Current Best Practices for Time Tracking in Businesses

As the economy advances, competition tightens. And employees start to bloat from more activities that leave them stressed, but yield no tangible results. Many resort to multitasking, which lowers productivity levels even more.

There is a dire need for productivity measures that will maximize resources for sustained or increased profits to accommodate new trends as they arise. Workers are expected to carry a slice of the accountability pie, by being productive and efficient with their task for the benefit of the whole company. As people get busier, the more that time becomes a highly valued resource.

In this fast paced world, people should have at least the basics of time management skills. And it is not that easy to wear many hats and stay efficient doing everything simultaneously. Time management is essential in handling your time well, especially for employees who work for profit while attending to their personal needs or their families. For freelancers, time management is very important as it will help them direct their skills to the pipeline of revenues. That is if they can prove that their time and services have more worth than that of a full-time employee.

Time tracking is a method used to hone your time management skills. It allows you to have a wider perspective on how you spend your time in working and in attending to personal matters. For a business, time tracking enhances the visibility of the employees’ performance. In a project, you can assess the flow of work by looking at how the team is performing individually and as a group. Overall, time tracking is an important factor to drive productivity and efficiency that translates into motivation, satisfaction and increased profits.

Value of Time Tracking

At work, time is money. Optimizing time should be the aim to increase revenue opportunities and profits. Time tracking is a method of establishing visibility of tasks and activities to compel freelancers, and even full-time employees, to be more responsible in spending their time. This practice not only earns them more profits (because they are being more productive) but also makes clients trust their skills and be satisfied with their services.

Time Tracking for Project Management

The idea of time tracking might be mistaken for snooping your team, but once they realize its benefits and advantages, they will embrace it. Time tracking disguises as time sheets used to prove attendance. It also gives the project manager an overview of what tasks are already accomplished, to let him know if the project remains on track or not.

Filling in time sheets is tedious. But through technology, you can now automate time tracking to ease your team from time-consuming work and let them focus on more important tasks. For project managers, they can derive more insights in understanding the performance of the team as a whole, and of the members individually.

Here are more benefits of using time tracking for projects:

1. Improves decision-making.

One of the benefits of time tracking is that it lets a project manager see how the team execute their tasks and what drives them to be productive. It can also put into view how workflows are managed, and to see if there are plugs that need to be put for improvement. This wider perspective and deeper understanding of the project’s time flow will help in decision making in terms of motivational factors, cost savings, risk mitigation and output delivery.

2. Helps in making realistic plans.

Budgeting and resource allocation are critical aspects of projects that must be taken seriously. Consistently doing time tracking for projects and teams can help in providing a strong basis for planning and scheduling of tasks by analyzing past budgets and project performances. Time tracking can also help in allocating resources for each milestone appropriately.

3. It opens the lines of communication.

Since time tracking is effective in providing details about one’s activities every day, a project manager may discover areas for improvement. Time sheets can serve as a focal point of discussion to address the smaller problems before they grow and affect the project significantly.

4. It gives more accurate forecasts.

Understanding the workflow through the productivity and performance of the team can help the project manager make accurate forecasts about the project. He can assess if the project is going as planned, or if there is a need to adjust other tasks to stay on track and achieve the deadline. Time tracking provides useful information on how to manage time and tasks, especially during untoward circumstances.

5. It makes sound estimates.

Past performances, budget allocations and team track record can help a project manager to make meaningful estimates based on proven facts and historical accounts. Realistic and accurate estimates for the time frame and budget are valuable for the project to run seamlessly and deliver its output on time.

Time Tracking for Small Businesses

Small companies compose 99.7 percent of the US businesses nowadays, which is a good reason to ensure that they run smoothly. Time tracking for small businesses can help you achieve the following:

1. Cost savings

Time tracking tools can help in accurately paying contractual workers per hour. They can be also used as evidence for disputes and compliance for law regulations.

2. Attendance automation

Even small companies can benefit from automated solutions such as time tracking. There are outsourcing companies that offer cloud-based time tracking and attendance software, which lets you achieve enterprise solutions at a fraction of the price.

3. Increased visibility

Time tracking increases the visibility of both the business workflow and its employees’ task performance. Problems in budget allocation and missed deadlines are huge deals for a small business, and by avoiding it altogether increases the chances of growth.

4. Maximized profits

Small businesses usually employ low wage earners due to a limited scope of work or budget. But rendering unaccounted over time pays can suffer small businesses greatly. Time tracking reduces oversight and promotes transparency when it comes to payroll and accounting management. It also helps a small business to motivate its employees with incentive programs with data driven from time tracking tools.

5. Maximize freelancers

Some small businesses work on a per project basis, and in most cases, hiring freelancers are both cost and time efficient choices. It spares the company in managing full-time employees, and save a lot from monthly wages and added benefits. Time tracking a series of projects can help small businesses gauge when it is wise to hire freelancers and justify the cost and time that goes with it versus hiring full-time employees.

Time Tracking in Payroll and Attendance Management

A Kessler survey about the reality of time theft found out that in 2013, 93 percent of employees admitted to doing it, where 30 percent said they falsified time records on their jobs. One can imagine how much a company loses out of this unacceptable behavior. But as technology advances, time tracking has now become a more sophisticated system. A time tracking software for employees not only tracks their attendance accurately but also gives insight on how to motivate them well to stay productive and efficient with their tasks.

Upgrading to automated time and attendance software gives your business the following benefits:

1. It cuts the time in making a payroll by up to 70 percent and is more likely to resist errors from manual input and computations.
2. It minimizes time theft, especially when integrating biometrics in attendance systems. There is no way for a buddy punch clock system to work anymore.
3. Time tracking can let both employees and businesses gain access to time sheets and make them both informed about productivity levels and remaining leaves.
4. It spares you from doing tedious and time-consuming paperwork of manual entry time sheets, and also in recording and storing it.
5. It gives you substantial evidence of attendance and payroll records that can strongly support disputes that may arise in the future.
6. Using time tracking tools, such as an automated attendance software, is a sound investment for something that is flexible and can remain useful as your company’s employees grow in number.
7. Automated systems help a business capture useful data and keep it in a centralized repository for easy access and retrieval.

Conclusion

Time tracking not only benefits the people in gaining accountability over how they spend their time, but also the businesses that wanted their workers to adhere to the best practices, which will mutually benefit everybody on board. In this fast paced working environment, time tracking helps point the right direction in making employees productive, efficient, focused and well-paid for their efforts and hard work. It can also save businesses a lot of money from time theft and extra payables for services they didn’t get in the first place.

Want to see which are the best time tracking tools that can help your business improve? Look at the different time tracking tool reviews in CrowdReviews.com to help you know more about the available options in the market.