A Toggle alternative: todo.vu vs Toggl
Toggl is one of the most well known time tracking options available today.
Toggl has some nice features however, Toggl is surprisingly expensive for what it offers. If you’re looking for a Toggl alternative, todo.vu might just be the answer. Here’s how to know if todo.vu might be right for you.
Toggl is a pure time tracking system. It offers no project or task management and no real CRM or customer management. While you can set billing rates, it actually has no formal billing component either.
Toggl’s cheapest plan that matches most todo.vu features is $20/user/month, which limits you to just 1 business feature. Their main plan which allows for all features is $59/user/month. (And you still need to purchase a separate CRM and Task management system to complete the suite!)
Comparison of features
- Task ManagementTask Management
- ProjectsProjects
- Clients/ContactsClients/Contacts
- Time TrackingTime Tracking
- BillingBilling
- Cross-project visibilityCross-project visibility
- CalendarCalendar
- Repeating tasksRepeating tasks
- Free client usersFree client users
- Price capPrice cap
Toggl
$20.00
/user/month
- Task Management
- Projects
- Clients/Contacts (no Contacts)
- Time Tracking
- Billing
- Cross-project visibility
- Calendar
- Repeating tasks
- Free client users
- Price cap
todo.vu
$9.00
/user/month
- Task Management
- Projects
- Clients/Contacts
- Time Tracking
- Billing
- Cross-project visibility
- Calendar
- Repeating tasks
- Free client users
- Price capcapped at $99/month
Project integration changes everything
Fully integrating tasks and time makes a huge difference. Toggl claims that you can link to other project and task management systems via optional third-party integrations, but it is important to recognise the significant difference between using an add-on or an integrated solution for time tracking.
The option to track time directly on tasks provides faster, simpler usage and leads to increased accuracy and advanced business reporting possibilities. There is no need for duplicate entry of project data and no possibility that time can be accidentally recorded against the wrong client or projects.
“Fully integrated time tracking is not just a convenience, it is a paradigm shift in terms of reporting and business intelligence.”
Billing reports can track time entries back to the very source requests. Labelling of tasks can be used to filter reports to produce time reports not possible with third party plugins.
Genuine billing vs basic tags
In Toggl, the only way to know if time has been billed is to create a label and tag time entries when you bill them. This is a major weakness when it comes to reporting and tracking. While you can tell which times have been billed, you have no way of knowing when they were billed or on which bill they were charged.
If a client enquires about the details of a bill, you will have great difficulty tracking down the specific entries for that bill or even tracking them back to the original task request.
todo.vu provides significantly better tracking of billed time right from the original task request through to the final bill. todo.vu generates billing reports that can be adjusted in detail to reveal as much or as little as you wish to the client. If there are any queries about a bill, you can easily track each time entry back to the user, date, and original task.