Switching Time Trackers: What to Do With Your Old Data Before You Move
Changing tools mid-year means your billing history is scattered. Here is how to move without losing the records that matter.
The Switch Feels Urgent Until You Think About What You Are Leaving
You find a better time tracker. It has the features you wanted, the invoicing workflow you have been missing, a timer that does not require four clicks to start. You want to switch immediately.
Then someone asks you to pull the hours for a project from four months ago. And you realize your data is stuck in the old tool, in a format that may not survive the move.
Before you switch, spend thirty minutes thinking about what you are carrying over. Not because the old tool deserves loyalty. Because your billing history does.
Export Everything Before You Cancel
Most time trackers let you export your data as a CSV. Do this before you cancel your subscription or delete your account. Export everything. All clients, all projects, all date ranges.
Label the file clearly. Something like time-log-export-oldtoolname-through-june2024.csv. Store it somewhere you will actually find it. A dedicated folder in your cloud storage, not your desktop.
This export is your fallback. If a client disputes an old invoice, or if an accountant asks about billable hours from last year, that file is what you show them.
What You Actually Need to Migrate
You do not need to import every old session into the new tool. That is usually more work than it is worth and can create confusing double records.
What you need is:
Client list with billing rates. Recreate these manually in the new tool. Do not guess from memory. Pull the rates from your contracts or your old export before you set them up.
Open and in-progress projects. Any project that still has billable work happening needs to move cleanly. Log its start date and the total hours already tracked so your reporting stays accurate.
Invoice records. Keep a copy of what you billed and when. Your new tool should not need to know your full history to function, but you do.
Set a Clean Start Date
Pick a date for the switch. Make it the first of a month if you can. That way your time data in the new tool starts clean, and your old data from that month backward lives in the export file.
Do not try to run both tools in parallel for long. You will miss things. You will double-log. You will create a mess that takes longer to untangle than the switch itself.
One week of overlap at most, just to make sure the new setup works the way you expect. Then stop logging in the old tool entirely.
Rebuild Your Project Structure Intentionally
The switch is a good time to clean up the project categories you let get messy. Old trackers accumulate ghost projects, duplicate clients, and rates that never got updated. Do not copy that chaos into the new tool.
Start with the clients and projects that are active right now. Add historical ones only if you need to run a report that crosses the cutover date.
Time-Trak lets you set up projects with specific billing rates before you log a single hour. Use the switch as a forcing function to set those rates correctly from day one instead of adjusting them later after you have already invoiced.
Screenshot Records Do Not Transfer
If your old tool captured screenshots during sessions, those do not come with you in a CSV export. Before you cancel, download any screenshot archives that matter. Anything tied to an active client or a project where you might still need proof of work.
Once you start using a new tracker with automatic screenshots, the record builds from that point forward. The gap between tools is the window where you have no visual record. Keep that window short.
Make the Move Worth the Disruption
Switching tools has a real cost in setup time. Make sure the new tool actually fixes the problems that made you look for an alternative. If you were losing hours to a clunky logging process, check that the new timer is genuinely faster. If invoicing was the headache, confirm the new tool handles it end to end before you commit.
The best time to switch is the one where you never have to switch again.
Track your time, bill every minute.
Time-Trak is a native Mac and Windows time tracker with a floating timer, automatic screenshots, and one-click invoicing.
Free during beta.
Download Time-Trak →macOS + Windows · Floating widget · Auto screenshots