5 Easy but Impactful Time Tracking Tips

This article provides tips to help company owners implement straightforward digital timekeeping practices to improve their business. From saving money and ensuring legal compliance to maintaining relationships, these easy-to-follow tips will enhance your daily operations.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your organisation is, nor whether you work with external contractors or have employees. Whether office-bound, hybrid, or remote, every setting is equal. Time tracking is crucial for any business; it helps ensure that workers are paid on time and according to their rates. Not to mention, it contributes to improvements in various operations across the organisation, such as billing, project management, and many others.

Effective time-tracking practices offer valuable insights into your overall productivity. From improved visibility of project progress to evaluating progress toward business goals, time management serves as the foundation of your success.

What is the Most Efficient Way to Track Time?

The most effective way to track time is by using timesheets. Writing down the exact hours each employee worked is crucial for calculating their compensation. However, various types of timesheets exist, including traditional paper ones, digital timesheets, and desktop time trackers. The list goes on.

Some would argue that different approaches work better for some businesses than for others. We disagree. There is one specific type of timesheet we believe is superior when it comes to efficiency, regardless of the size or industry of the organisation.

1. Adopt Software to Keep Track of Employee Hours

Accuracy is paramount in payroll. There’s no room for mistakes, as the consequences can be severe. From damaged relationships to legal issues, you simply can’t afford them. The best way to minimise human error is to eliminate humans from the process and rely on business intelligence instead.

Get a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution that can easily and accurately track your employees’ hours. Implementing a time management system for your staff improves transparency and eliminates the risk of miscalculations, particularly when dealing with more complicated processes such as overtime payments. The Timesheet Portal Project also enables you to streamline procedures like flexitime management and holiday request approval.

2. Be Strict About Employee Break Time

Despite work breaks being mandatory and paid, many employees choose to skip them. Whether this is due to sincere dedication or an attempt to impress you, you must not allow this. During the mandated break time, employees are required to relieve themselves of work-related duties. If they don’t, the employer is legally obliged to pay them for that time.

Aside from that, working without breaks is the fastest route to burnout. This can result in decreased productivity and a lack of effort. Additionally, it raises the likelihood of mistakes. You are required to enforce mandatory break times for your staff due to legal compliance issues, but it is also important for their mental well-being.

3. Keep Employee Records Up to Date

Implementing a time tracking system is just the beginning of the process. You must also ensure that the timesheets are filled out correctly and stored in a secure, centralised location. If the need to verify your payroll arises, you want to have easy access to these records.

A wise solution here would be to adopt timesheet software that has a centralised document management system built in. This way, the timesheets are automatically saved in a designated location. Our solution is also designed to store important information about employees, such as employment contracts, passport copies, and other documents collected during onboarding.

4. Spot and Eliminate Time Theft 

Whether accidental or not, time theft occurs frequently, especially without an employee time tracking system in place. A recent study found that 75% of businesses fall victim to this malpractice, resulting in substantial financial losses annually. Time theft comes in many forms, from an employee forgetting to clock out to one worker clocking in for another, a practice known as buddy punching.

The solution, and therefore a defence against losing money, is an investment in online time tracking software. The best solutions on the market are available across different devices, and some even feature GPS to confirm the location of a clock-in. As the majority of these systems have unique logins for each employee, clocking in for another person becomes difficult. This, in turn, allows you to remain safe from malpractice.

5. Automate Billable Time Management

Alongside employee payroll time tracking, you’re also responsible for ensuring that billable time is tracked as well. Employees working on the projects should track the time spent not only on the projects but also on specific tasks. Occasionally, different tasks will have different costs per hour, which emphasises the need to record them separately. Our software has been designed with this in mind. In Timesheet Portal, you can easily build custom timesheets that reflect your unique agreement.

Additionally, transparency regarding time spent and tasks completed builds stronger, trust-driven relationships with your clients. Accurate invoices position you as a responsible and professional supplier, contributing to long-term partnerships and client retention. The inability to provide precise timestamps when issuing invoices can damage your credibility, and mistakes might even lead to legal issues.

To avoid mistakes, our software generates and sends invoices based on your timesheet, eliminating the need for manual keying and reducing the likelihood of human error. In other words, we are focused on automating billable time management to facilitate the smoothest communication between you and your clients.

Summary

The practices described above are simple to implement and can be easily integrated into day-to-day processes. However, their impact on your business's overall performance is tremendous. Being responsible with timekeeping fosters better rapport with your employees, aligns the teams, and aids in client retention.

In our age of technology, following most of these tips requires minimal human involvement. The software available on the market, including ours, has been specifically designed to assist in creating smoother workflows that also support compliance and facilitate quicker execution.

Are you eager to improve your internal processes? Book a demo, and we’ll guide you through it.