20 Instant Benefits Of Using A Time Tracking Software In Your Business
It’s too cumbersome.” “I don’t want to micromanage the team.” “It slows us down.” “That’s not the way we do things around here.” These are only some of the reasons service businesses choose not to track time. It can be seen as an added administrative headache, and a way to choke the creativity and focus out of your team. But the truth is that time tracking offers a myriad of benefits for your business. And if done correctly it doesn’t result in micromanaging or a stifling of creative thinking. A cloud-based time-tracking system enables your team to quickly enter time wherever they are, on any device.
But why should you be tracking time at all? Well, we can give you 20 good reasons:
1. Keep employees on track Do you find your team often aren’t sure what they should be doing next? Or are taking things casually when there is a pressing deadline to meet? It might not be that your employees are slacking off. They just could be lacking any sense of urgency around deadlines. Or perhaps they don’t see any of the other work past what’s on their desk at one particular moment. Enable your team to take ownership for their workload with time tracking. Employees can enter the time taken on each task and see for themselves how they perform. They can turn their time tracking into a personal challenge – seeing if they can beat their previous time. Engaging your team with their own productivity helps them to take ownership for their work and schedules. If they’re using time tracking software they’ll also be able to see all the jobs in the queue, so they’ll always have something to get on with. 2. Improve your quotes and estimates Producing accurate quotes gets you off on the right foot with your clients. By keeping accurate records on exactly how long each type of job takes, you’ll be able to adjust and improve your quotes. If you use time tracking software, you can run reports in an instant on different types of tasks and the times taken to complete them. Improvements to your quotes can then be implemented immediately. 3. Bill clients for EXACTLY what work has been done If asked, I bet every member of your team can probably provide a rough estimate of how long it would take them to complete certain tasks. But a rough estimate isn’t the same as an accurate log - if you don’t record the time you actually spend on a job, you can’t bill the client for it. If every job takes just 20 minutes longer than estimated, and you complete on average 10 jobs per week, you’re losing out on more than 170 billable hours every year. By accurately tracking each employees time, you’ll be able to earn what you deserve for the time you put in. 4. Keep track of contractors When you’re employing freelancers or other contractors, you need to keep a careful eye on their workload and hours to ensure you’re not blowing up the budget. Get your contractors to fill out the same timesheets as your staff. Keeping an accurate record of hours worked ensures you’re only paying for what’s actually done, and also enables you to track the performance of different contractors so you can allocate work to the right people. 5. Prioritize projects With a time tracking system like WorkflowMax, you can use the calendar, milestones, and staff allocation features to make adjustments to schedules. This enables you to easily re-allocate hours and shift deadlines for high-priority projects. Your team can easily see the estimated number of hours for each stage of a project and exactly where that project is in the pipeline. Visibility and accountability in one neat system. 6. See the status of a job at a glance As soon as a job leaves your desk, it seems to disappear into a black hole. With so many different people working on different parts of a project (and several projects on the go at once), it can be difficult to know the status of each task as you require it. Not so if you’re using time tracking software! Simply login and at a glance you can see the status of every single job. You can narrow down your view to a certain department or type of job, and if your software is in the cloud, you can even access this data from anywhere in the world. 7. Improve project schedules Do you find projects and milestones regularly running over? This is a big problem is it can impact client relations. Before you go railing on your team to work faster, perhaps it’s time to have a look at your project timeframes and schedules. Are you being too ambitious with your schedule? Your time tracking software will tell you how many hours each task on a job take. If you see consistent patterns in certain project types / stages, perhaps you need to adjust your schedule to a more realistic timeframe. 8. Track time across different devices What if you have remote workers, team members out on site, or staff working all across the world? Can you still maintain a consistent time-tracking solution? With a cloud-based time tracking system your whole team will be able to quickly and accurately enter time, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. Everyone can have access to an instantly-updating cloud-system from their chosen device. 9. Focus on strategic projects One of the biggest benefits of tracking time across your company is your ability to then report on that data. You have access to a huge data resource about your staff, jobs, suppliers and profits, and you can use this data to focus your strategic direction and measure the progress of your goals. 10. Compare projects over time Want to compare features of different projects past and present? Need to see if you’ve improved the speed of a certain type of task? Want to see how the ratio of different project types changes over time? If you’re recording the data, then you can find the answers.
Read the other 10 points here
Successful time tracking is all about recording data in your business. What you do with that data is up to you, but we hope we've given you a few ideas to think about. How can you get time on your side?
Written by Steff Green at WorkflowMax
