The Benefits of Accurate Time Tracking
Published: 29/07/2024
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This educational post is dedicated to highlighting the importance of nurturing accuracy in time tracking. We will also be talking about why it is crucial to businesses and the best ways to achieve it.
Most companies only track time either to bill their clients or to compensate their workers. Although these are the basic job timesheets that are meant to be fulfilled, there are plenty of other benefits you could reap from them. But here’s the catch - to unlock and successfully utilise the said benefits, your time tracking reports need to be pristine in terms of accuracy. And it’s not as easily achievable as it seems.
From employees making mistakes when logging time to getting caught up in confusion by differentiating rates, there are many potential scenarios in which errors to your data may occur. Most of them trickle down to human nature, namely our natural tendency to make mistakes. While it’s normal, it can still have anything from inconvenient to disastrous effects on your business.
While this sounds grim, there is a ray of sunshine. In other words, there is a way to minimise the risk of errors and keep your time tracking accurate with little effort. In the modern day, digital transformation has taken over almost every aspect of our lives. It’s an approach proven to drive accuracy, efficiency and growth. And it applies to time tracking. In this article, we will be exploring how digitisation helps you achieve accurate time tracking.
The data held within timesheets is nearly priceless. It is highly actionable and can become the backbone of many business decisions. This is why the accuracy of it is highly important. Namely, wrong data will influence actions that may not be the best for your company’s future development and success.
Clean and accurate timesheets can help you become better at resource allocation, project forecasting, team management and many more areas. It is key to reducing operational costs, saving time, and continuously improving your team’s efficiency. In other words, as long as you keep your records current, you will thrive. But that’s easier said than done. Because as humans, we tend to make mistakes.
In terms of data, one inaccurate reading can skewer up everything that comes after. And errors are often difficult to spot, let alone correct if they’ve been left unnoticed for a while. The best way to prevent them or at least significantly reduce the possibility is to rely on digitisation. Time tracking is a practice many businesses don’t give too much significance to, despite how vital it is. With this article, we hope to correct this.
Accurate time tracking can give your team’s performance a massive boost. And it covers several areas simultaneously. Not only does it propose opportunities to alter their workflows to drive efficiency, but also reduces both time and financial costs. We will explore each of these areas separately.
Although viewed as controversial by some, maintaining authority over where and how your team’s time is applied is very important to your overall success. It’s not to be mistaken for micromanagement, however. Rather, it’s focused on understanding your team’s strengths and shortcomings, therefore working out what tasks should be prioritised. In the long run, it also gives you the ability to be more accurate in terms of forecasts, offering your clients correct billing from the get-go, and managing deadlines and expectations.
It also serves as a means of getting deeper insights into the individual workers, their skillset and work efficiencies. Such could open the discussion about additional training where relevant, or impact the type of tasks the worker would be trusted with. It may even reveal that the people you thought were performing averagely in their respective areas were completely geniuses elsewhere. Employee time management, in general, provides a lot of actionable data. As long as you keep your mind open, communicate your findings, and apply them correctly, it’s a powerful tool that will always work for you.
While a solution to track time is an investment, it will help you cut costs. Think of it from the perspective of how long it takes for your team to fill and submit the timesheets. And how much time you spend processing them, correcting them if needed, or chasing people who either made mistakes or didn’t submit the timesheets on time. While this may only take you a couple of minutes each week, these minutes stack up. Before you know it, they turn into not even hours but days you could be spending on more impactful tasks.
It may not seem as if you’ve saved money nor made any return on investment at first, but analysing data throughout an extended period will highlight these changes. The smaller is the task, the less significance we give it in the light of the bigger picture. But the reality is that it’s the said small tasks that cause a big impact. Unlike major ones, they are also easier to implement and cause fewer inconveniences when changes are made. In turn, that makes the said changes more adaptable, meaning they will start bringing gains quicker.
The key selling point of any digital solution is the options to automate they bring. And this is true for time tracking too. While digital timesheets are mostly sold as the means of centralising time tracking, making it accessible and easy for the whole team, the automation opportunities are often viewed as secondary. We, on the other hand, believe they are equally important. As we’ve discussed, digitising time tracking is beneficial in terms of cutting down on operational costs, and automation feeds into it. Especially when it comes to more complex timesheets that include differentiating rates, or when there are limits to how many hours an employee may work at a given time frame.
For example, when using digital timesheets, you can set an hour cap. This means that the employee won’t be able to log hours past the limit, reducing the processing time on your end. You can also automate calculating what the workers are owed, taking into consideration different rates when applicable, such as overtime. Finally, instead of having to transfer data into accounting software manually, you can run the process with just a click. Most time tracking solutions will integrate with accounting packages, creating a seamless link for sharing data.
Having defined the key benefits accurate time tracking brings, let’s talk about the ways of ensuring it’s accurate. As we’ve pointed out earlier, it’s not an easy task, but it’s also not impossible. There are two components you need to combine, but before that, you need to ensure you understand them.
