Are Digital Timesheets Worth the Investment?

This article will discuss whether paying for the digitisation of timesheets is worth it when traditional time tracking does the job. We strongly believe digital timesheets are worth the investment and will share our point of view.

Whether you work with contractors, hourly-paid employees, or multiple projects, timesheets are vital. They help bill the clients and reimburse the workers, and are mostly very straightforward. If you think this is the only use of them, you might naturally be hesitant to abandon manual processing in favour of digitisation. Especially when digital tools can be costly. Alas, we believe that investing in digital timesheets is not only going to pay itself off but also bring long-term benefits. Simply put, there is more than pay and bill you can do with them. 

In this article, we will be exploring the range of pros digital timesheets bring. Although the designated software may sound unappealing due to additional costs, the right tools will supply you with features that support continuous gradual growth. Not to mention, they might be more budget-friendly than you think.

What Are the Benefits of Automated Timesheets?

Let’s not dilly-dally and go straight to business. Automated timesheets have many advantages over paper ones or even Excel spreadsheets. Here are some to list:

• Accessibility on the go; 

• Quicker and more accurate processing; 

• Effortless adherence to workplace policies; 

• In-depth insights across all projects; 

• Centralised view of your team’s progress;

• Many additional layers of security;

• Transparency for all parties involved.

As much as we would like to explore each of them separately, his article would get very long. Instead, we are going to focus on the key ones below. That said, we believe all these benefits are important for businesses across all industries and at different development stages. 

Cost-Benefit Analysis

There is a good chance you will need to pay more when you get on board with digital timesheets, such as setup costs. Since we are focusing on the financial side of things, let’s start with exploring what you’re getting for the price you pay. And how this is an investment that not only will pay itself but also generate revenue moving forward. 

Initial Setup Costs vs Long-Term Savings

It has already been established that modern companies can’t get away with out-of-the-box software anymore. Not if they want to thrive and succeed in a highly competitive environment. With each business having its unique needs, management style, processes and approach to task distribution, it is impossible to have the same basic setup to cater to different companies. That said, while most digital timesheets provide preset essentials, it’s strongly recommended to spend time setting up and customising the platform. Most vendors are happy to do it for you, for an additional cost. And that’s where the dilemma arises. Most companies don’t want to spend extra, believing they need no customisation.

If you are just starting up, the factory settings will get you by for a short while. However, the decision to stick with the basics will strip you of the opportunities unique to your company. Investing in a professional setup, on the other hand, means you will spend time communicating your goals and preferences to the specialists, who will then tune your tool up to cater for you specifically. While it will cost you extra, both monetarily in time-wise, it will pay off in the long run. Personalised digital timesheets are a one-time investment that will justify itself with a hefty interest in the long run.

Minimising Payroll Errors

Some may argue that digital timesheets are not worth the money you pay for the software itself, the setup and the maintenance. However, digitisation significantly reduces the risk of one of the costliest mistakes - payroll errors. More often than not, they occur as a consequence of human errors such as mistyping or accidentally skipping a number. When the process is handled by software, humans don’t get to err. 

That said, we are now wandering into the automation territory. Digital timesheets offer it in the form of time rules, meaning you can implement different pay rates, caps and such in accordance with your operations. Instead of taking all these factors into consideration when handling the payroll, you will no longer have to calculate them manually, fearing a potential error. An automated tool will take this task off your hands, not only completing it faster but also avoiding the pitfalls humans are prone to. This once again supports our previous point that paying an initial setup fee can save you a lot of money moving forward. 

Benefits of Digital Timesheets

We’ve already brushed over the list of benefits digital timesheets provide, but let’s take a deeper dive. As we’ve mentioned before, there is more than simply tracking time and billing clients. Your business’ entire well-being can be improved by adopting a digital solution.

Accuracy, Compliance and Data Security

With error reduction, which we discussed in the previous section, accuracy will naturally be on an incline. Not to mention, unlike humans, programs and machines aren’t biased. Meaning there won’t be bias-influenced inaccuracies either. This leads us straight to another benefit digital timesheets bring to the table - compliance. Simply put, with relevant rules and directions set in place, the software will ensure your company stays compliant at all times. For example, you may block an employee from accessing the platform if their documentation is out of date.

This smoothly transitions into another crucial benefit - data security. One of the biggest problems with traditional timesheets is how accessible they are. Anyone can get their hands on them, they are easily tampered with, get lost, and so on. None of this is an issue when time tracking is digital. The digital timesheets are securely stored on a cloud server, making them only accessible to your company. Additionally, each employee has unique access information, often protected by a second-factor authentication to ensure no login sharing or data leaks. 

Scalability for Growing Businesses

Digital timesheets allow businesses to scale. As proven above, replacing traditional time tracking methods with a modern approach is bound to save time. Digitising timesheets entails more than simply logging hours online. It opens the door to automating processes such as client invoicing, expense submissions, reporting and many more. Without spending time executing them manually, you will be able to focus on your clients instead. 

With your team spending less time on manual data insertion labour, they will be available to take on more clients and projects. This naturally leads to your company’s scaling, something most growing businesses are desperate for. Digital timesheets often get dismissed as a secondary tool, but as we’ve proven so far, their functionality stretches long past what the name entails. What’s more, most of the time tracking software is very budget-friendly, making it a perfect aid for smaller businesses that aim to scale. 

The ROI of Investing in Digital Timesheet Solutions

Finally, the main purpose of investments is to generate ROI, with interest. And digital timesheets won’t fail you in this department. If anything, they carry a promise of continuous delivery and progress as you move forward. 

Consistent Growth

The key reason why digital timesheets are worth the investment is the fact they never stop improving your business. Digitising time tracking and therefore pay and bill is part of digital transformation, a continuous process that nurtures uncapped business growth. While paying the setup fee is a one-off, the opportunities that come after are limitless. Digitising just one step of the process will give you access to data you might have never discovered before.

With the said data in mind, you can implement further changes, once again subjecting yourself to new discoveries. Continuous optimisation leads to eventually identifying gaps in your strategy, areas you can heavily capitalise on and so much more. In other words, investing in digital timesheets means you can experiment and improve non-stop, at your own pace, moving in the direction of your choice. And even if your latest optimisation effort didn’t bring viable change, it still supplied you with data you may re-apply elsewhere. Win-win!

Summary

Are digital timesheets worth the investment? Absolutely! The initial setup and the software itself may come out a little costly, but it is almost guaranteed to pay for itself in no time. A digital time-tracking solution is your best bet when it comes to reducing potential errors in payroll that cost companies millions every year. Not to mention, it wins back a lot of time by automating manual tasks, allowing your teams grow in efficiency and therefore deliver better results in the long run. 

Not to mention, digital timesheets add multiple layers of security to your processes. Stored on a remote cloud server, they don’t get lost or tampered with as easily as physical ones, nor get overwritten like Excel files. Each team member has a unique login and 2-factor authentication, which also protects you from malpractice like password-sharing and buddy-punching. All in all, digital timesheets are part of the digital transformation process, meaning they offer continuous, uncapped growth. And in our book, that’s the best investment one can make.

Sounds good? Give it a try!