Project management alternative
BusinessHRM vs Asana
Beautiful project management. Now put the business around it.
The short answer
Asana is a project and work management platform for organising tasks and projects across list, board, timeline, and calendar views. BusinessHRM offers project management too and adds HR, attendance, payroll, time tracking with screenshots, CRM, and invoicing in one place.
Asana is a mature, well-loved project and work management tool, and its core task and project features are genuinely best-in-class. It is built to manage work, not the workforce, though. There is no HR, no attendance or leave, no payroll, no CRM, and no invoicing, and its time tracking is a paid add-on with no screenshots or activity levels. BusinessHRM gives you strong project management plus the HR, tracking, and billing Asana leaves to other tools.
Best for
Teams that run projects in Asana but pay separately for time tracking, HR, and client billing.
What Asana does well
Best-in-class project management
Flexible list, board, timeline, and calendar views with subtasks, dependencies, milestones, and custom fields. This is its mature core.
Powerful automation and templates
A workflow builder, reusable templates, and forms for standardised intake that automate routine steps.
Strong reporting and ecosystem
Universal reporting for dashboards across projects and portfolios, plus a very large integration library.
Where Asana stops
No HR, attendance, or payroll
Asana manages work, not people. There are no employee records, no leave or attendance, and no payroll.
No monitoring-grade time tracking
Native time tracking is a paid add-on on higher tiers, and there are no screenshots or activity levels at all.
No CRM or invoicing
Sales pipelines and client billing are not native and require separate tools or integrations.
Side by side
Where Asana stops, BusinessHRM keeps going. Verdicts reflect each product's native, out-of-the-box capabilities.
| Capability | BusinessHRM | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Time tracking & timesheets | Add-on | |
| Screenshots & activity levels | ||
| HR records & documents | ||
| Attendance, shifts & leave | ||
| Payroll | ||
| Projects, tasks & Gantt | ||
| CRM & sales pipeline | ||
| Invoicing & online payments | ||
| Helpdesk & tickets | ||
| One platform, one login, one bill |
Comparison reflects publicly documented features as of 2026. Competitor plans and add-ons change, so verify current details on their site before deciding.
How Asana pricing works
Asana is priced per user, per month with a capable free tier for small teams and paid tiers billed cheaper annually. Structured timesheets and budgets are a separate paid add-on on top of a paid plan. Verify current figures on asana.com before deciding.
Compare with BusinessHRM pricingWhy teams switch
Time tracking that is included
Screenshot-based tracking and timesheets are built in, not a separate add-on with no monitoring.
HR and payroll in the same place
Records, attendance, leave, and payroll run alongside your projects instead of in another system.
From project to invoice
Tracked project time becomes a client invoice in one step, which Asana cannot do.
Switching from Asana
Does Asana have built-in time tracking?
Asana has native time tracking only on higher tiers, and full timesheets need a separate paid add-on. It has no screenshots or activity levels. BusinessHRM includes screenshot-based tracking and timesheets in the platform.
Does Asana do HR, payroll, or invoicing?
No. Asana is a dedicated project management tool with no HR, attendance, leave, payroll, CRM, or invoicing. Running those means buying and integrating several separate tools.
Is BusinessHRM project management as flexible as Asana?
BusinessHRM offers boards, lists, and Gantt with milestones, dependencies, and time on every task. Asana has a deeper pure-PM feature set, but BusinessHRM covers the core plus the rest of the business.
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