The Cost of Time Tracking: How Much It Costs and When It Pays Off

Published by Pavlo Lebid · Editorial and trust standards

The question “how much does time tracking cost” has two parts: how much you pay and how much you get back. The second part usually matters more, because this is one of the few business tools that pays for itself in weeks rather than years.

Let's look at both — with real figures in hryvnia, sample calculations for teams of different sizes, and a list of hidden costs worth asking about before you buy.

The price of a time tracker isn't the number on the price list — it's the gap between what you pay and what you recover. For most teams of 10 or more, that gap turns positive within the first or second month.

How pricing works in this market

Almost every system charges per licence (one employee) per month. It's a convenient model: you pay exactly for the people who actually work in the system.

What affects the final amount:

• Number of employees — the base multiplier
• Feature set — basic tracking costs less than project tracking with screenshots
• Billing period — annual payment usually comes with a significant discount
• Storage method — an on-premise version on your own server is priced differently from the cloud

A separate category is free plans for micro-teams. They are usually limited in the number of users and the feature set, but for a team of 3–5 people that is often enough.

Real pricing: the Yaware example

To avoid speaking in the abstract — current prices per licence, in hryvnia, excluding VAT:

Additionally:

• A free plan for teams of up to 5 employees — PC time tracking, violation monitoring, automatic timesheet
• 14 days free with full functionality for testing
• A six-month plan comes with a 14% discount, an annual plan with up to 37%

Sample calculations for different teams

A team of 5 that needs basic tracking and a timesheet. The free plan — 0 UAH. For a micro-team, work time tracking can cost nothing at all.

A team of 20 that needs basic tracking and timesheets for accounting. Automatic Time Tracking, annual billing: 88 UAH × 20 = 1,760 UAH/month (about 21,100 UAH per year).

A team of 20 that needs analytics and screenshots. Conscious Manager: 166 UAH × 20 = 3,320 UAH/month (about 39,800 UAH per year).

An agency of 15 that tracks by project to invoice clients. Project Management: 228 UAH × 15 = 3,420 UAH/month.

A company of 60 with an on-premise storage requirement. Enterprise, price on request. For comparison: a cloud plan for 60 people would cost from 5,280 UAH/month.

Which plan fits which goal

A common mistake is buying a higher plan “just in case”. You pay for features you don't use, and the team is unnerved by excessive oversight. It makes more sense to start lower and upgrade once a concrete need appears.

Now the second part: how much comes back

This is where the numbers get more interesting than the subscription price.

Accuracy of tracking

When time is logged manually or reconstructed from memory at the end of the week, people systematically overestimate the hours they worked — a documented pattern, not bad faith. The gap between reported and actual time is usually 5–15% of payroll.

For a team of 20 with an average salary of 30,000 UAH, that's 30,000–90,000 UAH a month paid for hours that never happened. Against that backdrop, the subscription costs 1,760 UAH.

Recovering productive time

Analytics reveal the biggest time leaks: excessive meetings, fragmentation, and non-core routine work that eats up a specialist's day. Even a moderate reduction in these losses across a team is equivalent to several extra employees at no additional payroll cost.

Software usage audit

The system shows which paid programs are actually being launched. Companies typically pay for licences used by fewer than half of their employees. The one-off saving often exceeds the annual cost of the time tracker.

Protection in labour disputes

Objective data on hours worked is evidence. A single dispute resolved in your favour can cover years of subscription costs.

Article 235 of the Labour Code of Ukraine (КЗпП) places the burden of proof on the employer: without time records, you will prove nothing.

How to calculate the payback for your own team

Instead of taking these examples on trust, run the numbers on your own figures. The method is simple and takes 15 minutes.

Step 1. Calculate the annual subscription cost. Number of employees × plan price with annual billing × 12. Example: 20 × 88 × 12 = 21,120 UAH.

Step 2. Calculate your monthly payroll. Number of employees × average salary. Example: 20 × 30,000 = 600,000 UAH.

Step 3. Estimate the tracking gap conservatively. Take the lower bound — 5% of payroll. This is the share typically paid for time that never happened. Example: 600,000 × 5% = 30,000 UAH a month, or 360,000 UAH a year.

Step 4. Compare. Example: 360,000 UAH in potential savings against 21,120 UAH in costs.

Even if the real gap in your company is half the conservative estimate, the subscription pays for itself many times over. The trial period will give you the exact figure: compare the system's data with what the timesheets recorded for the same period.

A second way to check is to look at the structure of your team's time during the trial. If the analytics show that a significant share of the working day goes to activities that create no value, you get a second source of savings — larger than the first.

Hidden costs: what to ask before buying

The price on the list isn't always the full cost. Check with the vendor:

• How long data is stored and what happens to it once the subscription ends
• Whether you can add licences during a paid period
• Whether deployment and training are included in the price or billed separately
• Whether there's a fee for integrations with your CRM or task manager
• What happens when you switch plans — whether your data is preserved
• Whether licences are tied to specific people or can be reassigned

For reference, here's how it works at Yaware: data on cloud plans is stored for 3 months, and for another 30 days after the subscription ends; licences can be added as you go and aren't tied to a specific employee, so you can remove and add people within the number you've paid for.

What not to cut corners on

The trial period. Two weeks of testing costs less than a year of paying for a system that doesn't fit.

Explaining it to the team. A tracker rolled out without explanation produces distorted data: people either sabotage it or get anxious and work worse.

The integrations you actually need. A cheaper plan without integration with your CRM can end up costing more — through manual data transfer every month.

The most expensive corner to cut is the rollout. A system the team never understood produces data you can't trust — and at that point the subscription is pure expense.

FAQ

Can I pay monthly, without an annual commitment?

Yes, monthly billing is available — just without the discount. The difference is noticeable: 140 UAH versus 88 UAH per licence. A sensible sequence is to test for free, run a month or two on monthly billing, and switch to annual once you're confident the system fits.

Can I buy different plans for different employees?

No — within a single account, one plan applies to all users. If part of the team needs extended functionality, the plan is chosen based on their requirements.

What if the team grows in the middle of a paid period?

You simply add the licences you need. Since licences aren't tied to specific people, you can change the team's composition freely — only the total number of active users matters.

Is a paid plan worth it for a team of 5?

Often not — the free plan covers basic tracking, violation monitoring and timesheets. Moving to a paid plan makes sense once you need productivity analytics, screenshots or project tracking, or when the team grows beyond 5 people.

How much does deployment cost?

With cloud solutions, basic deployment usually doesn't require a separate payment: registration, installing the agent and setting up categories take a few hours. Dedicated deployment services may be needed for large teams or the on-premise version.

Summary

For most Ukrainian companies, the cost of work time tracking ranges from zero (the free plan for up to 5 people) to 88–228 UAH per licence per month with annual billing. But the price isn't what decides it — the ratio to the savings is: closing the gap between reported and actual time alone usually returns a multiple of the subscription cost.

The most accurate calculation is the one done on your own data. Fourteen days of full functionality, with no card required, will give you the figures for your team — not the ones from an article.

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