The Benefits of Time Tracking for Your Business
Keeping track of how you and your workers spend time is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Labor costs can be a large portion of expenses, and understanding how time is spent can help you manage your business better in a multitude of ways.
Benefits of Time Tracking
There are many reasons to track time:
- If you price by the hour, time tracking is mandatory because without it, you won’t be able to invoice your clients accurately.
- Tracking time helps managers understand how long a task should take, where employees may need training, and where processes and procedures may need improvement.
- Information on time reports can be fed into a project management system and reviewed to make better fixed-fee pricing estimates on future jobs and customer proposals.
- Time tracking feeds into job costing for construction companies.
- For manufacturing businesses, time tracking feeds into labor reports.
- Time tracking is used in payroll systems to pay hourly workers accurately.
- Time tracking can increase accountability among workers as they become more aware of how they spend their working time.
- When time is budgeted in advance, actual hours worked can be compared to see how the budget is used and whether it was too much or too little.
- Time tracking allows managers and business owners to determine when they need to hire additional staff because the backlog has become too large.
What is Time Tracking?
Time tracking is the process of recording how you spend your time. You can use a pen and paper, a spreadsheet, or time tracking software to log the task you are working on and the length of time you worked on it.
For example, here’s a simplistic example of a time log, or timesheet, for one day:
| Employee | Activity | Hours | Billable | Complete? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JS | Client A Bookkeeping | 4.5 | Y | Y |
| JS | Training Webinar | 1.5 | N | Y |
| JS | Finding Client A’s file | .5 | N | Y |
| JS | Client A Tax Return | 1.5 | Y | |
| Total | 8.0 |
On a daily or weekly basis, employees may be required to complete timesheets, which are then turned into their managers and payroll administrators.
Managers can take time tracking to the next level by adding hourly payroll costs, as well as the employee’s hourly billing rate, to gain insight into further time-tracking financial metrics.
Time Tracking Software
There are many different types of time-tracking software:
- A time clock allows employees to ‘punch in’ when they arrive for work and ‘punch out’ when they leave. This type of machine is mostly used for payroll in a manufacturing setting.
- Time tracking applications allow workers with computers to enter their time via the application. In some cases, workers can enter their time via a mobile device.
- Some companies will have their time tracking function embedded into their project management, job costing, or billing system. Employees would then enter their time via those applications.
Getting Employees on Board with Time Tracking
Reporting your hours in a time-tracking system is often employees’ least favorite task and requires a new mindset and attitude. It’s important that your employees do not feel like you will be ‘Big Brother’ when it comes to using their time data.
For best results, let employees know how the timesheet data will be used. Reassure them that they will not get fired or penalized if they feel something took too long—this often translates into an employee fudging their hours on a task in which they might have made a mistake. Make sure they know they won’t be penalized in any way for what they report.
Communication is key to getting employees to report their time accurately so managers and owners can receive meaningful information. Have managers tie time tracking to an employee’s personal career goals to increase adoption and reduce resistance.
Personal Time Tracking
Time is our most precious commodity, and tracking your personal time can give you insights into how you are investing in yourself. Some really interesting questions can be answered when you have time data for yourself.
- How much downtime do you need each day?
- How much time are you spending on your life goals?
- Are you spending time on what you consider to be important?
Getting Started with Time Tracking
If you’re considering time tracking or would like to take your current time-tracking function to the next level, please reach out. We may be able to help with integration, implementation, the accounting aspect of time-tracking, and financial metrics and reports.
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Don’t overinspect or oversupervise. Allow your leaders to make mistakes in training, so they can profit from the errors and not make them in combat. -Col. Glover Johns We had just hit the jackpot. A Chinese submarine crossed our path in an area where no one expected it to be. This should have been a massive win for U.S. intelligence, our ship, and us as SONAR technicians. But there was one problem: no one made the call. The submarine was only discovered in post-analysis days later. What should have been a career-defining success became a failure for our SONAR team due to hesitation and lack of confidence. One of my teammates saw the submarine—its frequencies matched, it behaved like a submarine, and all the indicators were there. But he didn’t speak up. He was afraid of being wrong. When this failure came to light, our team had a meeting to figure out what went wrong. The teammate who had seen it was devastated. He felt like he had failed the entire crew. Our immediate supervisor didn’t help—he picked apart every mistake, repeatedly asking, “How could you miss this? I’ve shown you this a million times!” After a few minutes of this, his boss stepped in. He asked how we were being trained. The answer was obvious to all of us. Our supervisor was a doer, not a teacher. He couldn’t stand to see mistakes, so instead of letting us learn, he micromanaged and took over. The result? We lacked the confidence and knowledge to make decisions because we had never been trusted to. At this point, you might think, “What a terrible leader!” And you’d be right—at least in this instance. But what you might not realize is that even good leaders fall into this trap. And you’re not immune to it either. If you have kids, I guarantee you’ve stepped in and done something for them because they were taking too long. If you run a business, you’ve likely taken over a task because you didn’t trust an employee to do it right. It feels like the right move in the moment, but it’s not. It is the easy way out. The answer is simple: real leadership requires patience. It’s easier to take over than to teach. So how do we break this cycle? It takes discipline. Step one: provide the right training. No one becomes an expert overnight, but they need a foundation strong enough to work from. Encourage questions and never make people feel stupid for asking. If they’re afraid to ask, they’ll be afraid to act. Step two: let go. You have to trust the people you train. Set expectations clearly and then step back. Resist the urge to jump in. Step three: debrief. Go over the work. Point out successes and failures. Then, instead of just pointing out what went wrong, show them how to do better. Follow these steps, and I guarantee you’ll build a team that has the knowledge and confidence to make the call. Written by: Marc Chianese, CPA Candidate
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