Excel vs Dedicated App for Small Team Time Tracking

Why many small teams start with Excel

Founders often tell me the same thing: with only four or five people, a spreadsheet feels perfectly fine. You create columns for date, person, project and hours. No subscriptions, no learning curve. At the very beginning that is usually true.

Then three projects run in parallel. Someone forgets to subtract breaks, another person works from a copy that is already two days old, and suddenly the totals no longer match. That situation is familiar to anyone who has tried to run Excel with more than two people at once.

Everyday friction points

At Jomawo I regularly see that the master file ends up on one person’s laptop. Everyone else sends their hours by chat. Collecting and entering the numbers can easily take half a day each month. When someone works remotely and the file is not synced, two different versions appear. It happens faster than most teams expect.

What a dedicated app actually changes

The real difference is not colourful buttons. It is how data is captured and kept consistent. In an app every team member can book time directly to a project. The entries land in one shared record without manual copying. Corrections are visible to everyone immediately.

Another practical advantage: rules for breaks or overtime can be set once and then apply automatically. In Excel every exception has to be handled by hand.

Concrete numbers

Take a team of four. Each person loses or forgets twelve quarter-hours per month because logging in Excel feels cumbersome. At 85 euros per hour that equals 51 euros per person. For the whole team the monthly loss is 204 euros. Over a year that adds up to 2 448 euros – simply because the recording process stayed too manual. The exact figure will vary, but the pattern is common.

Side-by-side comparison

When Excel is still the right tool

There are cases where a spreadsheet remains sufficient. Two people working on a single project with stable hours rarely need more. The same applies when only a rough monthly overview is required and no detailed client reports are needed. I have met teams that deliberately keep using Excel because they want to avoid introducing another tool.

Legal requirements in brief

Since the 2019 ECJ ruling and the 2022 BAG decision, working time must be recorded objectively. Excel can meet this requirement as long as the file stays current and accessible. Once several people edit it simultaneously or old copies circulate, reliability drops quickly. An app with an audit trail usually makes compliance easier.

How to test the switch sensibly

Start by using only the time tracking part of an app for two or three weeks. Do not change anything else yet. After that short period most teams already know whether daily use feels noticeably lighter. Many begin with one project and expand later.

Before deciding, ask how often you actually need the data. Do you only want monthly totals or also project-level reports for clients? The more detailed the need, the sooner a dedicated tool pays off.

By the way, when you look for free time tracking, it often makes sense to try the free plan first and only upgrade once you miss specific features.

For more practical tips see our post 5 Tipps für effiziente Zeiterfassung im Alltag. Teams already using spreadsheets can also read Zeiterfassung Excel: Vor- und Nachteile im Überblick for a closer look at the usual limits.

In the end the decision is rarely about technology alone. It is about how much time you want to spend managing hours instead of doing the actual work. For many small teams the moment arrives when an app simply becomes the more practical choice – not because Excel is bad, but because the team’s needs have grown.