Kimai is an open-source, browser-based time-tracking platform designed for project-driven teams and businesses of all sizes. It is available as both a self-hosted solution and a SaaS (Kimai Cloud) version hosted in Germany with a strong focus on European data protection.

Here is a summary of its principal functionalities:

Comprehensive Time and Expense Tracking

• Flexible Tracking: Kimai tracks work time by customer, project, and activity on a yearly, monthly, or daily basis.

• Time-Clock Mode: For stricter logging, it offers a "punch in" and "punch out" mode that prevents users from entering arbitrary timesheet records.

• Attendance Management: The system tracks not just working hours, but also vacation, sickness, and public holidays.

• Expense Management: Users can track expenses and categorize them by customer or project to include them directly in invoices.

Reporting and Business Intelligence

• Advanced Analytics: It provides detailed analysis of recorded times filtered by users, tags, or specific time periods.

• Visual Dashboards: The main dashboard features several statistics and charts to provide an immediate overview of collected data.

• Customer Portal: Businesses can share live statistics and timesheets with clients via a secret, optionally password-protected URL.

Invoicing and Data Export

• Professional Invoicing: Kimai features configurable invoice templates in multiple formats like PDF and DOCX, with options for entry grouping and custom numbering.

• Versatile Exports: Timesheet data can be exported in XLSX, PDF, CSV, and HTML formats. Once exported, records can be locked to protect them from further changes.

Team Management and Security

• Multi-User & Teams: It supports unlimited users with different roles and permissions. Users can be organized into Teams (such as departments) to limit data access to specific projects or customers.

• Advanced Authentication: For security, it supports Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) via TOTP tokens and integration with external identity providers using LDAP or SAML (e.g., Google Workspace, Azure AD).

• Localization: The interface is translated into more than 30 languages.

Extensibility and Integration

• JSON API: An extensive API allows external applications and custom tools to read and write data to Kimai.

• Plugin System: The platform is built to be extendable, allowing developers to add new features through a variety of available plugins.

• Docker Support: It provides Docker images and Compose setups for easy deployment in production environments.

Kimai acts like a professional-grade stopwatch integrated with a digital accountant: instead of manually feeding complex Excel spreadsheets, it automatically captures your team's work, organizes it into beautiful reports, and can instantly transform those recorded hours into professional invoices for your clients while keeping all your data safely locked in a secure, EU-hosted vault.