What Is Time Management Software?

In very simple terms, time management software, or time tracking software, is a software that allows you to keep track of the time you and your employees spend working on different projects and tasks. However, more than a tool for gathering information, time management software is a solution that empowers your business to handle and optimize different processes and activities such as payroll, project budgeting, and business intelligence.

In order to better understand time management software, we need to take a look at the benefits that you can get from it. But first, let’s have a look at how to choose the right time tracking software for your company. 

What to Look For In a Time Management Tool? 

Believe or not, the time management software market is a crowded one. That’s why it’s important to understand the most important features when choosing your time management tool. Let’s take a look. 

• Easy to use. 

When it comes to time management software, simplicity is king, and you’ll want to make sure it’s easy to use for everyone. The interface should be clear, intuitive, and user-friendly. Because ease of use is crucial, we advise you to look for products that offer a free trial period so you can really test the tool before committing to it. Apart from being easy to use, you want to ensure the time tracking tool you choose includes features that will help simplify your work and optimize key processes within your organization. Those features could include automatic time tracking, automated reminders, a start-and-stop timer, or a mobile time tracking app for employees on the go.

• Flexible. 

Flexibility is another must-have. Look for a tool that you can easily adapt and configure to the needs of each user and project, as well as your overall business. For instance, if you work with freelancers and regular employees, you want a product that is flexible enough to differentiate between the two types of workers, and to accurately measure the time and performance of all the people you work with.

Flexibility ensures you’ll be able to measure the time and cost of each one of your projects as accurately as possible. With that in mind, we encourage you to look for software equipped with features defined by a high degree of flexibility, such as the ability to customize your KPI dashboard or configure the exact reports you want.   

• Collaborative. 

If you are getting time management software with the idea of monitoring people, you are missing the point. A time management software is a tool aimed at empowering your entire business, and one of the ways it does that is by facilitating collaboration among your team.

Make sure your software allows you to interact with your employees and exchange ideas and feedback about specific projects. Look for time tracking solutions that provide enough room for collaboration, like offering integration with tools like GSuite and other online applications.

Benefits of Time Management Software

Let’s take a look at the benefits that your organization can get with this kind of tool. From boosting your company’s overall productivity to improving your staff morale, there’s a lot of potential in correctly implementing a time management tool.

• Boost staff productivity. 

Time management software provides you with the opportunity to identify where your employees are most productive. Simply being able to see that offers a big advantage. Generally speaking, employees’ high productivity is directly connected to the things they like doing the most. If you are able to redistribute their workload according to their more productive areas, you could significantly boost the productivity of your entire team. 

Along those same lines, a time management software tool can also help you identify and eliminate tasks and activities that aren’t crucial to moving your projects forward. Being able to see where time is wasted offers a great opportunity to fix the processes that are not working in your organization.

As far as your employees go, time management software enables them to see the whole picture regarding their working time, which is something that can significantly improve their focus and, hence, their productivity. 

• Increase accuracy of time and attendance tracking. 

Accuracy is one of the first things you will notice once you’ve implemented a time tracking tool. Not only does it remove the inaccuracies associated with paper-based tracking, but it will also help you have an accurate picture of how much time everybody is actually spending on their specific tasks and projects. 

If your employees are able to log their hours by tasks, projects, and/or clients, you would be able to generate more accurate invoices. Such accuracy will help you bill clients for the actual work, which of course can help save money and have a positive effect on the bottom line.

You’ll also be able to efficiently track attendance. For example, if your software is equipped with a mobile time-tracking app, you can collect accurate data from your mobile workforce even when those employees are not connected to the internet.

In terms of attendance, a time management software also tells your employees exactly how many vacation days they have left or how many sick days they are entitled to. Knowing this information gives them a sense of control over their time. All these benefits of a time tracking system add up to helping you to take care of payroll with ease.

• Prevent payroll abuse. 

When it comes to payroll abuse, a good time management software solution levels the field for both the company and its employees. In fact, it not only holds employees accountable who cheat on their hours, but also companies that fail to comply with things like overtime regulations or particular status (e.g., assigning full-time hours to part-time employees).

Additionally, time management software is a great tool for companies that have employees with irregular schedules and hours, because it easily removes any room for discrepancies regarding time and fees.

• Employees receive access to schedules. 

Transparency is one of the defining benefits of a time management software solution. One of the ways employees enjoy such transparency is by accessing schedules that allow them to better plan the work ahead. In fact, with a time management software you can easily visualize all your projects and create schedules for each employee in a matter of just a few clicks.   

• Time management systems are scalable. 

Regardless of the size of your company or how fast it grows, a time management system provides you with the opportunity to have a tool that you can easily adapt to your own needs.

Remember what we said about flexibility? This is one of the most important reasons why you need to have a product that is flexible. Your business or the nature of it can easily change, so you need to have a tool that allows you to face those changes without friction.

• Real-time analytics. 

A time management solution is not a tool for gathering data, but rather a tool aimed at improving your business intelligence. In fact, some of the solutions available in the market are equipped with analytics-based features such as:

• Customizable dashboards for measuring all kinds of KPIs.

• Employee reports that allow you to analyze trends and identify opportunities and potential problems.

• Absence analysis that you can use to identify patterns of absenteeism or presenteeism within your company.

If you are able to manage this kind of real-time analytics, you will be able to leverage every single initiative across your organization and tackle any issue that could potentially harm your business.   

• Time management software saves money. 

Time is money and if you save time, you save money. In fact, just by removing the administrative work associated with old-fashioned tracking systems, your new software will help you to eliminate unnecessary expenses. 

Plus, saving money is one of the natural consequences of everything previously mentioned. If you boost the productivity of your staff and improve the accuracy of the costs associated with your projects, you will inevitably end up saving money. 

Along those lines, a time management software not only saves money but also paper (and physical space!)—an extra bonus if you want to make a positive contribution to the environment.

• Improve staff morale. 

There are many ways a time management software can improve staff morale. To begin with, it can bring a sense of equality and fairness to the workplace that eliminates favoritism and encourages transparency. That alone provides a solid base for promoting wellbeing at the workplace.

It also eliminates the need for micromanagement and provides employees with an accurate sense of their work that boosts project ownership among employees. The combination of these two variables improves staff morale in a significant way. 

Conclusion

More than a tool, time management software is an empowering solution for your business that can help you optimize some of the most important aspects of your company. Many time management software solutions will also provide you with free timesheet templates. If you are planning to implement one, make sure you abandon the idea that this kind of software is a tool for gathering information and monitoring people. Instead, keep in mind all the benefits we just mentioned, and use them as the perfect excuse to start optimizing your business while boosting the productivity and morale of your human capital.