Do you feel like you are constantly behind on your work? If so, you are not alone. Trying to juggle work and life can be challenging for time management. But the good news is that several time tracking tools options can help you track your time and keep better work records.
Time-tracking tools assist in several ways. These ways include more accurately billing the clients and tracking project milestones. Here are the pros and cons of some of the most popular time tracking tools.
Plenty of time tracking tools is available. But it is essential to select the right one for your needs. Each has its benefits and drawbacks, so it is best to try several before deciding. Here are the three essential factors to consider when selecting a time tracking tools package.
What Are Time Tracking Tools?
A time tracker is a device that logs the hours spent at work. It often enables tracking of employee work hours. And it provides information on how much time is spent on particular assignments, customers, and projects.
Hourly pay, interaction with invoicing systems, and the option to include lunch breaks are just a few basic time-tracking features that time tracking tools often offer.
Today, hourly workers, independent freelancers, remote teams working on multi-national projects, and businesses like software development firms, digital marketing agencies, legal firms, or construction firms are the users of time trackers. This kind of software aids in the consolidation of efforts to finish a challenging activity, like creating digital products.
How To Use The Best Employee Time Tracking Tools?
Best way to keep track of employee time and working/billable hours without spending your time on manual entry or excel timesheets is by using a web-based time tracking tools. Regardless of their location or preferred device, a time tracker automatically records work hours and breaks for both on-site and remote employees.
You only need to click or tap the “Start” button on the desktop app when you begin working on something. Then “pause” it when taking a break, switching to another task, or entering a meeting. Then press “stop” after finishing the initial project, regardless of whether you use a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or desktop.
The best thing is that you may have several tasks on your user dashboard. All you need to do is select the one you’re working. Adding time corrections or remarks is another feature of time trackers. Automatic time tracking tools enable users to quickly and easily aggregate their time inputs at the end of each week. Another feature is that since everything is in “automate” mode, manual approvals are not needed. As a result, managers and team leaders may approve weekly time entries with only a few clicks and receive quick alerts.
What Are The Types of Time Tracking Apps?
A tool to track time and tasks is all that time tracking tools are. The capacity to track time is at the heart of the solution, which can take many shapes. These are a few of its varieties:
Time Tracker
We may classify time tracking tools app as a time tracker if time monitoring is one of its primary features. It enables users to clock in and out using their phones or computers or time their work using a timer. A time tracker provides analytics and reporting capabilities that compile data to provide insights.
Timesheet
Online timesheet accessed from desktop and mobile devices is its main feature. It may interact with invoicing software for billing or a payroll system to automate wage computation. User can record the hours spent in the office or on the job site using the cloud timesheet. A dashboard that shows real-time data is another feature used to quickly manage absences and time off with substitutes or approve employee hours.
Project Management
Because keeping track of time is essential to finishing a project, the best time tracking tools are a component of a project management system. In this situation, they are project management tools.
Benefits Of Using A Time Tracking Tools
Why use a time monitoring program? Allow these benefits of time tracking tools software to persuade you of its significance for your company.
Increase productivity
The time tracking tools assist with the productivity of your team. Everyone has been held accountable and on the same page thanks to the clear and monitored deadlines. Any time wastage is simple to identify and fix.
Effortless time capture
In addition to keeping track of your billable hours, you have other critical tasks to complete. The program handles the projects of timekeeping, wage computation, and invoicing and even more effectively assures data accuracy and transparency than manual entry. The time capture to billing or payroll process is automated after establishing the required rules.
Promote workplace transparency
Conflicts are avoided when billable hours are accurately tracked and documented especially with time tracking tools. In addition to utilizing the data to determine dues, you can also use data-driven metrics to assess staff performance.
Improve the accuracy of your deadlines
It is simple to estimate completion dates when jobs are visible down to the last detail. Add a few delay situations, and you have never had a more precise time estimate. Any daily job that isn’t completed may be readily added in to modify weekly and monthly deadline objectives.
Empower employees
Managers feel at peace and have control over goals with more accountable staff. Because of the increased trust created between managers and employees, workers may eventually be granted more freedom in how they do their tasks.
Downsides Of Using Time Tracking Tools
Decreased Morale With Increased Paranoia
Any change in the workplace might make employees uneasy. New time tracking tools might give some employees the impression that their managers are keeping an eye on them and waiting for an opportunity to catch them doing anything wrong. However, addressing any possible worries by being open and honest with your team about how installing the technology will help the business can help.
