5 Essential Benefits of Time Tracking Software (Other than Productivity)
We all know that time tracking software improves productivity, but it has 5 more benefits you maybe overlooked when you started thinking about the implementation.
When was the last time you thought: ‘I wish there were 35 hours in a day’? Was it last week? Yesterday? You’re not alone. And things only get worse if you’re running a business and need to take care of all the organization and employees. Life can get really stressful really fast.
But the thing is, you don’t need those 35 hours. You only need the official eight if you know how to use them. And employee time tracking software can be a huge help in guiding you.
Now, you’re very likely familiar with what time tracker software is and how beneficial it can be for your company as well as for your employees. One of the most commonly listed benefits is definitely increased productivity. Which is precisely why we’ve not going to include it in our list!
In the following paragraphs, you’ll read about five other important advantages that time tracking can bring to your business.
1. Better Organization
Basically, time monitoring software tells you how long each employee spends in each app or website and how long it takes them to finish a project with two simple clicks - ‘start’ and ‘stop’. As a side note, they don’t even have to do that if your time tracking app has the automated time tracking ability. This feature monitors work on projects based on file names alone.
Now, how exactly does this help with organization? Well, first of all, it gives you a very nice and accurate overview of your employees’ activities. This includes who did what, for how long, whether they’ve finished or not and so on. These reports are visual and easy to understand.
Next, getting this data helps you make informed decisions about how to distribute workload. You’ll be able to assign projects based on performance and break big tasks into smaller ones for more efficient business time tracking.
2. Fair Attendance and Overtime Tracking
There is no imaginable scenario in which you can’t somehow benefit from employee time and attendance tracking software. Let’s take a look at a couple of common working hours policies and how tracking attendance can help each and every one of them.
Say your company has fixed working hours (e.g. 9 to 5) - time tracking software can tell you who’s late. Or if you have flexible working hours but your employees need to be in the office for eight hours - employee hours software can detect how long each employee has worked on any given day. Even if you have some sort of task-based policy, this type of software can help you pinpoint tasks that you can make faster and more efficient.
Time and attendance tracking software also gives you the ability to accurately calculate overtime and reward your employees accordingly.
3. Managing Client Expectations
In the first section, we’ve talked about organization and optimizing your workload, which can also be extremely beneficial when it comes to dealing with clients.
Tracking time by project or task type gives you insights into how long each project and task takes on average. So the next time a client asks you the good old ‘How long is it going to take?’ question, you can give a much more accurate estimate based on real past results.
You can even go one step further. You can give your client gated access to their project’s data, so that they can see the progress themselves.
4. Handling Your Budget
As you know, in the corporate world, time is literally money. So, by extension, managing time effectively should also lead to managing money equally as well.
Using an app to log time spent at work gives you the opportunity to be more accurate when it comes to payroll. Rewarding hard workers is always a fair thing to do and a good investment.
Additionally, time tracking and billing software will be your best friend when it comes to you getting paid as well. Calculating billable hours and sending these reports to clients prevents them from ever underpaying you.
As an added bonus, you can cut costs of corporate software too. If you track time spent in certain apps, you can know which ones are valuable to your company and which ones you can easily do without.
According to our clients, you can expect as much as $10 million dollars worth of savings on the back of using a time tracking software app.
5. Automating Tasks and Processes
We’ve mentioned several things you can automate by using a time tracker, including attendance taking, client reports, calculating billable hours and so on. Automating these ‘tiny’ tasks can free up a lot of your valuable time that you can use to run your company.
We’ve also briefly mentioned automated time tracking. This allows you to automate a very important aspect of your business running process - project tracking and management.
As different types of automatic time tracking software get more and more sophisticated, you can only expect more advantages and fewer unnecessary tasks on your plate.
Conclusion
If you’re still not sure about implementing time tracking software, ask yourself this: ‘If your company were a person, would it thank you for using it?’ The answer is probably a resounding yes. Our time tracking app has helped many businesses, and it can certainly equip you with the necessary data to make your company even more successful. The rest is up to you.