Time Tracking Myths You Should Avoid

What is time tracking and why should you get your business some good time tracking software?

As an employer or business owner, time tracking serves the purpose of documenting the time a particular employee or unit of employees has worked during a certain period. This includes recording time spent on tasks, projects, or clients.

However, many people link-time tracking to a compilation of spreadsheets that is time-consuming and has no real essence. In fact, this is the very first myth about time tracking which we will debunk in this post.

Myth 1: Time Tracking Is Pointless

This myth stems from the mindset that time tracking is just another administrative process like bookkeeping, only that it is not as necessary. Keeping track of time in your business while harboring this kind of mindset will make it actually not benefit your business in any way.

In fact, time tracking can open up a world of benefits to you if you carry it out with a more positive outlook and more precise expectations. Keeping a good account of time in your business gives you a blueprint that you can use to do things such as:

• Properly plan how to tackle upcoming tasks in the most time-efficient manner by referring to you and/or your team’s use of time in the past. 

• Foresee any problems that may arise in the future because you will be able to look back at your timesheet to analyze any actual or potential problems that you have experienced before.

• Help drive your project to swift and successful completion by using a good time analysis.

Having a good account of your time will also enable you to present more accurate proposals to new clients. You will be confident and specific whenever you tell your clients when their jobs will be delivered.

Time is money, so if you can save time, you will find that you have automatically saved yourself some costs that would have been otherwise inevitable. You will also have more time to work on other projects.

Myth 2: Time Tracking Can Never Be Accurate Because People Never Remember to Log in Their Time as They Work

This is not just a myth but also very much a thing of the past; a problem that has been effectively extinguished by modern technology.

Good time tracking software makes it easy to keep accurate track of your business time. This software has in-built features such as timers and system prompts that simplify the entire process of time tracking.

Therefore, businesses no longer have to worry if their employees will forget to clock in and out of work. You also do not have to worry about inaccurate timesheets any longer. You just have to click a button and technology will do the rest for you.

Myth 3: Time Tracking Is Time-Consuming

Has your team expressed or hinted at some fears that their working hours will increase if these hours are tracked?

Yes, that might happen at the start. But as explained in debunked-myth number 2, technology has simplified it all. Cloud-based software has presented swift and resourceful solutions to tracking time.

And check this out: thanks to this type of software, time tracking can now take only two minutes per week!

Your business may take just a few days or less to adjust to the new process, and before you know it, time tracking will even become the easiest part of your routines.

Plus, for those who fear more working hours, rest and be assured that you are not expected to work more hours. The results yielded from time tracking will only aid you and your team to achieve higher levels of productivity while maintaining a work/life balance. Also, to the employers and team leaders, reassuring your workers of this will help combat this fear.

Myth 4: Time Tracking Connotes Micromanagement.

Lucky for everyone, it does not.

If you are an employee, again, fear not. Time tracking does not mean the end of freedom in your workplace. Your all-around amazing boss suddenly wanting to keep accurate track of time spent on tasks in the office will not turn him or her into a micromanager.

He or she might get a little too excited at the beginning with all the wonderfully valuable data that will come out of the timesheets, but soon afterward, you will all come to see the worth of the management information that will be obtained and even you might even expect this information once you realize it is invaluable to aiding the best decision-making processes in your workplace.

And if you are an employer, letting your employees in on what exactly the timesheets that will be generated from this procedure will be used for will help combat this type of fear in your workplace.

Time tracking is highly modernized today, giving it a lot less of the technicality that it used to have in the past. So have we sold you on the idea of time tracking yet?

Not yet?

Well, let’s look at extra a few benefits you will be receiving by tracking your business hours:

• An accurate account for the time you and your team or workers spend on tasks and projects will enable you to bill your clients correctly so that you are not underpaid and do not overcharge.

• Sufficient time data helps you identify workers that will be available for certain tasks, facilitating a well-organized distribution of workload. This will, in addition, help to prevent employee burnout.

• Appropriate payroll processing is another advantage of time tracking because you will be able to rightly pay your workers for their time.

• Also, if you are a business individual such as an entrepreneur or a freelancer, and you charge your clients by the hour, it is vital to your business that you keep a detailed and precise track record of your time so that the bills you present to your clients are accurate to a T. This will build some levels of trust in your clients, as well as prevent you getting underpaid.

• A business must meet its deadlines to avoid any potential loss of trust from clients. Good planning achieved from time tracking will enable you to always make your deliveries on time.

• Good use of time will reduce time lost in your business.

• Time tracking will improve project management and increase the productivity of you and your team. It will also give you the tools that you will need to do a good employee/team performance analysis and project evaluation, making you aware of what is working and what needs to be worked on.

To attain all of the above, you need to keep accurate records of your business hours. This makes time tracking essential to any successful business. So if you want a successful business today, stop wasting time and track it instead! 

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