Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App · Focus Booster Review

Focus Booster Review Tutiorial

Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App · Focus Booster Review

Productivity Advice for cell phone or tablet

This page is optimized for desktop or laptop computers.

For example, the calculator, the screenshots, the video, the reviews and the tools used for this page are much better enjoyed on a large screen.

Of course, you’re welcome to read on, but I wouldn’t be any good at productivity if I didn’t point this out 🙄

My advice: just email this post to yourself with the default Share Option on your device. Then you can read comfortably on a large screen whenever you’re ready. 

It’s just a tip!

What is Focus Booster Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App?

This is a great and very affordable time tracker and pomodoro technique tool (around 5 dollars per month at the time of writing) to be more productive and enjoy very cheap time tracking.

I use it mainly for two purposes:

      1. Pomodoro timer to keep focused
      2. Time tracker for client-related activities

Focus Booster App gives you insight into what you’ve spent your time on and helps you overcome distractions.

Your Pomodoro sessions are automatically recorded, so you can review your output to improve productivity or track client work.

This last feature alone saves me quite some time. No more manual recording, checking for appointments in your calendar to see how much time you spent, etc. Awesome time tracker = awesome time saver!

Online and for Windows, Mac, and mobile apps for iPhone (iOS) and Android.

 

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The so-called Pomodoro (Italian for tomato) Technique will help you stay focused and get things done.

There are multiple explanations for why it has been called Pomodoro.

The first is that the inventor of the technique used a time tracker in the shape of a pomodoro.The second is that he used to smash a pomodoro every task done. And of course there are even more urban myths going around on the internet.

Well, I don’t care what the actual origin story is of this technique.

The only thing that matters to me is that it actually works!

And because it says more than 1000 words, I invite you to just take a look at the image below. Then you will know what the Pomodoro Technique is all about. 

Simple yet effective 🍅🍅

 

Focus Booster Pomodoro Technique

Use Focus Booster App. It Will Make You Much More Productive

Why did I need the Focus Booster Time Tracker?

Two reasons:

1) I have some legacy clients from the past in online marketing advice, SEO etc. I needed simple time tracking software to show them the exact hours I spent.

2) Distractions are everywhere. That’s when I ran into the famous pomodoro technique. I wanted a simple yet effective pomodoro tracker to apply this technique in my daily routine.

Focus Booster App Time Savings Calculator

Calculate your time saved or the extra money you could make with the calculator below.

If you need some guidance, please watch my tutorial further on this page for an explanation and demonstration.

Or if you just want to know the number of hours you could save, set the Fee or rate per hour to 1.

Obviously, then it should read Hours saved per week instead of Extra money per week and the outcome is in hours instead of USD. 

15
How many times do you log time per week
5
The time in minutes you need for logging time, looking up entries for a specific client, calculating time per entry, adding up the entries for this client, calculating the total hours/minutes and determining the total fee for the client.
60
Enter the average fee that you charge your customers. Otherwise, enter your internal rate or estimated worth per hour.
Extra money per week 

Multiply this by 40 for your savings or extra money per year!

* = With Focus Booster, it takes a few minutes per week to get the amount due for a client in a given period.
But since this is negligible, we don’t take this into account in this calculation.

Focus Booster Time Tracking App Tutorial Video

Watch my tutorial to see Focus Booster App in action. Both the Time Tracker and the Pomodoro Technique App.

 

Focus Booster Time Tracking Tool and Pomodoro Technique App Screenshots

Focus Booster App for mobile.

With Focus Booster you can see what you can bill your clients in a few seconds. This list can serve as proof as well. 

Focus Booster Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App Features & Benefits List

Dictate Features & Benefits Image
  • Very easy to set up

  • User-friendly

  • Excellent time tracker. Copy paste settings for multiple clients

  • Useful analytics

  • Better for your body and mind

  • Huge time saver

    No need to track time via Excel, stopwatches, calendar etc.. Exit timesheets!
    No need to calculate total fee. Just filter by client and period. Done!

  • Cheap, so a no-brainer

    Free plan available
    Professional plan is only $ 4,99 per month (2020)

Olaf's Favorite Feature


If you enter an hourly fee for a client, it will automatically calculate the total billable sum. Just filter by period and the tag of the job and the amount of dollars rolls out. Fantastic!

Focus Booster Time Tracker Tool and Pomodoro Timer Characteristics

Type: Time Management

Pricing: Paid

Free trial: Yes (30 days)

Difficulty:
2/5

Focus Booster Time Tracker and Pomodoro Timer Reviews

Focus Booster Reviews 1
Focus Booster Reviews 2
Focus Booster Reviews 3

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Frequently Asked Questions

Software tools are always in continuous development. This means that it’s likely that the tool that I’m showing in the tutorial and/or in the screenshots will be different today. The information itself will just be as valid though.

