My Hours vs. Toggl Track for Agencies

My Hours offers comprehensive budgeting options, with user-friendly tools that make it easy to monitor expenditure based on project type and scope.

You can choose to set a single budget for the entire project or break it down into mini budgets per task for more control.

From there, you have three budget-setting options:

1. Time-based budgets (total hours)
2. Billable amount budgets 
3. Cost-based budgets (covering time, billable hours, and expenses)

Once you have set the budget, a handy progress bar will show you expenditure at a glance. Plus, for added oversight, you can also set an automated alert to ping you when a certain percentage has been spent.

Budgets can be a one-off thing or set to restart each month, making them suitable for both fixed and recurring projects.

This is one of Toggl’s weakest areas, since the platform offers no monetary budget tracking options.

The only thing that comes close is the ability to set time estimates. This allows you to input the number of hours you think a project will take. As time is tracked, the project screen will tell you how much time is remaining.

You can also track expenditure for flat fee projects and set up an alert to notify you when a certain amount has been spent. However, it’s not a budget per se, and you can’t divide it between tasks.

There’s no competition: My Hours wins hands down for budget tracking. So, if this is an important part of agency financial management, you’ll likely become frustrated with Toggl’s limitations.

With My Hours, capturing billable rates is simple. Set a labor rate and billable rate per user, and you’re good to go. If you need to adjust the user billable rates according to different projects, then you can do this when assigning users to a project.

As time is tracked, so are the labor rate and billable rate, giving you real-time insight into profitability.

Additionally, users can mark time entries as billable or not, which is useful when a user completes project-related work that isn’t billable to a client.

For expenses, users create an entry the same way they would for time. Each expense is linked to a project and/or task, along with the amount and an uploaded copy of a receipt or invoice.

Like time entries, expenses can be marked as billable or non-billable. Plus, for supporting information, you can add a description and any relevant tags.

Toggl also allows you to set user billable rates and labor rates, but access is split across plans. Billable rates are available on the Starter plan, while labor rates are locked behind the Premium tier, which can feel unnecessarily restrictive.

Like My Hours, you can configure unique user rates at the project level and mark time entries as billable or non-billable.

Expense capture is where things get a bit complicated. Expenses aren’t managed directly within Toggle Track; instead, you must connect your account to Toggl Work to access this feature. Once connected, you can either upload a receipt (and an AI agent will scan and input the information) or you can enter the expense details manually.

But the real sticking point is that you cannot link expenses to projects and tasks. They sit completely separately from the rest of your billable data, making it difficult to get a full understanding of true project costs.

My Hours’ billable and expense data sit within the same ecosystem, with all costs linked directly to projects, tasks, and budgets. Because of this, it's easier for you to keep on top of all expenditures without switching between platforms.

Toggl Track’s AI receipt reader is a nice touch, but maintaining a separation between billable and expense-based costs is a real letdown. For agencies, this can pose a problem when managing expenditure.

Whether you need to capture more data or organize it more effectively, My Hours has two ways to do it.

First, you can create unlimited custom tags and apply them to both time and expense entries. These can be used for virtually any reason, such as distinguishing between CapEx and OpEx or defining allowable and unallowable costs.

The second option is to create custom fields. You can pick from text, numerical, or dropdown fields, making them flexible for different purposes. Up to three custom fields can be added to clients, projects, tasks, users, and time/expense entries. These are great for capturing data like cost center codes or expense data, such as mileage.

Toggl Track supports custom tags for time entries, allowing teams to organize and filter tracked time in much the same way as My Hours. However, these tags cannot be applied to expense entries in Toggl Work.

It’s also not possible to create any custom data fields on entities, so you’re pretty limited in the amount of customized data you can apply.

My Hours offers a lot more flexibility with wider customization abilities. This allows you to create datasets that align with your agency's needs, without relying on other tools.

It’s good that Toggl includes custom tags, but it would be useful to have a bit more range. However, with over 100 native integrations, Toggl may be expecting you to rely on third-party integrations to fill in the data gaps.

Using a simple clients > projects > tasks hierarchy, My Hours makes it easy to organize deliverables and keep all data in the right place.

Each client functions as its own separate workspace, within client spaces, where you can create unlimited projects and tasks. For every client, you can also input crucial info, such as contact details and tax numbers.

At the project level, the overview screen lets you add custom IDs and descriptions, configure billing and budgeting options, and assign users. From there, you can create the relevant tasks for each project.

Tasks support comprehensive data, too, including custom IDs and descriptions, helping users understand each deliverable. For larger projects, tasks can be organized into color-coded task lists, keeping everything tidy and easy to find.

Like My Hours, Toggl Track also follows a client > project > task hierarchy, but the overall setup is more simplistic in comparison.

