The Time Tracking Case- Tracking’s Benefits in the Light of Users’ Feedback

Time is passing fast, even if you do not do anything it passes. Hence, spend time wisely and avoid wasting it since it will not come back. How can you spend your time in the right way? You can do it by tracking it!

What is a time tracking?

Time tracking is all about observing and noting down your daily tasks and their deadlines. Professionally, you can do it as an employee to track your working hours and tasks completions; you can do it for billing purposes, being a freelancer, for instance. Traditionally, employee time tracking used to be done via swipe cards, clock-in & clock-out, and geo-location tracking methods. Now, time tracking apps like Time Doctor have replaced those. Using such apps, time can be tracked either via a timesheet or via a timer.

Timesheets

In this method, you add your tasks and time spent on them at the end of the day, or a week or a month. Daily tracking is recommended. It is a simple method and is free from stress given by a timer.

Timer

The timer is started with the start of your work and ended when you are done with your task. It more precisely records working hours while in timesheets approximate times are added.

Importance of time tracking

• Tracking makes billing and payroll processing easier and efficient.

It means you can know billable and non-billable hours. If you are a small or medium-scale business and have a strict budget, time tracking keeps you organized and under budget. This data can also help you determine your product or service's price.

Freelancers and clients need accurate billing and time tracking helps to calculate both hourly and fixed rates for projects.

For the hiring manager, it gives insight into where the money is going.

• Gives useful data

When you enter data every day, you end up with a lot of data – in this case, with useful information you can utilize in various ways. Firstly, you will see how much your team is working and what they are working on, as well as the amount of time it usually takes to complete a task. The data entered every day gives useful insights like how productive your team is and how much time they take to complete a task. This helps to make improvements.

• Improves productivity

Time tracking prevents you from procrastination since it keeps you focused and avoids wasting time.

• Tracking time is the best solution

Time tracking helps you avoid wasting time on social media as you can constantly see your daily activities being tracked. It makes you more accountable and keeps you away from distractions. It helps improve your productivity.

• Great for students

Students having exam season coming can make the most of their time via time tracking. They can be free from the sudden change in routine and keep motivated to complete their preparations.

• prevents multitasking

It keeps you away from unnecessary multitasking especially when you are at work. If you are doing a task that needs your 100% focus, and you are doing another task too, then you will have both incomplete and end up frustrated. Doing one task at a time is more efficient.

Users’ Feedback for using time tracking software

Laura Vanderkam, the writer of the books 168 Hours and I Know How She Does It, says "If you want to lose weight, you need to write down what you eat. It same thing with time. If you want to spend time better, you need to figure out where it is going. Maybe something you thought was a problem is not. Maybe something you never even considered is taking a lot more time than you thought.”

Her Freelance Experience

According to Laura, the time tracking apps enhanced her quality of life, since it allowed her to do her job instead of:

• being concern about the payment from her client
• feeling guilty for not working enough
• easting time
• procrastinating She could see her idle time that helped her in making changes in her daily work life.

She was able to set clear priorities and kept her on track, avoiding a need for extra hour’s work that helped her mental health too.

Exact time tracking also benefit the clients

Laura’s clients were happy as they could see clear progress through reports that also made communication easier.

Here are some other users’ feedback:

"As a graphic designer, it is important for me to provide my clients with the accurate amount of work that I did, broken down into tasks and projects so that they can see what they are paying for. With Clockify this has become less of a burden for me and allows me to invest more of my time into what I do best rather than paperwork or counting hours.” – Elijah D, Graphic designer

“Time Doctor is very easy to use & very quickly anybody can pick it up – useful when onboarding a new employee. Enables effective management of housekeeping tasks for team leads & managers – like attendance, timesheets, etc. Easy tool to bill the hours worked & review time taken on projects and tasks through reports. There is a mobile app as well which enables you to track time spent on calls as well – especially when you are a consultant or advisory services provider and spend a lot of time on the phone. You can set up time tracking for specific clients, projects, tasks and assign it to specific employees – this is very granular and comprehensive.” – Subash B, Co-founder of a marketing and advertising company.

Can time tracking be a bad idea?

It can be, sometimes. Time tracking may not be useful for all jobs and all tasks. For instance, a freelancer who is good at time management and is paid per project and not per hour may not need time tracking. Here are some situations where time tracking can be a bad idea:

If you feel bad with a sense of being monitored or your privacy violated Some employees may take time tracking as being watched with no concern of their privacy, which may affect the working environment as well as their performance.

What to do?

Develop trust with your employees and a culture where all feel being valued. Explain to them the benefits of using the new software.

• If it’s stressful

Time tracking may sound boring and should not make you tensed by adding extra workload.

What to do?

The employer should provide clear guidelines for using the software. Start with audit entries every 2 or 3 weeks to ensure all information is being entered and tracked properly. It also helps to fix the errors sooner than later to avoid any extra stress in the future.

While selecting a time tracking app for your company, go for the one having an intuitive interface, is fast and simple to use. Freelancers should also select based on these factors.

Since doing a job is often hard and tensed enough, the goal of the time tracking apps is to simplify people's lives and not complicate them more.

“In terms of feel and use, Time Doctor has many integrations and has a simple, sleek, and intuitive interface regardless of what supported device or browser you decide to use it on. This is especially true for its user-friendly, easy-to-navigate web app which can be accessed from anywhere for viewing of your and your current team’s progress.” – DeskTime.

Also, think of this question:

• is there any positive reinforcement for someone being efficient and doing their job well, or only negative consequences for the lack of productivity?

If your time tracking routine involves trying to remember what you did 3 days ago, then it is probably not effective. Human memory is not the most reliable narrator you can possibly have.

What to do?

Set an alarm that will go off every weekday at a certain time to remind you to either start recording time or to track all your tasks in the timesheet. Time Doctor also gives an option to set a reminder to start the timer.

Final Thoughts

Time tracking, if done regularly and via the best time tracking app like Time Doctor, helps improve productivity especially for frustrating tasks like billing and project costing. It gives useful insights for improving your business or project management. To use the time in a wise and the best way, know how you are spending it and keep it in the right way. The great thing is that with time tracking apps like Time Doctor, time tracking has become much simpler and easier to do.