Productive’s time tracking is individual or in-bulk approving and timesheet locking. For accountants that have issues remembering to track time, notifications can be sent to their account or email.

Productive also includes a Google Calendar integration for linking meetings and events with a specific time entry.

Productive is more than just a timesheet tool — you can also benefit from integrated time off management.

This helps accounting firms manage availability and ensure that there are no unexpected circumstances that can affect client satisfaction (for example, unfinished work because an accountant is on their scheduled holiday).

Managers can create and allocate categories of leave, and employees can send requests from the platform, with insights into how much days they have left across each category.

Approved time off will be automatically reflected in your firm’s resource plan.

And if you’re already using time off software, Productive integrates with a wide range of HRM solutions, for example BambooHR, Breathe, HiBob, and many more.

With Productive’s Budgeting, you can manage different types of client projects and pricing models.

Notably for the accounting industry, this includes hourly rates and retainer projects (though you can also manage fixed and hybrid projects).

When working with an hourly rate, you can differentate billable vs non-billable hours, and invoiced your billable time accordingly.

With retainers, you can set up recurring budgets within Productive. This means that instead of manually creating budgets, they’ll be created automatically at the intervals you’ve set up.

You can also carry over unused or overused hours from one period to the other.

Moving on to the invoicing process, with Productive you can create and send invoices from the platform based on tracked time.

You can also:

Additionally, you can also use Productive’s Xero or QuickBooks integration and take the process from there.

All of these features will help your accounting firm manage billing clients and budgeting for projects more reliably and efficiently.

With resource planning, scheduling your employees across multiple projects becomes much easier. Productive’s resource planner helps you get a full understanding of staff capacity and availability.

By knowing exactly who’s working on what and when, project managers and team leaders can ensure that every project is properly staffed and deadlines are met without overloading team members.

Additionally, you can monitor utilization across accountants to see how much of their overall time is spent on billable or non-billable tasks.

You can even forecast it to see how busy they’ll be in the future, and make better decisions on whether you can take on more clients, or if you need to hire extra staff.

Productive also includes financial forecasting. If you’re scheduling your employees, you can predict budget burn and profit margins for upcoming periods of time.

Productive offers comprehensive reporting which is based on the features we’ve discussed above (and some additional ones). Here’s an overview of some useful insights you can get with Productive:

Productive offers over fifty reporting templates, so there’s much, much more that you can get from it. Reports can also be created from scratch and customized extensively with business-specific custom fields.

For sharing your reports, you can either export them, set up reporting dashboards, or scheduling sending to Slack or email with Productive’s Pulse.

Productive offers seamless integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting and invoicing; BambooHR, Breathe, Humaans.io for HRM; Memtime for time tracking; and more.

Try out Productive with a 14-day free trial.

KarbonHQ is an accounting practice management solution for businesses of all sizes. Karbon includes some features that go beyond just online invoicing, but its fairly high price range can make it inaccessible.

Key features:

Pros: One of Karbon’s benefits is that it integrates a couple of useful functionalities and doesn’t stop simply at accounting features, so it can help accountants manage more of their processes. Notably, this includes project management and collaboration, which are staples for any business that works with clients (and even just internal projects).

Cons: As the main downside of the software, KarbonHQ is a fairly pricy solution, especially compared with other comprehensive all-in-one accounting software out there.

A user on G2 also notes that: “At the moment the billing module is still being developed. But it’s improving each week”. An example of a particular feature that is reported to be missing is adding ccs when sending out billing invoices, as well as tasks.

While KarbonHQ offers a solid range of features, these downsides are not ideal for businesses looking for dedicated accounting systems.

Teamwork is a project management software for a variety of business, including agencies, professional services, architecture and engineering studios, legal and IT services. While Teamwork provides a wide range of operations management features, its budgeting and reporting are not as robust as in comparable tools.

Key features:

Pros: Like Productive, Teamwork is one of the more popular project management tools. Its benefits are that you can keep track of time, manage project budgets and client billing. Some of the budgeting capabilities include setting billable rates and expense management (such as fixed costs, one-off fees and ancilliaries).

Cons: There are some very specific downsides to Teamwork, some of which are more frustrating than others. One is that time off management is not automatic, in the way that time off requests can’t be processed within the platform. Instead, a manager has to manually input it into the resource management schedule. Learn more about Teamwork’s pros and cons.

Xero is a specialized CPA time and billing software designed for accounting professionals. With a software solution such as Xero, you’ll get an accurate billing platform for expenses, reconciliation, and payments management; but you’ll need to combine it with a solution for time tracking & workflow management.

Key features:

Pros: Xero can be a great option for creating professional invoices and online payments, especially for small to mid-sized businesses. Users report that it’s fairly easy to use.

Cons: While you may need to use Xero to manage your clients’ accounts, it’s not the most robust software for workflows. The issue is that you’ll need to invest in a separately-paid module within Xero, called Xero Projects, to get time tracking and task management features.

Considering that Xero Projects comes with its own share of issues (just check out the Reddit threads), investing in a comprehensive solution with a Xero integration is probably your better option. For example, Productive has a Xero integration.

QuickBooks Online is a popular accounting software solution that’s similar to Xero. It’s a specialized tool for designed for modern accounting firms, but can be pricey. Inuit QuickBooks is designed for smaller teams, while QuickBooks Online Advanced is for larger businesses with complex needs.

Key features:

Pros: QuickBooks Online is considered an industry-standard for smaller businesses. When it comes to managing accounting tasks, QuickBooks won’t disappoint. Accountants in the US will also likely need to know how to use QBO, as it’s considered a standard, and clients will likely use it for their billing.

Cons: Like with Xero, QuickBooks’ billable and non-billable time management capabilities are not included in the base version of the software. You’ll need to purchase a separate module in QuickBooks Time for accurate time tracking, time off management, and payroll management.

