Online Timesheets Can Fix Your Biggest Business Headaches

Gone are the days of using paper timesheets and creating roasters in an Excel spreadsheet. Online timesheets can help automate and improve time tracking accuracy, which helps optimize productivity, control costs, and boost employee satisfaction. The software is accessed via Internet-enabled PCs, smartphones, or tablets to record employee attendance – i.e., start and end times for work, including breaks. Data is collected in real-time and promptly organized into online timesheets that can be forwarded directly to payroll for processing. Whether you’re considering online timesheets for the first time or trying to replace a system you’ve outgrown, you have a seemingly endless options list.

Opting for online timesheets can free up time for yourself and your team so that everyone can focus on more critical tasks. Online timesheets solve numerous business problems, including but not limited to:

Payroll Inaccuracies & Excessive Admin Work

Payroll involves multiple variables, namely regular hours, overtime, deductions, and so forth. Manually inputting information can lead to errors, with mistakes like typos, incorrect formatting, or misreading data being common occurrences. Payroll errors can have financial, legal, and reputational consequences for businesses. If employees question their paychecks or have questions regarding the accuracy of their benefits, this can lead to dissatisfaction among the workforce and destroy team morale. Companies that leverage online timesheet software have experienced a reduction in payroll errors, improving accuracy in time reporting and payroll processing.

It’s no secret that manual processes overwhelm employees. The repetitive process of adding/modifying data is something everyone wants to avoid because it’s inherently slow, especially when dealing with large volumes of information, and can take hours to complete. With each error requiring time and resources to fix, the administrative costs increase further. Counting on manual data entry not only ties up HR and IT staff in mundane tasks, but it also increases the chances of support issues arising from system inconveniences. As opposed to paper timesheets, digital systems provide the convenience of editable time entries.

Lack Of Project Visibility & Budget Overruns

Making details like project objectives, milestones, and tasks readily available to stakeholders simplifies the understanding of the project’s full lifecycle and the progress made or potential risks incurred. Online timesheets ensure real-time insights into how resources and time are allocated, so managers can determine what’s working and identify bottlenecks or misalignments in workload distribution. By offering historical data and trend analysis, time-tracking software allows you to quote new projects effectively. Whether you opt for a fixed price offering or the flexibility of a variable price, your best bet is to explore online timesheet integrations.

Failure to identify and manage risks ahead of time can lead to cost overruns, meaning the actual cost of the project surpasses the initially estimated or budgeted amount. Recording employees’ progress in fine detail helps your business gain better visibility into project costs and make timely adjustments to your budget, therefore minimizing the risk of exceeding the allocated finances. Online timesheets typically integrate with other project management tools, providing a better view of the situation. This integration guarantees the reported hours accurately reflect the progress of a project, and stakeholders can use this data to adjust timelines, budgets, and staffing needs.

Non-Compliance Risks & Labor Law Challenges

It’s obligatory to record the times at which working hours begin and end to ensure compliance with rules and regulations that mandate employers to ensure a safe and healthy working environment. In the United States, employers must adhere to federal and state labor laws, especially when it comes to overtime. In the European Union, employers are required to implement an objective, reliable, and accessible system to track daily working hours. By booking time off and staff leave in advance, employers help ensure adequate coverage across all departments. Accurate and comprehensive records help labor inspectors verify that employees are adequately classified, paid, and provided with much-needed breaks.

Productivity Gaps & Low-Performing Teams

The more productive we are, the more money we can earn. When employees are unaware of their responsibilities or performance expectations, they don’t prioritize tasks effectively, which leads to evident gaps between the expected and actual performance. More often than not, employees are burdened with too many simultaneous tasks, and this scenario tends to lower the quality of the output. Online timesheets detail how employees spend their time by breaking down the hours worked across different tasks, so managers can seamlessly adjust workloads. Not only can you understand where productivity gaps occur, but you can also create a roadmap to success.

Productivity gaps can emerge at the individual or team level, and they manifest as bottlenecks, missed deadlines, duplicate work, or delayed responses. Underperforming teams can negatively impact project outcomes and the organization’s bottom line, so have a clear, up-to-date view of time allocation for better planning, improved task prioritization, and overall enhanced productivity. Change management and communication are of the essence in terms of getting adoption across all levels of the organization and achieving the desired results. For some of your staff, the change can be scary, so provide extra support when they need it.

Concluding Remarks

Traditional methods of tracking employee time, such as manual entry, can be quite time-consuming and prone to errors, and these issues can lead to inaccurate payroll calculations, lack of project visibility, non-compliance in the context of labor law, and discrepancies in productivity levels. Recently, there’s been a growing trend towards the use of online timesheets, which can be logged via web/mobile apps and are visible in real time. Indeed, digital systems collect and store sensitive data susceptible to leaks, but it’s possible to mitigate risks via data encryption, regular security audits, employee training, and access controls.

At the end of the day, it’s important to work smarter, not harder, and the responsibility of managing time falls more on the individual. Employees must optimize and use their time just as freelancers do. Conversely, managers must give them the liberty they need to craft their own efficiency method. Empowering them with independence leads to more engaged teams that save the company money and reduce operational disruptions. Adopt a situational leadership style, that is, tailor your approach to individual employees and tasks.