TaskClerk

It is hard to keep track of time while focusing on a project or enjoying some personal time. If a customer is interested in how you spend your time while working for him, you can use TaskClerk to log your activities and their durations. The application runs in the background and you just need to tell it what you are currently working on. When you are done, you will find detailed statistics, regarding your working hours, as well as a color coded pie chart, on a user friendly interface.

The application is free and it can be installed in no time. It is designed for Windows XP and Vista, but it works on Windows 7 as well. The application requires a 1 GHz processor or faster and at least 512 MB of RAM, which should not be too much for any modern day computer.

There is not much you can do on the user interface when you run TaskClerk for the first time. You can start timing specific tasks, by right clicking the application's system tray icon and selecting an event from a series of sub-menus. TaskClerk comes with a good number of predefined tasks, which are organized in different categories and it allows you to create your own tasks as well, on a small window.

When you select a task, the application will start tracking the time you spend with that task. You can select another task at any time, if you wish to track a different activity. Besides tasks, you can also select events, such as starting to work, stopping or stopping the timing process.

Timed activities are sorted automatically, on the user interface, by date, month and year. The activities themselves are listed in the lower region of the interface, along with their durations, start and end dates and descriptions. You can bring up a properties window, for individual activities, on which you can modify the start and end dates and make other settings. Logged activities and their durations are also illustrated in a pie chart, on the same interface.

Besides options for basic configurations, the general settings menu displays a series of options for tracking tasks automatically, when the application is launched. Depending on your settings, TaskClerk will start an event and an activity of your choice, end one when you close the application or start another activity or event when it idles.