Do you ever feel like sometimes the hours in your working day just fly by?
Tracking your time at work is tedious! But critical.
Primarily, timesheets ensure you bill your clients correctly. A detailed breakdown of the hours you have spent on projects reassures you and your clients that you are paid fairly. Also, accurate timesheets are essential for good resource allocation: it helps you maximize efficiency and productivity whilst keeping your team happy. Ultimately this makes time tracking a vital component of running a successful business!
Traditional time tracking requires employees to constantly start and stop timers to record the time they spend on their tasks and projects. This is exceptionally dull and frustrating! Not to mention it totally disrupts an employee’s focus and productivity.
Additionally, a traditional timesheet is almost synonymous with timesheet errors, which carry the risk of not being paid accurately or working with needless inefficiencies.
This blog covers some simple and easy solutions to help improve your business timesheet process.
If you’re seeking easier and more effective timesheets, read on.
Using Timesheet Templates
So what is a timesheet template? It is a simple method of tracking your hours, with a clear breakdown of the time spent on different tasks. There are a range of templates that offer perfect solutions to record your time.
- Daily - Employees track their daily projects and tasks.
- Weekly - Records the hours an employee spends on projects and tasks across the week, perfect if a company has a weekly billable hours process.
- Monthly - Employees record their hours over the month. Ideal if working on bigger projects for clients where the business will be calculating billable hours monthly.
- Project based - Focused timesheets on one project, perfect if the project is complex and requires time management and productivity insights.
You can read more about timesheet templates.
Benefits of Timesheet Templates
If you're looking for a hassle-free upgrade from manual time tracking, transitioning to timesheet templates is the easiest option, providing four major benefits along the way:
It’s efficient
There’s no need for manual calculations and it’s easy to fill in. This removes a massive headache for employees and reduces time spent on timesheets. Less time on boring admin tasks means more time for real work.
It’s accurate
Timesheet templates also ensure payroll payments are accurate by being in a standardized format and reducing the chance for error. By accurately recording your working hours, it means clients pay your business correctly…yippee!
It’s consistent
When everybody in a company tracks their time in the same way, it’s easier to compare and analyze time data. Therefore, spotting trends and generating insightful reports is possible.
It’s convenient
The whole process of time tracking is smoother using timesheet templates since they can be downloaded, filled in and shared easily. Additionally, the templates can be integrated with project management tools or payroll software reducing the need for manual data entry. And we already know that less manual data entry means fewer errors!
Using automatic time-tracking apps
If you’re fed up with having to use timers at work or even using timesheet templates to record your time then automatic time tracking apps are for you!
Time tracking apps record your time automatically for you in the background so you can stay on task. It's like having your own personal time-tracking assistant, making your work life easier and more efficient!
Time tracking apps boost your productivity by removing the need to start and stop your timers, and motivate you to stay on task as your work hours are being recorded and will be visible to others. This increases the accountability you have for your work, increases your output and increases your efficiency.
There are further advantages to time tracking apps… data analysis! Time tracking apps stop repetitive tasks, identify time wasters and spot your most productive time. This visibility helps you to maximize your efficiency and productivity at work.
By having this awareness of how you work best, you can ensure you plan your working day to ensure your focus time on tasks and projects is within your most productive hours.
Key features of time tracking apps
- Automatic - Record your time in the background for you!
- Accurate - By recording time in real time, inaccuracies are eliminated.
- Visibility - Detailed and clear records of your working day, allowing you to identify time wasters and your most productive hours. Increasing your outputs, benefitting the business!
- Reports - Data reports on time tracking records allow businesses to take insight-led decisions to improve their resource and project management.
Popular automatic time tracking apps
- Clockify
- Rescue Time
- Timely
- Traqq
Using time-tracking apps streamlines timesheet management within companies, by ensuring that all employees' timesheets follow the same process. This makes processing payrolls simple! Not to mention the insights into employee productivity and time wasters.
Using AI to draft your timesheets
So, you’ve automatically tracked all your activities in a day. But now, how do you make sense of what you’ve done? How can you make sure that each activity is billed to the correct project and correct client? And, how can you make sure your timesheets are created automatically?
AI-powered timesheets are the answer!
AI timesheets automate the process of time tracking, through recording in real-time task duration, the time spent on activities and progress on projects. From these recorded activities, it can create a timesheet entry.
For example, the AI function in Timely takes all the activities collected by the automatic time tracker (the Memory app) and assigns them to the right project, and drafts you a time entry. It does this by using your previously logged time patterns to learn how to group your tracked activities.
Every time you log time using the automatically tracked activities on your desktop, the AI learns to associate between the projects and the activities. In short, the more hours you log on Timely, the more accurate your AI timesheet drafts will become.
What does this all mean?
AI timesheets automate the entire process of time tracking. This reduces the time spent filling in timesheets, ensuring your employees can stay on task.
In addition, AI algorithms have the power to identify any data anomalies and detect data patterns that the human eye can’t see. That means fewer timesheet errors and greater insights into how the company functions.
How to Get Employees to Submit Timesheets On Time?
Timesheet software and apps are ideal for businesses to increase their productivity and profitability… but only if timesheets are submitted on time. For payroll to be processed properly, timesheets must be submitted! For good project management, timesheets must be submitted! For accurate resource allocation, yep you guessed it, timesheets must be submitted!
Expecting employees to always remember and submit their timesheets on time doesn't always go as planned. But, a couple of reminders at the end of each day, week or month are ideal, alongside clear submission guidelines.
Whether it’s an email, a Slack message or even a timesheet meme, these reminders are great for encouraging the timely submission of timesheets. Incentives are also useful, perhaps set up a monthly prize draw for employees who meet timesheet deadlines.
However, if you want to guarantee your timesheets are submitted on time and easily, AI-powered timesheets are your best bet. No more reminders needed! Plus, your employees can stay focused on more valuable and productive tasks instead of interrupting their flow to fill out timesheets.
Conclusion
- Accurate timesheets are important to ensure that your business can allocate and plan its resources appropriately to ensure projects run smoothly.
- Manual timesheet templates offer insight and visibility into your working day, but there are inaccuracy risks and waste valuable working hours.
- Automatic time tracking is accurate! This method also boasts accountability, and increases productivity and transparency.
- AI-powered time tracking tools such as Timely offer detailed data records that allow anomalies and data patterns to be identified, ensuring your business hours can be reflected upon and optimized!
- Timely timesheet submission is essential for business: clear guidelines, reminders and incentives are great ways to encourage this. Automatic and AI time trackers simplify this process.
- AI powered time tracking software offer a new and bespoke way to make timesheets easy!