For example, client records are limited to a name only, with no option to store additional details. Similarly, projects and tasks don’t support descriptions or ID numbers, which restricts how much info can be captured.

This can pose a problem for larger agencies that have high volumes of deliverables or similar-sounding tasks, because there’s no way to add extra information that would be useful for the user.

Toggl Track keeps tasks flat under a project, no grouping layer, though you can tag time entries. To organize tasks into segments or lists, you'd need Toggl Plan, a separate product with its own subscription. My Hours groups tasks into task lists with templates, built into the same tool you already use for time and billing.

Toggl Track works if you are a small agency with easily identifiable projects and tasks. If, however, you deal with more complex setups or detailed projects, My Hours offers a better solution for growing agencies to keep everything organized and easily identifiable.

Depending on your client contracts, you can set up billing structures in My Hours to match.

You can pick from several options:

• User billable rate: Takes the hourly billable rate of each user assigned to a project.
• Task-based rate: Applies a single hourly rate per task, no matter who is working on it.
• Project-based rate: A single hourly fee across the whole project, regardless of users or tasks.
• Flat fee: A single, fixed fee for the whole project, regardless of time tracked.
• Not billable: No billable rates are applied, but labor rates are still tracked. Useful for internal projects that are not invoiced.

Whichever billing type you pick, it will apply across the entire project.

Toggl offers the same billing options as My Hours, but they work a little differently.

Rather than applying the same billing type across the entire project, you have hierarchies where one rate will supersede another.

For example, if you set a project-based rate, you can also set a new rate for a specific task. The task rate will then override the project rate for that task only. This gives you more control over rates, but it’s easy to get confused or apply the wrong rate. Still, it’s useful for agencies with complex project billing needs.

My Hours has simpler and more user-friendly billable rates. However, it’s still possible to apply detailed billing by using the task-based rates.

Toggl gives you more granularity, but it might be overkill for some, especially for simple billing requirements.

Reporting is key for agencies to keep clients updated and stakeholders satisfied. Therefore, My Hours has made it as easy as possible to create custom reports in a few clicks.

Reporting options include the Dashboard report, which provides a visual overview of profitability and other metrics, complete with graphs.

The Detailed report is for when you want to dig into granular data. Choose from an extensive selection of filters and data columns to retrieve the precise information you need. Save your report settings as templates to generate future reports in a single click.

There’s also a handy scheduling tool where My Hours generates a report and then automatically emails it to recipients. Reports can also be downloaded in PDF or XLS format.

For at-a-glance profitability, the trends and forecast tool on each project dashboard is really convenient. It shows you whether you’re on the right track with your spending or need to scale back.

Toggl’s reporting feature is also extensive and easy to use. As well as summaries and detailed views, there are also specific reports for workloads and profitability.

The profitability report is very useful, since it shows you exactly what your top and bottom earners are. However, bear in mind that if you are subscribed to a plan that doesn’t include labor rates, the reporting data will be limited.

The detailed report works similarly to My Hours, yet, in comparison, you have fewer options for filters and data columns to choose from.

When it comes to sending reports, you can generate a shareable link or download them in PDF, CSV, and XLS format.

Overall, Toggl’s overview screens are more readable than My Hours. They’re laid out well, and the specific profitability report is very beneficial.

However, when it comes to deep data, My Hours delivers. It offers greater granularity than Toggl Track, making it a better choice for analysis.

For each client, all billable time and expense data can be quickly pulled onto an invoice and sent for payment.

You configure the invoice page, add in any tax and discount details, and pick the date range. Invoices are emailed directly to clients from within the My Hours platform.

Unfortunately, there are no recurring invoicing capabilities, so it’s a largely manual process. However, it’s simple and ideal for smaller agencies with a handful of clients.

Alternatively, if you need better invoicing, you can integrate with QuickBooks or Xero and send the data over.

Toggl’s invoicing feature sits within the reporting tool. To send an invoice, you must first generate a report with the right data, as there’s no specific “invoice” report available. This setup can be a bit confusing, particularly for teams expecting a more streamlined invoicing workflow.

In Toggl Work, the invoicing options are better with a proper template. But remember, you can only pull expense data, not the billable time data, which limits its usefulness.

If Toggl combined these two platforms, the tool would become a lot more powerful. That said, Toggl integrates with multiple accounting platforms, so it’s likely that it supports a connection with your preferred financial software.

Both Toggl and My Hours support simple invoicing, but neither platform’s tools are particularly powerful.

However, My Hours takes the edge because it can pull billable and expense data in one system, saving you from having to generate two separate invoices.

Note: Both platforms offer customized enterprise pricing.

Both platforms offer a free plan, two paid plans, and enterprise pricing.

My Hours is more affordable, especially considering the features you get. For growing agencies, this makes it a better value proposition.