If you need support with one of the tools, please go to the support page of the tool itself. Follow the buttons on this page to go to the tool and search for their support. Every tool has a frequently asked questions section and/or a support department where you can create a ticket. If you do email me with a support question, it just won’t get answered, sorry. Otherwise I could never be productive and wouldn’t be able to provide value anymore 🙄 

If your question can’t be found in these faq’s and you feel that it would really benefit you and other readers to be answered, please send me an email 📧

Tools used to create this post

Focus Booster Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App Video Transcript

Hi,

If you, like me, work for clients sometimes then it’s obvious you need a time tracker tool. 

Because if you are going to invoice these clients, you need to know how many hours or minutes you have worked and what the amount should be on the invoice.

So, I was in need of a simple yet effective tool to make this happen.

Another thing I needed was something to support the Pomodoro Technique.

If you don’t know what the Pomodoro Technique is, I will explain to you in a minute. 

But effectively it’s a tool you can use to get your things done in time without being distracted by something else. So, if you need this tool as well, stay tuned and I will explain it to you in a second.

My name is Olaf and I am your ToolFinderr.


00:48 Why did I need 
Time Tracking Software and the Pomodoro Method App?

So as I said, I have some legacy clients from the past regarding online marketing advice, SEO and other stuff I do for them.

For this, I used to spend hours per a month to find out what hours I worked for which client and how much money I should bill them

I thought to myself there must be an easier way to keep track of my time without spending top dollar for complicated software tools that big companies or at least companies with 20, 30 employees would need.

So, something for a self-employed guy like me who needs a time tracker tool to accommodate multiple clients.

Another thing is, as you know I am into productivity and I want to get my shit done. But distractions are everywhere.

Your telephone, your email other tasks, somebody barging in with a cup of coffee etc. So in my search over the years, I ran into the famous Pomodoro Technique which I’m going to explain to you in a minute.

And I wanted a simple yet effective tool to accommodate this and to support the Pomodoro Technique, so I could stay focused and get things done.

For example, making this video now is one Pomodoro.


02:10 What is the Pomodoro Technique?

So, what is the Pomodoro Technique?

Well, it’s actually a very useful tomato because Pomodoro is nothing else than tomato and the story goes that the inventor of this system well, there are two versions.

One of them is that he used a timer in the shape of a tomato to time his sessions.

Another one is that it was this Italian guy who had the habit of smashing one Pomodoro after each task to celebrate the finishing of the task.

Well, you choose whichever you like most but the Pomodoro Technique is very simple.

You plan your task you say okay, I need one Pomodoro for this or maybe two or three, four but let’s say one, you do this one Pomodoro without any distraction and normally the Pomodoro, one Pomodoro stands for 25 minutes but you can change this into the time that you like.

I use 45 minutes because in my experience, 25 is just too short to get anything done. In 45 minutes I can for example record this video. So, this is for me: 45 minutes then a 10-minute break and after four Pomodoros, you can take a longer break of like 30 minutes, but these are all things you can set for yourself.

The key of this is to keep this focused, so these 25 minutes or 30 or 45 whatever you want, should be protected.

As they say here, “Protect your Pomodoro!” so be focused, stay on your task and only be distracted when it’s time for your break.

So, I needed a tool that could guide me and help me with this technique as well.


04:01 Client Example for the Time Tracking App

I found Focus Booster and this is an example of the time checking that I just explained.

So for example in this case it has something to do with the website and this is the label. What you can do with Focus Booster is when you start your 45 minutes, in my case I just say this is Pomodoro in this case site B2 and my client is X.

And then what I can do is over a month or week or whatever I’m going to bill them on, is I just like it says here. You just filter it by the date, you filter it by client and if you want the label. 

After that, if you have already set your hourly fee for this client, Focus Booster time tracker app automatically calculates the number of hours and minutes and the number of dollars you have earned for this client in this period.

This is for me a really great example of time tracking. 

It’s

  • simple
  • easy 
  • very user friendly

And what I do is I just copy and paste this report and I send it to my client along with the invoice. Easy does it.


5:12 What are the benefits of this pomodoro clock and time tracker?

So, what are the benefits of the Focus Booster Time tracking software?

Well, it’s:

  • it’s very simple and lightweight
  • easy to set up
  • very user-friendly
  • It has some useful analytics so you can even be more productive
  • If you can see where your gaps are, it’s better for your body and mind

I should explain this last part maybe… 

It’s better for your body because in the past if I was sitting behind my computer and sit there for 2-3 hours without having a break altogether.

And this is terrible for your back and bad for your body in general. But also bad for your mind because scientifically it has been proven that after 45 minutes you will be distracted and your span of attention is gone.

So, it’s better for your body and mind to use some technique that forces you to focus on a task and after this task then you can just enjoy a little break.

For me, it’s a huge time saver because I don’t need to track time via Excel anymore or having a stopwatch or timer or calculate it through my calendar entries.