Time Theft
By putting up your staff’s clock-in preferences, problems are minimized. However, time theft may happen if workers have the option to clock in via a mobile app. Make sure that employees clock in on equipment owned by the firm. Any harmful behavior by staff employees can be avoided by restricting the IP address or forbidding early clock-ins and clock-outs.
Reliant on Technology
Businesses are exposed to various issues when using an online time tracking tools. Any internet or power interruption will make it difficult to determine the proper times. In addition, administrators could examine data excessively while choosing a suitable timetable. Overanalyzing a plan of action might result in excessive micromanagement and extra difficulties.
How Can You Make Sure That You Get The Most Out Of Your Time Tracking Software
Time tracking experience at DSS Consulting
The Hungary-based IT firm DSS Consulting Ltd. decided to replace its less effective internal time tracking tools with one that was outsourced. They selected actiTIME from a list of 25 possibilities based on functionality and cost. And as a consequence, they were able to enhance processes and reduce process costs while also increasing the accuracy of time monitoring.
Time tracking experience at Intertalk
InterTalk, a Canadian communications firm, formerly relied on a more conventional weekly timesheet system but eventually discovered that it was incredibly incorrect, irregular, and sluggish. They needed to adopt a more dependable and practical one if they wanted to benefit from the R&D tax incentive scheme.
Time tracking experience at actiTIME
Naturally, we at actiTIME are no strangers to time monitoring ourselves. At this point, it is an essential component of both our project management procedure and our overall company strategy. Time tracking has greatly improved our team leads’ ability to foresee and estimate project expenses and deadlines, allowing them to plan and allocate responsibilities more reasonably and fairly.
Best Time Tracking Software: Our Top Picks
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FAQs
What is a Time Tracker?
Managers and staff members use time trackers to keep track of their working hours for billing, payroll, or other purposes. They often record the time spent on tasks and are used to automate payroll or customer billing. They may also give you information on how your business is run, such as which duties are the most time- and money-consuming for your employees, enabling you to manage project budgets.
What are the advantages of using Time Tracking Software?
Increase productivity
Effortless time capture
Promote workplace transparency
Improve the accuracy of
Are there any downsides to using Time Tracking Software?
Deceased Morale With Increased Paranoia
Time Theft
Reliant on Technology
What features should a Time Tracking Software have?
Time tracking
This key component often tracks hours worked on a timesheet in real-time, down to the minute. The timesheet is used to accurately calculate payroll or charge clients. You may see tasks as a timeline by using time tracking. Estimating completion dates and deadlines aids project managers or leaders.
Online timesheet
A timesheet, which collects all logged billable hours, is a feature that not every time tracking software offers. The timesheet serves as a report on attendance that also keeps track of absences, vacation time, and holidays. Typically, it is exported to PDF or CSV and utilized for billing or payroll.
Project management
Some time-tracking applications do offer simple project management tool functions, even though many time-tracking tool software solutions are incorporated into bigger project management software. They let you, for instance, prioritize activities, arrange tasks by projects, or establish deadlines. Additionally, you may create budgets for each project and monitor a project’s progress on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. A simple time-tracking app works well for quick and easy assignments.
Online invoicing
If you charge clients by the hour or minute, you need to have this option. The function accurately records all hours worked and creates invoices automatically depending on your parameters, including billable time and rates. Using this tool will help you invoice clients transparently and prevent disagreements. Additionally, the program automates pay computations, saving small firms a ton of time. Employees merely need to punch in and leave to have their time recorded on a timesheet and entered into the payroll system.
Alerts
There are several desktop apps for notifications. Employees receive a reminder, for instance, if they forget to check in or out. When the team is running behind time, you might also receive a warning beforehand. Likewise, your team might receive alerts about due or urgent work. Automated notifications may be delivered to a variety of devices and channels, including the dashboard, email, and SMS.
User management
You may manage unlimited users by team or department and establish groups. This facilitates work assignments and group report generation. It also makes it easier to assign team duties to the team leader. To control system access, this functionality makes use of permissions for several user kinds, including admin, manager, and staff.
Reporting and analytics
With a few clicks, you can quickly produce reports and summaries to study a variety of task-related data. For instance, you may see the overall time spent on a project, dive down to details like monthly and daily metrics, or examine the time spent on each activity. Additionally, you may do budget analyses or identify opportunities for cost-cutting. For easy lookups, reports are shown as charts and graphs. The majority of solutions also offer customizable template possibilities.
