Tracking time and efficiently utilizing it is cardinal for businesses of all sizes to emerge successfully. Though your business, at its nascent stages, may find manual time tracking easy to handle, it may become tedious as your business grows.

However, most business owners don't get a grasp of this concept. If you are hesitant to implement a time tracking software in your company, think about the following questions. What are your employees doing now? Are they speaking to your clients or streaming videos on social media channels?

Providing complete liberty to your employees, without any way to track them, is like a double-edged sword. Having an appropriate tracking system in place ensures that you have a hold on productivity levels, thereby enabling you to reap maximum business benefits.

This is a representation of how your employees may spend their productive hours.

Source:Finances Online

Now that you are convinced about incorporating an employee time tracking software, the next question in your mind will be how to choose the right time tracking software and what features to look for?

Here, we have consolidated a few important features you should be looking for in time tracking software.

1. Accurate Time Tracking

Your time-keeping software should track the time employees have spent on particular tasks. This feature should either accept manual entries from employees or automatically register the clock-in and clock-out entries as submitted by the users.

Also, employees should be able to manually edit the total number of hours spent on tasks in addition to the validation by automated time trackers. For example, if a user clocks out and continues work due to an urgent requirement, the overtime that has been served by the employee will not be calculated. The employee may, in this case, log into his/her account and enter the additional hours. This will help them earn the additional payout for the overtime served.

2. Comprehensive Reports

Though time tracking systems provide data about time spent by employees on a common interface, you must be able to derive insights from the recorded data. Detailed and interactive reports help in interpreting information.

These reports should ideally include information about the following parameters:

• The reports should have a detailed mention about the total number of hours spent by employees on particular tasks and their idle time over the week/day.
• The time entered by employees should be categorized based on the task/project that was assigned. The system should project the individual contribution of every employee towards these tasks/projects.
• KPIs assigned to employees should be listed separately. The number of hours spent on these activities should be recorded. When key KPIs are available on a single screen, it becomes easy to track time/employee performance and obtain actionable insights.

3. Efficient Project Management

Efficient project management and time tracking applications complement each other. This is because projects can be delivered on time only when their progress is tracked and monitored closely. For example, a time tracking system allows you to assign tasks to individual employees. You can track the number of hours spent on particular tasks. This way, you can also monitor the progress of your projects and know where your project delivery stands. Also, if you find the project consuming a higher number of hours than predicted, you can interfere and course-correct processes. Further, it helps you to identify bottlenecks in your business processes that may result in the delay

Moreover, if you pay your employees on an hourly basis, tracking time is essential. It helps you find the accurate number of hours spent by employees on particular tasks, thereby helping you to streamline payment processes.

4. Powerful Integrations

Breaking through silos is important. The free flow of information, without any dependency on specific checkpoints, helps in seamless business processes.

It's the same when considering a time tracking system. Time tracking and payroll management are interdependent. Payroll processing takes place based on the data obtained from the time tracking system. The amount of effort put in by individual contributors is calculated through the time tracking system. They are paid either on an hourly or flat monthly rate through the payroll management system.

What if these two management systems are integrated?

Yes, if you are on the verge of signing the green line for a time tracking system, do not overlook this need for integration. The timesheet system should be able to integrate with your payroll system. This way you can simply export employee timesheet data from the time tracking system, import this data into your payroll management system, and your accounting is tackled in a breeze!

For example, Archarina’s Arc Time Tracking system can be integrated with Cougar Mountain’s Denali payroll. This capability saves time during payroll processing, improves transparency, and also helps tackle billing-related disputes in your organization.

5. Easy Accessibility

Easy accessibility to your time tracking system is important. More so, when companies are grappling to meet deadlines and maintain the quality of work delivered even when working from a remote ecosystem.

Not just the pandemic, but even after businesses come back to normalcy, easy accessibility to timesheet systems will remain cardinal.

Consider you having a distributed workforce, a cloud-based time tracking system that is easily accessible irrespective of the employee's work location will be hugely beneficial. Also, this kind of time tracking system gives your employees the perk of entering/editing time/task status even from the comfort of their home.

Moreover, when your team has access to a common online interface with accurate details of tasks and effort put into them, it reflects transparency and boosts team collaboration.

Therefore, if you have decided to zero down on a time tracking system, need to look for a cloud-based time tracking system, first on your checklist.

Wrap Up

A state-of-the-art time tracking system can contribute hugely to untangling process-oriented complexities. If you have decided to invest in time tracking software, ensure that you check the features mentioned above. This helps you simplify the complete process of tracking tasks while promising maximum productivity.

Archarina’s Arc Time Tracker offers you these features and much more. Reach out to us for a detailed discussion and free demo!