Rize – Auto Time Tracking for Agencies

Overview

In today’s fast-paced digital business environment, manual time tracking has become a significant productivity bottleneck and accuracy challenge for teams and agencies. Enter Rize, an innovative AI-powered time tracking platform designed to revolutionize how teams monitor their work and optimize their productivity. Founded by Will Goto and Macgill Davis, experienced engineers from Twitter and Periscope, Rize automatically tracks digital activity across desktop environments, intelligently categorizes entries to specific clients, projects, and tasks, and frees teams from the tedious burden of manual time logging.

Built specifically for productivity optimization and team collaboration, Rize has grown to serve tens of thousands of daily active users. The platform provides real-time visibility into team efforts while seamlessly integrating with existing workflows, making it an indispensable tool for modern agencies, freelancers, and distributed teams seeking to maximize billable hour accuracy and operational efficiency.

Key Features

Rize delivers a comprehensive suite of sophisticated features designed to make time tracking effortless, accurate, and deeply insightful for both individual users and collaborative teams:

• Advanced automatic time tracking with AI precision: Rize operates continuously in the background across macOS and Windows systems, capturing all digital activity including application usage, website visits, and document interactions without requiring manual timer management, while maintaining user privacy through locally processed data analysis.
• AI-powered activity categorization and project assignment: Leveraging machine learning algorithms trained on productivity patterns, Rize automatically categorizes tracked activities and intelligently assigns them to relevant clients, projects, or tasks based on learned behaviors, contextual clues, and user-defined rules that improve accuracy over time.
• Real-time team insights and collaborative dashboards: Gain immediate visibility into team performance, project progress, and productivity trends through intuitive dashboards that provide managers with comprehensive overviews of individual and collective team activity while respecting individual privacy boundaries.
• Comprehensive client and project management: Effortlessly organize time entries through sophisticated tagging systems that link activities to specific clients, projects, and tasks, enabling accurate billing, detailed project analytics, and streamlined client reporting with customizable hourly rates and billing strategies.
• Advanced team performance analytics and productivity optimization: Access detailed analytics that reveal how teams spend their time, identify productivity patterns, detect context switching behaviors, analyze focus time quality, and provide actionable insights for workflow optimization and capacity planning.
• Extensive third-party integrations and workflow automation: Rize integrates seamlessly with essential business tools including Google Calendar, Outlook, ClickUp for task management, and Zapier for workflow automation, ensuring smooth transitions and enhanced functionality within existing technology ecosystems.

How It Works

Understanding Rize’s sophisticated operation reveals both its simplicity for end users and its powerful analytical capabilities for teams seeking comprehensive time management solutions.

Once installed on team members’ devices, Rize operates discretely in the background, continuously monitoring digital activity through secure, privacy-respecting methods. The platform tracks application usage, website visits, document interactions, and system activity while maintaining strict user privacy controls and allowing customization of what data is collected and stored.

Rize’s sophisticated AI engine processes this raw activity data using machine learning algorithms specifically trained for productivity analysis. The system intelligently categorizes work activities, automatically assigns time to appropriate clients, projects, or tasks based on learned patterns, and generates detailed time entries with contextual descriptions that eliminate the need for manual logging.

The platform’s Teams functionality enables collaborative time management where team administrators can create shared clients, projects, and tasks that all team members can use for consistent time categorization. Real-time dashboards provide managers with comprehensive visibility into team productivity, project allocations, and billable hour tracking while maintaining individual privacy through aggregated reporting.

Users retain complete control over their data with the ability to review, edit, and approve all time logs before finalization. The platform supports both automated and manual time entry methods, includes meeting integration through calendar synchronization, and provides offline time tracking capabilities for comprehensive activity coverage.

Use Cases

Rize’s versatile design addresses diverse professional environments and team structures, providing specialized solutions for various business models and productivity optimization needs:

• Creative agencies managing complex client billable hours: Accurately track time across multiple client projects, campaigns, and deliverables to ensure precise billing, profitability analysis, and resource allocation while maintaining transparency with clients through detailed reporting and professional PDF exports.
• Remote and distributed teams improving productivity visibility: Gain comprehensive insights into remote team activity patterns, identify productivity bottlenecks, optimize distributed workflows, and maintain team cohesion without invasive monitoring through privacy-respecting analytics and collaborative project tracking.
• Freelancers and consultants tracking multi-client work: Effortlessly manage time allocation across multiple clients and projects, simplify invoicing processes through automated billable hour calculation, and maintain detailed work logs for client communication and business development purposes.
• Project managers monitoring team capacity and output: Maintain real-time visibility into project progress, individual team member contributions, resource utilization, and deadline adherence while ensuring projects remain within budget constraints and timeline requirements through predictive analytics and capacity planning tools.
• Professional services firms optimizing resource allocation: Analyze team productivity patterns, identify high-value activities, optimize billable hour ratios, and make data-driven decisions about staffing, project scoping, and client engagement strategies through comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities.

