Time tracking is the key to productivity, insight, and a healthy workflow. This is very important for an organization. Whether you are a manager of a company, an executive, or a team member, keeping proper track of time is paramount. When it comes to business, many questions come to the surface. You may think about how to track time, what is the best time tracking tool, and how to implement time tracking for projects. In terms of businesses, time tracking refers to the working hours of their employees. Based on the measurement of working hours, employees have been compensated accordingly. Time tracking tools are essential time management tools that can help your team to become more efficient and organized. It will save your company precious time and money.
Time tracking offers a myriad of benefits for your business. A cloud-based tracking system will help your team to quickly enter time wherever they are and on any device. Time tracking plays a major role in reaching your business goals. Here we will discuss 20 good reasons.
1) It helps to keep employees on track:-
You may have noticed that your team is not always sure about what they should be doing next or not taking things seriously when there is a pressing deadline to meet?
Most employees lack a sense of urgency around deadlines. You can enable your team to take ownership of their workload with time tracking.
Employees can themselves check the time taken by them for each task. They can check their performance. They can change their time tracking into a personal challenge and check themselves if they can beat their previous time. When you engage your team with their own productivity, they will take ownership of their work and schedules.
2) It will improve your quotes and estimates:-
You can be on the right foot with your clients by producing accurate quotes. If you keep accurate records of how long each type of job takes, you can improve and adjust your quotes. With time tracking software you can run instant reports on different types of tasks and the time taken to complete them. You can improve your quotes immediately.
3) Bill clients exactly for what work has been done:-
Every member of a team can provide a rough estimate of the time they have taken for completing certain tasks. But a rough estimate is not the same as an accurate one. You can never bill the client properly if you don’t have a record of the time your team actually spent on a job. So time tracking software is very essential for billing clients accurately.
4) Help to keep track of contractors:-
When you are hiring contractors or freelancers, you need to keep a record of the working hours of those contractors so that you never exceed your budget. Make your contractors fill out the same timesheet as your staff. By keeping an accurate record of hours you will only pay for what is actually done. It will also help you to track the performance of different contractors and you can allocate work to the right people.
5) It will help to prioritize projects:-
You can use calendars, staff allocation features, milestones for making adjustments to your schedules with time tracking tools. For some high-priority projects, it will enable you to shift deadlines and re-allocate hours. You can have accountability and visibility in one neat system. Your team can check the estimated number of hours for each and every stage of a project.
6) It will help to see the status of a job at a glance:-
With so many people working on various parts of a project, it is really difficult to know the status of each task. With the help of time tracking software, you can log in and have a glance at the status of every single job. You can view job details of various departments and types and access this data from anywhere in the world.
7) It will improve project schedules:-
If projects and milestones are regularly running over then it can impact client relations. You need to have a look at your project schedules and time frames before pushing your team to work faster.
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You can know how many hours each task on a job takes through your time tracking software. You should adjust your schedule to a more realistic timeframe when you observe consistent patterns in certain projects.
8) You can track time across different devices:-
Tracking time across different devices through time tracking software will help you to reach your business goals. You can maintain a consistent time tracking solution even if you have remote workers, team members working on-site or all across the world. With the help of a cloud-based tracking system, your team members can accurately enter time, no matter what they are doing and where they are.
9) You can avoid micromanaging:-
Time tracking software automates the process of time tracking. This will help you to save time and there is no need to ask your employees for a mandatory work report. This is not spyware. There is no invasiveness and privacy violation.
10) You can focus on strategic projects:-
The biggest benefit of time tracking across your business is your ability to then report on that particular data. You can easily have access to a huge data resource about your employees, jobs, suppliers, and profits. This will help you to focus your strategic direction and measure the progress of your goals.
11) It will motivate and disciplines you:-
There is always room for improvement even if you are a highly motivated individual. When you know that your work is being monitored, it will increase your concentration and put your focus on the road to great results. A freelancer can challenge himself to complete a certain task faster than other teammates.
12) It will raise your rates:-
Time tracking can help to increase your rates. To keep a look at the time spent on each task, you can easily charge out the overall profit on a job and charge-out rates for your staff. All this will give you an indication if you are pricing accurately or is it time to make some changes.
13) It provides additional value when selling:-
If you provide timesheet records to potential buyers for selling your business, it can be really valuable for both of you. It will show that you run a professional operation with a reputation for accuracy. They can see at a glance the output which they can expect from the team.
14) It helps to review team performance:-
It will be great to hang discussion on a specific set of data when your annual performance reviews approach. You can compare individual employees to the rest of the team and discuss them during their review.
It will help the members of your team to see how their performance stacks up and. This will help you to identify weaknesses to work on and strengths to emphasize.
Becoming reliant on time is not only the sole factor for judging performance. Quality of work and providing value to customers are also equally important.
15) Connecting to your payroll will be beneficial:-
By integrating the data in your time tracking software with the payroll system will help you to get the full picture of your salary department. You can cut costs according to time.
16) It helps to identify areas for improvement:-
While conducting a productivity audit as an important part of your improvement strategy, you can look for tasks that seem to take a long time relative to each project. If most of your team members are struggling with the timeframe for certain tasks then it seriously needs to be adjusted.
17) You can find out if a team member is overextending themselves:-
Some people take up a variety of projects and then they realize that they have taken on too much. This is the habitual problem of some people and this happens mostly during busy periods as projects mount up.
You can easily track how many tasks each member is working on and who has been assigned what by keeping a look at the allocated work in your time tracking software. It will help you to head off overloading problems.
18) It accurately reports hours for compliance:-
In some businesses hours worked by your team members are required for compliance reasons. This can be a really tiring task at the end of each month to compile and send off.
If you use time tracking software then you can run a report to pull out the information you need. You can do compliance in just a few minutes.
19) It will present a professional face:-
Your time tracking software can also answer some of the most obscure client queries. It will help you to put a professional face.
