There are several reasons small businesses might track time spent on various tasks each day. Time Tracking Tips for Small Businesses is essential to building your business. For professionals billing hourly, tracking is essential to getting paid. Other professionals may employ part-time workers who must report the hours they work each week. Beyond those two reasons, there are also professionals who want insight into where they’re spending their time each day.
If you need to track your time each day, there are a few things you can do to make the process easier. The most important thing is that you set up a system that you can easily maintain. Otherwise you’ll find yourself neglecting your time tracking throughout the day, making it impossible to catch up.
Here are a few tips to make your time-tracking efforts easier.
Keep It Simple
Whatever time-tracking system you set up, it’s important that it be simple enough to follow. This is especially important if you have employees or contractors you’re asking to use the system. If you have an overly complicated, multi-step system, it will end up being a productivity and morale drain.
Unless you work exclusively in your office, you should have something in place so that you can track your time when you’re away from the office, preferably through a mobile device that you always have on hand.
Use the Right Software
It’s important to have a time-tracking solution that works the way you do. If you bill by projects, your solution should allow you to easily connect each minute to a specific project. It should also be easy to transfer the information to your invoices or billing spreadsheets. The less duplication of work you can have with your automated solution, the better.
This will help you be productive while also capturing the information you need to get paid. Your software solution should also have an easy-to-use interface and a dashboard that gives you an overview of where your time is going on a daily or weekly basis.
Make It Automatic
If you need employees to clock in and out for timekeeping purposes, you’ll likely need an app that requires manual execution. However, if you’re simply wanting to capture time for your own informational purposes, a tool that runs in the background throughout the day may be the best option for you.
This will free you from having to remember to flip the switch as you start your workday, gathering information even when you’re taking a break from your duties.
However, this type of software can eat system resources, so make sure you know what you’re getting before you make the leap to an automatic time tracker.
Have Accountability
As you make time tracking a part of your regular routine, hold yourself accountable for tracking time each day. You should also hold your team responsible for capturing its own time. Audit regularly and make sure employees understand why they’re being asked to track the hours they spend on various projects.
If they benefit from tracking time, they’ll be more likely to do it, so offer a bonus to the employee who logs the highest number of hours on projects in a given month.
Regularly Regroup
As you capture all of this information, make sure you occasionally review the results and learn from them. This data can be invaluable in showing where your time is going each day.
These analytics can help you predict how much money you’ve earned each month and, over time, you’ll be able to better estimate project hours based on the hours you’ve put in on similar projects in the past. Knowledge is power and your time-tracking system can give you in-depth knowledge about the day-to-day workings of your business.
If you need to track your time, there are several ways to approach the task. If you make the process as simple and straightforward as possible, you’ll find that you’ve quickly made tracking a normal part of your daily duties.