Add up these two subs, and your costs can get pretty high. Additionally, users comment that prices of subscriptions have been steadily increasing.

As an alternative, consider workflow management software with a QBO integration, such as Productive.

Harvest is a time tracking and invoicing software with electronic payments capabilities. Harvest is a fairly affordable option, though you’ll need to buy a separate product if you want to benefit from forecasting, called Harvest Forecast.

Key features:

Pros: Harvest is fairly affordable among the cloud accounting software on this list. It also offers a free version with a single seat that can be a good option for freelancers. Though, accountants that work with many clients might not be able to do much with the two projects limitation.

Cons: The Harvest mobile app has limited functionality, which can be an issue for accountants that want to check data or handle different parts of their processes on the move. Additionally, some users state that the reports could be more robust, and you’ll need to buy a separate app to benefit from forecasting features. Learn more in our review of Harvest alternatives.

Clockify is a free time tracker and timesheet app for unlimited users. There are also advanced, paid plans for features such as scheduling, forecasting, or increased security.

Key features:

Pros: Clockify has an auto tracker that records time spent on apps, but this data is only accessible locally, which means that it won’t be used for productivity monitoring. This is usually seen as a benefit for staff.

Cons: While Clockify offers a wide range of project management tools integrations, there aren’t many integrations with accounting solutions (apart from QuickBooks Online). Additionally, there are no notable integrations for human resources management.

Replicon is sold in separate modules, which can be a benefit for accounting firms that don’t want comprehensive features, but can also make the implementation process more difficult. Replicon’s main time tracking and billing modules include: TimeBill, ProjectTime, Expense, and Timeoff. There’s also an additional time and attendance suite.

Key features:

Pros: According to Capterra users, although implementation can be very difficult (some even describe it as “brutal”), customer service is great. Technical support specifically has been praised for their quick responses.

Cons: Reviews are quite varied across Replicon’s different products. Due to the number of possible combinations, it can be difficult to find users with the exact same experience. As a general statement, users can find Replicon difficult to use due to its complexity:

Source: Reddit

TimeCamp is a software for time tracking and attendance management. Like most time tracking software, TimeCamp offers budgeting and billing solutions, as well as attendance management. Keep in mind that TimeCamp includes activity tracking features, including location and remote work monitoring.

Key features:

Pros: Alongside helping manage employee time, TimeCamp helps manage attendance and productivity. Some other benefits include free version with limited features and integrations with various third-party software.

It can also support your invoicing by generating invoices from billable hours. For productivity management, TimeCamp can track app usage and time spent. Business managers can also set and monitor employee goals.

Cons: Workforce monitoring tools can be useful to help project managers and team leads get detailed reports on employee activities and productivity. However, staff usually don’t enjoy them for multiple reasons. First is privacy, and the other is that these time tracker tools tend to be disruptive with frequent screenshots and idle alerts. For most CPA firms, this level of activity tracking will likely not be necessary.

TimeCamp is a popular Time Doctor alternative — you can check our review out to learn more.

Toggl Track is known as a simple and user-friendly time tracker. It’s suitable for smaller businesses and startups, and has a free version for up to five users, with unlimited time tracking and unlimited projects.

Key features:

Pros: Multiple users review Toggl Track as being simple to use, with essential features for managing billable time and monitoring project cost.

Cons: As a downside, certain users note that Toggl Track’s billing capabilities are not robust enough for it to be used as a standalone platform. Additionally, as a free product, Toggl is great, but the paid version can be expensive compared to some other tools on this list.

Source: Capterra

Time & billing software for accountants makes life a lot easier.

For starters, if you’re working on hourly rates, correct time tracking is essential to accurate billing. It takes the headache out of tracking hours, ensuring you capture every billable minute without juggling spreadsheets or sticky notes.

However, it can also be useful for fixed billing or internal projects.

Accountants can see how much time is spent on certain tasks, which can then help them estimate their average workloads more accurately. This is important for organization, especially in a multi-project context.

It can also be important to clients, so they know and understand when specific tasks are expected to be finalized (and you can avoid big over or underestimations).

Time tracking also tells you also how many employee hours are dedicated to billable and non-billable work. If more hours than expected are spent on non-billable work, such as administration, it might mean that accountants are working inefficiently.

By spotting and improving these issues, you can work faster, which is always a good thing.

With real-time insights, businesses can also get advanced profit margins and revenue data and optimize their pricing models to maintain a healthy bottom line.

In short, whether you’re a solo accountant or part of a team, accounting time and billing software simplifies your workflow and lets you focus on what you do best: helping clients manage their finances.

In this list, we’ve explored the best time and billing software for accountants with different benefits and downsides. Here’s a quick summary:

With Productive, you’ll get more than just timesheet software for accountants. Productive supports all phases of your accounting firm’s workflows, from managing leads, organizing tasks and team collaboration, to monitoring time tracking and budgeting.

To find out more about the benefits of Productive, book a demo today.

Accountants can track their time manually, by using Excel spreadsheets and creating a sheet with dates, then logging and calculating hours with formulas. A quicker way for an accounting professional to do this is to use a timer software with billing features, such as Productive.

Popular options software for accountants includes QuickBooks and Xero. This platforms are standard for accounting and billing. For accounting firm practice management, a good option is Productive, as it includes robust financial management and resource planning.

The best software depends on your needs. There are simple timekeeping and timesheets option, more robust billing and payments processing tools, and then there are tools that integrate project management, financial, and resource planning. For an all-in-one option, consider Productive.

Clockify and Toggl Track are free tools that many accountants use to track time effectively. They offer basic features for tracking billable hours and are a great starting point for individuals or small teams.