Timesheet: A Smart Way To Log and Track Time

Running a business and reaching the summit of success- the gap between the two is enormous. Creating an effortless bridge between the two requires impeccable managerial skills. In this, one of the significant tasks is tracking the employees’ working hours.

Beyond a question of doubt, time tracking is a tedious and highly monotonous job, and if the systems aren’t in tandem, time tracking can prove to be extremely arduous. And here, a timesheet is your absolute savior!

What is a Timesheet? How can automated timesheets prove to be fruitful in benefitting my business? What are the modern-day applications of timesheet automation? Indeed, these questions are popping into your head. Rest assured, as we’ve narrowed down everything you need to know about timesheets in this article. Read on to know more!

What is a Timesheet?

An employer can track the amount of time a specific employee has spent working on a given activity using a timesheet, which is a data table. This tracks working hours, making it an essential tool for project managers to manage resources, track payroll, determine holiday entitlements, and keep tabs on employee progress.

Timesheets in the past had the appearance of simple weekly schedules that were hand-drawn or printed on sheets of paper, requiring manual work. There was a risk these paper timesheets easily being lost, harmed, or destroyed. Contrarily, modern timesheets are digitalized, adaptable, and largely automated, which makes workforce management incredibly simple and efficient for all parties.

Kinds of timesheets

Depending on the purpose, timesheets are mostly of three types:

Employee timesheets:

Used for hourly-paid non-exempt staff members

Payroll timesheets:

Aid in streamlining the payroll of employees

Online timesheets:

Traditional payroll timesheets in digital form

Benefits of Implementing Timesheets in Businesses

Time-tracking is nothing but meticulous management. Employing timesheet automation, on the other hand, can prove to be beneficial in a myriad of ways. Let’s find them out!

Task Management

Managing responsibilities is a gargantuan task. Because of this, it is important to use timesheet software to simplify all of your tasks. Without getting exhausted, you may add new work, categorize your jobs as billable or non-billable, design new projects, and manage several clients simultaneously.

Offers Comprehensiveness

With a comprehensive understanding of your current tasks, timesheet automation enables you to create a more realistic action plan. You can use the timekeeping log to record time for the week’s job in the list view, learn more about your monthly schedule and long-term deadlines in the calendar view. You can fill details of each project and task worked upon along with the details of clients, jobs, and billing options for each day of the month.

Swiftness of Work

Automatic timesheets can help employees to work swiftly because human error is less likely to occur. The number of hours that an employee has worked can be entered into automated software. This thereby would be more accurate than having to manually enter an employee’s hours worked into a system after they had written down their total workday.

Budget Management

Cost management is one of the essential elements of project management. Since timesheet automation provides accurate information for calculating labor costs, it is essential for controlling costs and staying within the set budget.

Project managers can analyze the actual and budgeted expenditures to see if there are any discrepancies and then can take the necessary action. Data derived from timesheets also enables early detection of potential budget overruns and timely corrective action to maintain it.

Legal Compliance

States have varying policies on overtime. As an employer, you need to be aware of the employees who are and are not exempt from them, the accepted regular workweek duration in your region, the overtime pay rate, and so on. Timesheet automation helps you in tracking the overworked hours and thereby determining the overtime pay. It assists you in minimizing legal risks and demonstrating flawless adherence to regional labor laws.

Future Work Estimation

In the professional world, you must estimate how long it will take to perform each task in a set of project requirements. You can estimate project tasks more precisely if you have a history of similar jobs in a timesheet system.

Real-Time Progress Monitoring

Timesheets play a significant role in project management by providing real-time information on how activities and tasks are progressing. By monitoring the time spent on each job, project managers can make a comparison between planned and actual tasks, identify anomalies, and take the right action.

This enables them to monitor project milestones, identify any delays, and ensure that the given project is finished on schedule. Data from timesheet can be used to generate progress reports and inform stakeholders about changes, which ultimately encourages accountability and transparency.

Timesheet Automation: Modern-day applications

Automated timesheets have a whole range of applications in the current times. Some of the examples are as follows:

Payroll Management

Employers use timesheets to keep track of employee hours. They can also keep track of accruals, any additional modifications needed for processing payroll, and leave or holiday allowance. Payroll administration is now simpler, quicker, less prone to errors, and more affordable.

For Freelancers

Freelancers value their time as money. Because almost all freelancers bill clients by the hour, precise time monitoring is of utmost importance. Determining the time spent on a project becomes challenging for people who work remotely. By using a time-tracking system, they can track working hours and provide their clients with these records. Additionally, they can use this to generate accurate invoices and appropriately charge clients.

For Law Firms

Law companies often charge clients by the hour. Thereby, keeping accurate records of their working hours and information on the services they provide to clients is of utmost importance. Here, timesheet automation steps in.

Conclusion

Timesheets might seem uninteresting, but being inculcated with such amazing benefits and features, they are unquestionably a great investment for your organization. Nonetheless, you must begin by selecting a good timesheet software and such as Juntrax which is an all-in-one cloud-based PSA, HR, and Invoicing platform for Startups and SMEs from the Professional Services Industry.