How to incorporate time tracking in project management

Great business decisions come from having informed, concrete data–not guesswork. 

Running a business without robust data and analytics to guide you can result in poor judgment, reducing your profits and affecting your bottom line. That’s why 63% of businesses agree data has helped to improve the service they provide to customers.

In other words: Reduce business costs and invest resources where it’s needed most.

Having real-time data helps you to make those all-important strategic decisions. In fact, 74% of businesses are either already using a cloud-based solution, or are in the process of implementing it.

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Do you know how your project resources are distributed?

Project time tracking software can help you monitor employee time, manage projects, and track where your resources are going.  

Below, we’ll share the importance of time tracking, alongside five key benefits of tracking projects, tasks, and teams.

Time tracking can help you:

• Identify what areas of your organization need improvement. Time tracking helps you take immediate action on areas that need improvements and more resources. Use the data to assign the right tasks to the right people. Allocate more staff to a project when deadlines are looming or assign staff to cover a period of employee absence.
• Understand employee data regardless of work location. Manage remote and hybrid workers by planning and reporting on where your employees are working for easy office capacity management. Remote workers can record their working hours without being tied to a physical location. 
• Analyse actual project data. Keep your project tracking accurate and up to date. Time tracking allows you to see any variances and modify project costs before they get out of hand.  
• Estimate costs for the next projects. Understand exactly how much time a previous project activity took, especially if the activities are similar. Time tracking data allows you to accurately estimate the costs of future projects.
• Save time. Time tracking software saves time: 50% of professionals who do not have automated systems, (for example, time tracking) say manual data input and data adjustments are the most time-consuming parts of the process.

Simplify the way employees work–regardless of location across multiple projects simultaneously. Employee time tracking will allow you to break down project management activities into smaller sub-projects and set deadlines for each. 

What can employee time tracking show you?

Employee time tracking software monitors how employees spend their time and can be linked to a type of activity, such as administrative, training, or direct project work.

First-class time tracking solutions offer more specific tracking features, such as writing a proposal, performance review meetings, and much more. It will show you exactly where time is being spent and help improve any repetition, such as duplication of tasks across teams.

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Typically, time tracking in project management will help you answer the following questions:

1. Whose skills are not being used properly for project-based work?
2. Are employees giving away too much free work and time?
3. How much of a project team or individual team member's time is booked for work or actually spent working?
4. Are billable and non-billable activities by clients and team members monitored effectively?
5. Are more resources needed and are projects being delivered on time?
6. Can we improve productivity and plan more accurately?
7. Are we monitoring employee welfare and staff overload through excessive utilisation rates?

Time tracking will give a complete overview of each employee’s workload and save you valuable time in manually preparing data.

Do you know where your business loses productivity?

Digital solutions such as project time tracking software—can uncover business insights about workflows and unproductive patterns. Capture obstacles so you know which processes, tasks, tools, and behaviours to tackle first.

Distractions whilst working are a normal part of life. Slack and email notifications, social media messages, and office chatter all negatively affect productivity. What’s more, a study by the University of California Irvine says it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task.

Eliminating distractions and reporting on employee capabilities helps measure profitability.

“We used a spreadsheet in Google Sheets to track projects and customers but there wasn’t a “proper” solution,” says Dave Fenton, Vice President of Services at Ancoris. “It lacked consistency and validation, and there was no reporting capability or ability to track time in multiple ways. We had no ability to measure the profitability of projects, it wasn’t scalable at all and it also wasn’t used across the business, as we all had separate processes.”

Project time tracking software contributes to  building more effective teams by:

• Making to-do lists
• Time-blocking
• Prioritising specific tasks 
• Reducing the number of times employees multitask
• Identifying unplanned tasks

Help employees become more efficient. Project time-tracking can help you, and them, prioritise workloads–reducing employee stress levels.

How does project time tracking software help reduce human error?

Let’s face it: we’re all human and make mistakes. But employee errors can have a ripple effect on a business’ infrastructure, processes, and relationships. 

Let’s say you’ve inputted the wrong working hours on a payroll system, for example. Employees could be under or overpaid. It takes more time and effort to correct those mistakes, harming employee relationships. 

Similarly, sending your customer an inaccurate quote or missing a deadline for a project can damage your business reputation. More importantly, 76% of leaders who experienced a reputation crisis said it could have been prevented. For those reasons alone, it is essential to have a system in place to reduce human error. 

Let’s take a look at a real-life case study into the cost of human error. The National Audit Office investigated the Department of Work and Pensions. They found that “repeated human errors over many years” were to blame for underpaying 134,000 pensioners over £1 billion in state pensions.

•  “The use of automation is really beneficial, we don't have typos or inconsistent data input and can easily define the tasks we’re doing.” –Gareth Harris, Google Cloud Consultant at Ancoris

Let’s say an employee forgets to track time while working on a specific project, they can manually edit their working hour details at any time allowing corrections to make. 

Activate alerts and reminders for meetings–don’t just rely on remembering the details. Focus on deep work and get notified when a task changes.

That said: human errors are impossible to avoid. You can at least minimize them with project time tracking software.

Are you ready to implement time tracking software for your business?

Streamline your project management with easy-to-use, secure software for tracking time against customers, projects, and teams.

Appogee HR Time can provide you with a top-notch project time tracking solution for your business. 

Try free for 14 days or book a demo with a member of our friendly team and learn more about our packages in more detail.