No more timesheets – just whenever you start a session, click on the client and the task and it will be calculated automatically.

Also, as you have just seen in the previous slide, there’s no need to calculate your total fee. Your fee is in the system already, just filter by client and period and you’re done.

It’s very cheap so for me this was a no-brainer. I started with the free plan because I just wanted to know how this works, but soon I found out that it worked just fine. 

Although I needed the extra options within the professional plan to be able to track time for multiple clients and to filter by that. And this is only five dollars a month, so it will earn itself back in one day and I can recommend this wholeheartedly.

It’s a brilliant tool. There might be more fancy ones with more options and stuff, but I don’t need these options.

I just needed a simple time tracker and a Pomodoro Technique app.


07:30 Focus Booster App Reviews

So, what are people saying about it?

Some reviews, Focus Booster is a step above your average.

It also allows you to record all your sessions and track your productivity and Zapier says if you’re a freelancer regularly working with many different clients it’s important to be able to keep up to date with where you’re spending the bulk of your time.

That’s where Focus Booster is one of the best Pomodoro Technique apps out there. With its professional plan, you can use it as a time tracking app as well as a Pomodoro Technique timer. Keeping track of where your efforts are most spent among your clients.

Well, this is exactly what I just told you and what I use Focus Booster for: time tracking and Pomodoro technique app in one.

And here you see the editor rating of almost four stars and you can see there’s a free plan and there is a maximum of five dollars a month for the professional plan.


08:18 Time saved with this Focus Booster 
Time Tracker and Pomodoro Technique App

To calculate how much time you could save, how much money you could make extra by using this tool, I made a calculator and this calculator consists of three different variables.

You have your timesheet entries, you have your time spent per entry. So, a timesheet entry would be worth 40 minutes per client and I have to enter this somewhere in the system.

So maybe in my calendar or I can log in Excel or some other sheet. But somewhere I have to log the client, the activity, and the time.

And if you would then report upon this time entries, then you:

  • log the time first looking up an entry for a specific client
  • calculate the time
  • add up the entries for the specific client
  • calculate the total hours and minutes
  • specify the total fee for the client by multiplying this by the fee that you charge this client

So for every entry in total there will be at least five minutes of work around it. And I don’t know if you do your own time tracking, but maybe you will know that if you work for a week or two weeks, and you do your timesheets, it easily takes up a couple of hours to do.

And the third variable is of course the client fee or the rate per hour. So, if you are self-employed and you have a fee that you charge your clients then saving time is money because the time you save you can use to work for other clients for your regular fee.

If you don’t have clients you still will would save a lot of time of course and you calculate the worth of that time by entering your internal rate or estimated worth per hour.

So let’s go to the calculator, there it is.

If we said you have like three entries per work week and this is all per week then you would end up like 15 entries per week that you have to do.

The time you spend per entry including reporting to clients and calculating all the stuff would be five minutes and the fee you can charge your client would be 60 dollars.

In that case, you would save 37.50 dollars every week with Focus Booster and you can multiply this by 40 to find your savings per year so that would be like 1,500 dollars I think. Just by using this tool!

And of course it’s five dollars per month. So, it’s 60 dollars per year but that is negligible. As is the time that you should spend to find out the amount you can bill your client. 

It’s only a couple of minutes per week. So and what I said earlier, with Focus Booster it only takes a few minutes per week to get the amount due for a client in a given period. 

But it’s so few that we don’t take this into account. But if you want, you can knock a few dollars off the savings that you have to adjust.

Let’s assume you only have one entry a day, you spend only three minutes per entry and your internal rate is 30 dollars. This is like the worst case in everything. Then still it would save you like fifteen dollars per month. And then you subtract the five dollars for the plan and you still would earn ten dollars. 

But more normal would be like 15 or even 30 of these entries and these five minutes is actually pretty default because it’s very difficult to go below this. And if you have like 60 dollars that you can charge your customers or maybe even 100, then you can see what you would save per year.

So, that would be like 5,000 dollars per year saved by using this app, that costs you 60 dollar a year in total.

For me, that’s a no-brainer.

I’m more or less at this level, like this. So, for me, I would save or could earn 50 dollars per week more by using this app.

I hope it works out for you as well, I’m pretty sure it does if you have only a couple of clients, still it would save you a lot of time and money.


12:56 Focus Booster App Tutorial

All right, let’s go back to the presentation and of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So, let’s go to the tool itself.

Here we are in the tool itself, what you see here in this window is the time tracker. In this case, the label is website and the client is “Huisarts NL” and my time is 45 minutes. So, if I start clicking on it the time tracking software will run and you can put this in another window or minimize it.

Another option would be to have the mini time tracker, so instead of the large one you could drag this somewhere over here or on another screen as well.

