How to Track Time in Asana (Without Upgrading to Advanced)

If you run client work in Asana, you've probably gone looking for a timer on your tasks and not found one. That's not you missing a setting. Asana's native time tracking is only included in its Advanced plan, which Toggl's write-up puts at $24.99 per user per month billed annually. On Personal or Starter, there's no timer at all.

For a freelancer or a small agency that bills by the hour, that's a lot to pay just to see how long a task took. It also leaves the real job undone, because a number in a time field still has to become an invoice.

Here are the realistic options, from cheapest to most complete.

Option 1: A spreadsheet next to Asana

Keep a Google Sheet with columns for date, client, Asana task, start, end and hours. It's free, and it works for a week or two.

The trouble is that you have to remember to write things down. Most people end up reconstructing their day from memory on Friday, and that is exactly where billable time goes missing.

Option 2: Upgrade to Asana Advanced

If your whole team already needs Advanced for its other features (portfolios, goals, workload), the built-in time tracking comes along for free. It records estimated and actual time on tasks.

What it doesn't do is bill anyone. There are no hourly rates per client and no invoices, so you still export the hours and build the invoice somewhere else.

Option 3: A time-tracking extension that adds a timer to Asana tasks

This is what most freelancers settle on. A browser extension adds a start/stop button right on the Asana task, and the hours land in a separate time-tracking app. The main differences between tools are price (many charge per seat, with minimum seat counts) and whether they can invoice.

Option 4: Track time in Asana and invoice from the same place

This is why we built TimeGoals for Asana. It's a free Chrome extension that puts a clock on every Asana task you open:

1. Click the clock on any task to start a timer. Click again to stop.
2. The Asana project links itself to a TimeGoals project the first time you track a task from it, so there's no mapping step.
3. Turn the hours into an invoice. Pick the client and the period, and TimeGoals builds a PDF invoice from the tracked time and emails it to your client. If you connect Stripe, the client can pay the invoice online by card.

It works on any Asana plan, including free, because it doesn't use Asana's API at all. It reads the task and project from the page you're on.

What it costs

• Asana: any plan, free included.
• TimeGoals Starter: free, with 1 project, so you can try the Asana timer on real work.
• TimeGoals Pro: $12/month flat (or $10/month billed yearly) for unlimited projects, invoices, estimates and expenses. It isn't priced per seat, and every account starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no card needed.

A simple weekly routine

• Start the clock whenever you open an Asana task you're about to work on.
• On Friday, open Reports in TimeGoals and check the week's hours per client.
• At the end of the month, generate one invoice per client from those hours and send it.

That's the whole system. There's no spreadsheet and no copying hours between tools, and you don't have to upgrade Asana to get a timer.

Get TimeGoals for Asana → Free extension, free plan, no credit card.

Pricing mentioned here comes from each company's published pages at the time of writing. Check their current pricing before you decide.