There are two sides when it comes to determining if the tool is right for you. One is its functionality. How well does it cover the jobs you expect the solution to take over for you? Additionally, you should take into consideration whether these functions can stretch into further benefits moving forward. Assuming you strive to grow and scale, it’s very important to adopt tools that are capable of adjusting to your development instead of capping it. Finally, you need to assess if the tool of your interest is compatible with your current setup. Namely, if you can link them up via integrations. Your aim when adopting new software is to create a system rather than utilise stand-alone solutions.
The second part is the cost. While solutions with more features will cost accordingly, the question is do you really need all these features? When it comes to digital tools, it’s very easy to rack up the price by giving into the temptation of more functionality, even if you never use it. Many vendors will catch you with that by offering different price tiers based on the number of features. While it’s in our nature to go for the option that offers more, you should challenge this mindset and critically evaluate if the additional offer is worth the price. Ideally, we suggest you go for vendors that let you build your own feature package as opposed to locking you into a pre-set one.
Unfortunately, no matter how good of a software you choose, unless it’s used correctly, it’s going to be useless. Sometimes, you will find your employees hesitant to use the new tools, especially when the topic in question is as controversial as time tracking. Before you even begin defining what a good practice is, you need to ensure your workers are on the same page. Namely, they understand why it is important to track time. Focus on outlining what’s in it for them. For instance, digital timesheets make the process of paying workers quicker and less prone to errors. If possible, try and arrange a training course with the vendor. Whether it’s the management to be educated and to then relay their knowledge to the team, or the team directly, this is the best way to learn how to utilise the tool correctly.
The very purpose of adopting a digital tool is to have your team aligned through using it. They all follow the same process, making it easy to identify who’s excelling and who’s struggling. If different people would use a different approach or different tools in order to achieve the same goals, your data would be thrown into chaos. Although you would still see the end metrics, you’d be stripped of the opportunity of optimisation. To be able to improve both the process and the results, it needs to be standardised and followed by everyone. What makes a good practice? Consistency, time efficiency and the data deliverables. It will naturally lead to better team alignment, with minimal additional effort.
The beauty of time tracking done right is that it’s a source of valuable data. From showcasing where your team’s performance is lacking to pinpointing potential areas to automate, it offers endless possibilities to optimise. Most of time tracking tools come with two types of reporting systems available. The dashboard that you view as you log into the software showcases your key metrics. You can normally adjust what kind of data you want to be displayed, in what order and covering what time frames. The other one is more in-depth reports. They get more granular and should be reviewed at a lesser frequency, especially when trying to spot a significant change that occurs over time.
Every bit of data you collect is actionable. It strongly depends on your mindset how and where you apply it, however. When talking of optimisation, it doesn’t always entail grande changes, like changing the entirety of the process. Very often it covers as little as tinkering with a specific step to see if it brings a difference to the overall result. After optimisation, you will be presented with different data that will once again dictate your next steps. Do you need to focus on the said step still or was the problem/opportunity elsewhere? In truth, optimisation never ends and there is always room for improvements. Ultimately, it’s all up to your goals, creativity and the capacity of your tools.
We have proven, there are multiple benefits to time tracking, especially when it’s done right. To put it shortly, following the correct practices will award you with not just a boost of efficiency, but also heaps of actionable data. And the process is practically never-ending. Once you optimise based on your findings, the new data will be available for further processing and implementation. In other words - continuous growth.
Sure, it’s not an overnight process. And it is likely you will spend some time trying to find the approach that works the best, building the right digital setup and generally learning the ropes. But end of the day, time tracking is among the most powerful tools that help businesses grow. Not only do they give multiple opportunities to better your operations, claim back time and save money, but they also take you a step closer to digitally transforming your business. This is necessary for our modern age when the demand for the highest quality and the shortest turnaround time are at an all-time high. By becoming good at tracking and utilising your time, you can effectively beat the competition by offering high-quality services.
Accurate time tracking helps you maximise your team’s efficiency. It opens the door to better employee time management and overall resource allocation. When you bring digital tools to your aid, you also gain access to automation options. Not only does it take over tedious tasks for you, but also collects insights that allow you to better your processes further. The combination of it all will grant your organisation continuous, consistent growth.
When it comes to ensuring your time tracking is accurate, it requires two things: the right software and the right mindset. Your team needs to understand the importance of it to be on board when it comes to utilising best practices in day-to-day life. No matter how good of a digital tool you have, if your team doesn’t use it correctly, it’s useless. And no matter how great your team is, their hands will be tied without the right tools.
All in all, accurate time tracking unlocks many growth possibilities. Since it bears a goldmine of data, it offers infinite optimisation options, meaning there is no limit to improvements. Small changes based on collected data make a big difference moving forward. And therefore good time tracking leads to good business. It’s time to see it as not just timesheets but a powerful tool that helps your organisation grow.
Is your time tracking accurate? Consult us for an evaluation today.