Timesheets may be one of the most important business records going, but they're also one of the most inefficient and inaccurate. Thankfully, a new breed of time tracking tool can create machine-precise timesheets with minimal effort. By leveraging automation and artificial intelligence, such tools can create timesheets for employees while they work. But how do automatic timesheets work, exactly, and how accurate are they?
What is automatic time tracking?
Automatic time tracking gets smart apps to capture all your work activity for you so you don’t have to. Everything is recorded to a private timeline that only you can access, providing a completely objective digital memory of your work day. There are no timers and manual notes required - you effectively never have to actively track your time ever again.
Automatic time tracking apps can then transform this time data into draft timesheets for you, which you just have to click to log publicly when you're ready.
How do automatic timesheets work?
Automatic time trackers use machine learning to turn your tracked work activity into accurate timesheets. They need a bit of help from you first to get going – watching how you log specific activities so they know which project to link them to. Whenever you edit an automatically drafted timesheet, you effectively train an algorithm to adopt your individual preferences and task groupings. It ensures your automatic timesheets are as accurate and authentically "you" as possible.
How accurate are automatic timesheets?
Incredibly so. Unlike your average worker – who, surprisingly, can’t recount everything they work on – automatic time trackers capture everything you work on. This data is directly represented on automatic timesheets, making the final result a highly-accurate account of what you actually did. Improving accuracy was one of our key motivations for developing automatic timesheets, here at Timely. By recording everything, automatic time tracking apps capture the whole picture. They can help you discover all your rightful billable hours – including those that fall outside of your normal working day.
How do I use automatic timesheets?
Simply install an automatic time tracker and get stuck into your work! It should work across all devices (mobile, tablet and desktop), so you really can work anywhere. At the end of your working day, your timesheet will be waiting for you for review. You can edit anything before making it public.
Is my logged data safe?
At least in the case of Timely, utterly. All the data you track in Timely is private to you alone, any no personal information will ever be pulled into your timesheet. Time entries are made as suggestions, meaning nothing goes live until you approve it. Everything is fully editable and you have complete control over what information you push public.
Advantages of automatic timesheets?
If you hate filling out timesheets, automatic timesheets are a no-brainer. But the value of automatic timesheets extends far beyond that. With automatic timesheets, you:
- Never miss out on billable hours
- Get an complete view of of employee productivity
- Remove the overhead of manual timesheet creation
- Free employees for high-value, productive work
- Improve estimation and reporting
- Provide clients with invoicing transparency
- Remove end-of-month reporting bottlenecks
To help get your team on-board, we’ve broken down how automatic time tracking benefits CEOs, managers and employees alike.
