Customer support isn't just handled by support agents anymore. Many engineering teams now spend a significant portion of their sprint responding to bug reports, investigating production issues, assisting enterprise customers, and participating in technical support rotations.
Without tracking that time, it's difficult to answer questions like:
- How much engineering capacity goes toward customer support?
- Which customers require the most engineering effort?
- How much time is spent on incident investigations?
- Should we dedicate engineers to support rotations or hire additional support engineers?
A good time tracking solution provides real data instead of estimates.
Here are several tools worth considering.
1. TMetric
TMetric is a lightweight time tracking platform that's well suited for engineering teams that split their day between development work and customer support.
Useful features include:
- One-click timer
- Project and client tracking
- Task-based time entries
- Detailed reporting
- Billable vs. non-billable hours
- Team workload visibility
- Browser extensions and desktop apps
For developer teams, TMetric works particularly well when support work comes from issue trackers or project management tools. Teams can categorize time by customer, incident, sprint, or support queue to understand where engineering resources are being spent.
Best for:
- Software development teams
- SaaS companies
- Technical support engineers
- Agencies with customer-facing developers
2. Clockify
Clockify offers unlimited time tracking in its free plan and supports projects, tags, reports, and team management.
Engineering teams often use tags to separate coding, debugging, production support, and customer requests, making it easier to analyze how engineering time is distributed.
Best for:
- Small engineering teams
- Startups
- Open-source projects
3. Toggl Track
Toggl Track focuses on simplicity and speed.
Developers can quickly start timers while working on support tickets, investigating bugs, or participating in incident response. The reporting features make it easy to identify recurring support work that impacts development velocity.
Best for:
- Individual developers
- Small product teams
- Engineering consultants
4. Harvest
Harvest combines time tracking with invoicing and expense management.
If your developers provide paid support, consulting, or implementation services, Harvest can simplify billing by connecting tracked hours directly to invoices.
Best for:
- Consulting companies
- Software agencies
- Customer implementation teams
5. Everhour
Everhour integrates closely with project management platforms, making it attractive for engineering teams already using tools like Jira, Asana, Trello, or ClickUp.
Support work can be tracked alongside feature development without requiring developers to switch between multiple applications.
Best for:
- Agile teams
- Scrum environments
- Jira-heavy workflows
6. Tempo Timesheets
Tempo Timesheets is one of the most popular choices for organizations running Jira.
Because many support requests eventually become Jira issues, developers can log time directly against tickets while maintaining accurate records for sprint planning and customer support reporting.
Best for:
- Jira users
- Enterprise engineering teams
- Technical support organizations
7. Hubstaff
Hubstaff extends beyond time tracking by offering productivity metrics, workforce management, scheduling, and reporting.
For distributed engineering organizations with dedicated support rotations, it provides additional visibility into team activity and workloads.
Best for:
- Remote engineering teams
- Distributed technical support
- Managed service providers
What Developers Should Look For
Not every time tracker fits an engineering workflow. If your developers participate in customer support, consider these capabilities:
- Fast timer with minimal interruption
- Git-friendly workflow
- Jira or issue tracker integration
- API availability
- Tags for incidents, bugs, and customer requests
- Reporting by project, customer, or sprint
- Team dashboards
- Exportable reports for capacity planning
The less friction there is when logging time, the more accurate your engineering metrics will be.
Final Thoughts
Customer support is an essential part of software development, but it's often invisible when planning engineering capacity. Tracking support time helps teams understand where effort is going, improve sprint planning, justify staffing decisions, and identify recurring issues that deserve long-term fixes.
Whether you're supporting enterprise customers, maintaining open-source software, or participating in on-call rotations, using a dedicated time tracking tool can provide valuable insights into your team's workload. Solutions like TMetric, Clockify, Toggl Track, Harvest, Everhour, Tempo Timesheets, and Hubstaff each address different engineering needs, so the right choice depends on your workflow, integrations, and reporting requirements.
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