Pros \& Cons

Rize offers significant advantages for modern teams while presenting certain considerations that organizations should evaluate when implementing automated time tracking solutions:

Advantages

• Complete elimination of manual time entry reducing administrative overhead: Automated background tracking captures all work activity without requiring employees to remember starting and stopping timers, dramatically reducing time spent on administrative tasks while improving accuracy and consistency across all team members.
• Real-time visibility into team productivity and project progress: Managers gain immediate insights into team performance, project status, and resource allocation through comprehensive dashboards that enable proactive decision-making and rapid response to productivity challenges or resource constraints.
• Sophisticated AI-powered analytics providing actionable productivity insights: Advanced machine learning algorithms analyze work patterns, identify optimization opportunities, detect focus time quality, and provide personalized recommendations for improving individual and team productivity based on actual usage data.
• Seamless integration with existing business tools and workflows: Comprehensive integration capabilities with popular productivity tools, project management platforms, and business applications ensure Rize enhances rather than disrupts existing workflows while providing centralized time tracking across all business systems.
• Privacy-respecting approach balancing oversight with individual autonomy: The platform provides managers with essential productivity insights while maintaining employee privacy through aggregated reporting, user-controlled data sharing, and transparent privacy policies that build trust and encourage adoption.

Disadvantages

• Background tracking permissions may raise privacy concerns for some users: Continuous monitoring of digital activity requires comprehensive system permissions that some team members may find intrusive, potentially requiring change management support and clear privacy policy communication to ensure comfortable adoption.
• Limited effectiveness for non-digital workflows and offline work activities: Teams with significant offline work components, manual processes, or non-computer-based activities may find Rize less comprehensive for total productivity analysis, requiring supplemental tracking methods for complete visibility.
• Potential over-reliance on automated categorization requiring manual oversight: While AI categorization is sophisticated, complex or unusual work patterns may require regular manual review and adjustment to ensure accurate client and project attribution, particularly during initial setup and workflow changes.

How Does It Compare?

When evaluated against the competitive landscape of time tracking and productivity solutions in 2025, Rize establishes a unique position through its AI-first approach and comprehensive team collaboration features.

Toggl Track (2025): Toggl Track has evolved significantly with enhanced reporting capabilities, advanced filtering options, and improved team collaboration features in 2025. The platform offers powerful project management integration, comprehensive reporting with 11+ filter properties, and extensive third-party integrations including Jira, Salesforce, and Asana. However, Toggl Track primarily relies on manual timer control and user-initiated tracking, requiring team members to actively start and stop timers for each task. While Toggl offers background tracking as an optional feature, it lacks the sophisticated AI-powered automatic categorization and intelligent project assignment that Rize provides. Toggl excels in traditional time tracking workflows and offers strong reporting capabilities, but Rize provides superior automation and reduces the cognitive overhead required for accurate time tracking.

Clockify (2025): Clockify continues to provide comprehensive time tracking functionality with expanded features including advanced scheduling, team capacity management, enhanced mobile applications, and improved automation capabilities. The platform offers robust project management features, GPS tracking for mobile teams, and comprehensive reporting across free and paid tiers. However, Clockify operates primarily on manual time tracking principles where users must actively manage timers, select projects, and categorize activities. While Clockify includes auto-tracking features in its desktop application, these require manual conversion of tracked activity into time entries. Rize differentiates itself through fully automated AI-powered categorization that eliminates the need for manual project selection and time entry management while providing more sophisticated productivity analytics.

RescueTime (2025): RescueTime remains focused on individual productivity optimization with enhanced focus session capabilities, improved goal-setting features, AI-powered timesheets, and advanced productivity analytics. The platform excels at personal productivity insights, distraction management, and individual work habit optimization through detailed activity categorization and focus time analysis. However, RescueTime’s team functionality remains limited, providing only basic aggregate reporting without the collaborative project management, client tracking, and team coordination features that Rize offers. While RescueTime provides excellent individual productivity insights, Rize delivers superior team collaboration capabilities, client management features, and business-focused analytics designed specifically for agencies and professional services organizations.

Modern Time Tracking Solutions (2025): The 2025 time tracking landscape includes various solutions ranging from basic manual timers to advanced AI-powered platforms. Many solutions focus on either individual productivity or team management without effectively combining both aspects. Rize’s strength lies in its comprehensive approach that seamlessly integrates individual productivity optimization with team collaboration features, AI-powered automation with user control, and detailed analytics with privacy protection. This combination makes Rize particularly well-suited for modern knowledge work environments where both individual productivity and team coordination are essential for success.

Final Thoughts

Rize represents a significant advancement in time tracking technology that addresses the evolving needs of modern teams and agencies seeking to optimize productivity without sacrificing autonomy or privacy. The platform’s AI-first approach eliminates the traditional friction associated with time tracking while providing the detailed insights necessary for effective business management and client billing.

The combination of sophisticated automation with comprehensive team collaboration features positions Rize as an ideal solution for agencies, professional services firms, and distributed teams that require accurate time tracking without administrative overhead. The platform’s emphasis on privacy protection while providing essential business insights demonstrates a thoughtful approach to workplace productivity optimization.

Having been developed by experienced engineers from leading technology companies and serving tens of thousands of daily active users, Rize has demonstrated both technical capability and market validation. The recent launch of Rize Teams functionality further solidifies the platform’s commitment to serving collaborative work environments and business needs.

For teams looking to move beyond the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of manual time tracking while gaining valuable insights into productivity patterns and resource allocation, Rize offers a compelling solution that balances automation with user control. The platform’s focus on reducing administrative burden while improving data accuracy makes it particularly valuable for billable hour tracking, client reporting, and business optimization.

As remote and distributed work continues to evolve, Rize’s comprehensive approach to automated time tracking and team productivity analytics positions it as an essential tool for organizations seeking to maintain visibility, optimize performance, and ensure accurate billing in an increasingly digital work environment.