So if I start a job and I will click this again, immediately you see that if you’re already working on a task and you have to quit in the middle of something… Obviously, you should prevent this from happening, but if it does happen it will ask you if you would like to add the minutes you just spent to your timesheet for this client.

So, let’s assume you are 20 minutes in and the phone rings and you have to answer it, then it will ask you if you would like to add the 20 minutes to the client’s timesheet. So in this case I will say No and I will show you some other options. I will just enlarge this now for clarity.

We also have the session timer. This is what we see over here if you will start, you can choose from different labels or no label. And you can choose from your active clients or non-active clients, depending on what you want. 

You can choose a label and a client. You can filter later by client and or by label so you should be careful about how many labels you will add because sometimes it will get messy.

So, my advice would be: have some high over tags and obviously only one client per customer.

What you can do here is set your preferences, for example, the session length you can set to 45 as suggested in the Pomodoro technique.

I have set it to 45 minutes to enable me to really accomplish a task in this set period of time.

I don’t want the ticking sound, I do want the session complete sound and after 45 minutes I will take a 10-minute coffee break. And I don’t want it to sound but I do want to play the complete sound when my break is over.

I do want the mini-timer option and my theme will be light you can also choose dark obviously but I prefer light.

And another option is from here to go to your account. So, when I go to my account, I already opened this, then you and end up over here. 

And this is where all your timesheets are being gathered. You can find them and filter them and report over them easily.

So in this case we are in the timesheets. And for example, if I go back to yesterday I have a couple of Pomodoros and as you can see those were two sessions. They were 45 minutes each. And then we can go back and see we have a couple of those in the system.

So, we have a couple of options in the app. The timesheet, which is where we are now, the clients as you can see: there are active clients which you can choose from in your dropdown that we saw earlier. And we have non-active clients but in this case, let’s just show only the active clients.

What you can do here is you can edit the hourly rate to calculate with. So, when you have like 120 over here it will just calculate the time that you’ve spent on this client in a certain period and it will calculate the total amount of dollars that you can bill this client for. Which is obviously very easy! So, these are the clients, and then we have reports.

First of all we end up in the dashboard so you can see how productive you have been in a certain period per weekday, your revenue time by client and revenue by client.

And all of this will be per period, so if I would change this to let’s say 1st of August until 22nd it will change and you can see your productivity change as well.

You can also display this in actual time instead of sessions. But for now, we’ll just leave it at this and this is what I use if I want to bill my clients.

For example, if I want to bill the client Huisarts over this month September, I could enter the client which is this one.

I don’t choose a specific label for this because I want to bill them everything in one go. But if you want you can choose one of the labels.

I choose the date range so that would be September first until 22nd. I could filter it and what you can see now is it will just add up all the time I’ve spent on this client. Then it will multiply this by the amount that I will bill the client per hour and it ends up with three hours and 15 minutes worked, which is 460 dollars earned.

So, what I do in this case is as follows. At the end of the month I bill my clients and I just make a print screen of this. I save it and then I will send this with my invoice to the client immediately in one go. So, they will have the invoice and an explanation of the timesheets together.

As you can see now: normally you would work with normal entries, but you could also have manual entries. For example, if you have a meeting with a client that is not timed by the Focus Booster timer. 

Or you have done some work on another computer or another location or not on a computer for example in meetings or whatever, you can add those by adding a manual entry. 

So, in this case we go to the timesheets again and I would choose a new entry for this client. I would say well, let’s say it concerns the website again, we had a discussion a meeting about this.

I could enter a start time and the end time and then I would say I spent like 120 minutes and I would create this entry and now you can see this is over here at today.

So in this is how it works. It’s very easy, straightforward, it’s not complicated at all but it will save you a lot of time working with Focus Booster instead of just timesheets in your Excel or on your telephone or wherever.

Another thing I would like to show you is you get these neat weekly productivity reports.

So, here’s what you achieved last week and if you go to your dashboard, you will see what we just saw and it will just give you a high overview on what you have done last week and how productive you have been.

So to summarize, I am very enthusiastic about Focus Booster because it keeps me focused and sharp.

What is also good about it is there is no way to pause it. 

So it really forces you to focus your attention on the coming 45 minutes straight without distractions. No telephone and stuff. 

And the ease of use and simplicity with which you can bill your clients every week or two weeks or every month or whatever you want by filtering the period and filtering by client and just send them the timesheet overview.

Okay, I hope you like this and I will see you in the next video.

Good luck 🍀🙏

Olaf the ToolFinderr

Olaf the ToolFinderr
[email protected]

Olaf "the ToolFinderr" is a full-time internet marketer with a passion for systems and tools. His goal and drive is to help you get more structural and recurring revenue in less time. Or, if you are working for someone else, make you as productive as you will ever be. His secret ingredient: loads of TOOLS. Founded in 1970, 100% online since 2014.