The only platform built for Virtual Assistants

Toggl Track is an excellent time tracker. It's simple, reliable, and has a generous free plan for up to five users. If all you need is to start and stop a timer and run basic time reports, Toggl does that well.

But that's all it does. Toggl doesn't create invoices, manage tasks, send contracts, offer a client portal, or handle scheduling. To run a VA business on Toggl, you'd also need a separate invoicing tool, Trello or Asana for task management, Calendly for booking calls, and yet another tool for contracts. That's four or five subscriptions, four or five logins, and none of them talk to each other.

Handld replaces all of these. Track your time, generate an invoice from your tracked hours, send it to your client via their branded portal, and get paid online — all without leaving the platform. Plus, Handld includes retainer tracking (something Toggl doesn't offer at all), so you and your client always know where you stand on hours.

Toggl Track gives you time tracking with billable rates — and that's it. Handld gives you time tracking, invoicing, a client portal, task management, contracts, scheduling, file sharing, and reporting — all in one platform built specifically for VAs.

Harvest is a solid time tracking and invoicing tool used by over 70,000 companies. It's clean, well-designed, and integrates with Stripe for online payments. For freelancers who need to track hours and bill clients, it's a reliable choice.

Where Harvest falls short for VAs is everything beyond time and invoicing. There's no client portal, no task management, no contract templates, no scheduling, and no retainer tracking. It's designed for tracking time against projects, not managing ongoing client relationships — which is exactly what VAs do.

There have also been recent complaints about Harvest adding undisclosed fees to Stripe payments during free trials, which has frustrated some users. Handld uses Stripe Connect transparently — you connect your own Stripe account, and standard Stripe fees are clearly communicated upfront.

Harvest charges per user per month and gives you time tracking and invoicing. Handld is a flat monthly fee with no per-user pricing and includes significantly more features. If you're a VA managing multiple clients on retainer, Handld gives you the full picture — not just the timesheet.

Dubsado is a powerful CRM built for service-based businesses — photographers, wedding planners, coaches, and consultants. It offers contracts, proposals, invoicing, scheduling, and workflow automation. Many VAs use it, and for good reason.

However, Dubsado has a notoriously steep learning curve. Most users report it takes weeks to set up properly, and the platform is currently mid-transition from version 2.0 to 3.0, with some features not yet fully available in the new version. The cheaper Starter plan also locks out scheduling, workflows, and Zapier — meaning you'd need the Premier plan to get the features you actually need.

Critically, Dubsado doesn't include time tracking at all. For a VA selling retainer hours, that's a significant gap. You'd still need Toggl or Clockify alongside it, adding cost and complexity. Dubsado also doesn't have a native mobile app — you're limited to a mobile browser experience.

Handld was designed from scratch for VAs, so the setup is fast (under five minutes), time tracking is built in with retainer hour alerts, and the client portal is included from Pro. No weeks of configuration. No bolt-on time tracker. No version migration headaches.

HoneyBook is a popular client management platform, particularly among US-based creatives and service providers. It offers proposals, contracts, invoicing, scheduling, and basic automation — all in a visually polished package.

The biggest issue for UK VAs is straightforward: HoneyBook requires a US or Canadian bank account to receive payments. If you're based in the UK, HoneyBook is not an option for you. It's also become significantly more expensive following a price increase in 2025.

Even for US-based VAs, HoneyBook lacks time tracking (beyond very basic logging), has no retainer hour management, and doesn't offer per-client file sharing or a dedicated client portal. It's built around project-based creative work, not the ongoing monthly retainer relationships that define most VA businesses.

Handld is built for UK VAs from the ground up, with full time tracking, retainer management, online payments via Stripe, and a branded client portal.

Clockify is the most generous free time tracker on the market — unlimited users, unlimited projects, and solid reporting, all for free. It's an obvious choice for VAs who are just starting out and watching every penny.

The trade-off is that Clockify is purely a time tracker. There's no invoicing (beyond very basic functionality on paid plans), no client portal, no contracts, no proposals, no scheduling, and no task management. It also requires integration with other tools for anything beyond logging hours.

If you're on a tight budget and only need to track time, Clockify's free plan is hard to beat. But once you're billing clients, managing tasks, and wanting to present a professional image, you'll quickly find yourself adding an invoicing tool, Trello, and Calendly — at which point you're spending more time and money than a single all-in-one platform would cost.

Handld's free Starter plan includes time tracking and basic invoicing for one client — so you can start for free and grow into Pro when you're ready, without ever needing to bolt on extra tools.