The rest of the world would rather do anything else--even practice tax law or schmooze with clients with bad breath--before accounting for each six-minute increment of the workday.

Three companies -- Elite.com, Red Gorilla and TimeBills.com -- have recently formed to ease the pain. Their cure is all the same. Keeping track of time wouldn't be so annoying if you could do it when you want and where you want, and if you didn't have to learn yet another set of software commands. All three have built easy-to-use Web sites where you can track your time and bill your clients. The Web sites are fortified against hackers. Best of all, the basic services of all three sites are free.

These companies want you to be able to enter time from your laptop at a client's office, over your cell phone while stuck in rush-hour traffic or even while hanging upside down in some new inversion-therapy pose at your day spa.

TimeBills.com has been up on the Web since last summer, and this month both Elite.com and Red Gorilla plan to go live. The target market for all three is small firms and solo practitioners. Lawyers are just one group of potential customers. The companies also want consultants, engineers and accountants as clients.

John Witchel, the chief executive of Red Gorilla, had two inspirations for his company's beastly name. He swam for the Stanford University Cardinals, and he wants to take business from the 800-pound gorilla of the small-firm time-and-billing market: Timeslips.

One of Red Gorilla's beta customers, Menlo Park, Calif.'s 10-lawyer White & Lee, is switching from Timeslips. Partner Mark White says that the firm was continually training administrative staff on how to use Timeslips. He expects that it won't cost anything to teach staff how to tame Red Gorilla. Mr. White also likes Red Gorilla's wireless access feature: He can now phone in his hours from the road--and he's rarely in the office.

Says Mr. Witchel, "I'm standing in line at Starbucks, and I'm catching up on my time expenses."

Red Gorilla expects to make money through advertising placed on its site and through add-on services. Although basic time tracking and do-it-yourself invoicing is free, it costs $9.95 a month to access the service through a cell phone or PalmPilot, and $4.95 a month, plus postage, to have Red Gorilla mail or fax invoices to clients.

Sage U.S. Holdings Inc., the publisher of Timeslips, has taken notice. At the start of the second quarter, it will let current customers enter time and expenses via the Web, according to James Bone, director of marketing. Later in the year, the company expects to introduce a Web-based service that won't require users already to be licensed Timeslips customers. (Timeslips starts at $179.99 for a basic two-timekeeper system.) Mr. Bone says that one of the difficulties in moving to the Web is that Timeslips is such a robust program. It's not easy to replicate the "functionality and flexibility of Timeslips on the Web," he says.

Not everyone misses all the industrial strength power. Conrad Yunker is a solo practitioner in Salem, Ore. His firm had been using Timeslips for several years but switched to TimeBills.com over the summer. "It's straightforward," Mr. Yunker says. "I'm a lawyer. I need simple things."

Simplicity is a mantra at all three companies. "We want to pull down barriers between customers and their efficiencies," says TimeBills President William O'Farrell, a former associate at San Francisco's Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison L.L.P.

TimeBills is free for the first five users at a firm and $3.95 a month for each subsequent user. TimeBills will prepare and send three invoices a month for free and charges $4.95 for every three additional invoices. As with Red Gorilla, customers can choose to print and send invoices at no extra cost.

While Red Gorilla and TimeBills are startups, Elite.com is part of Elite Information Group Inc., the largest legal time-and-billing vendor. Elite.com is the company's attempt to crack the small end of the market.

Like Red Gorilla, it will have a phone-in service. More than that, Elite.com plans to build a Web site where customers can do more than just enter time. There will be industry-specific news, original articles, and member message boards and chat rooms. All free.

The cost will be free for time entry, 99 cents to print an invoice yourself or $1.98 to have Elite.com do it for you. A plan costing $9.95 a month per timekeeper will give you free live support three times a month and unlimited printing of invoices.

All three companies are eager to please. They can't fix your dislike for tracking time, but they can help you do it inexpensively. It's a buyer's market. Let the competition begin.