Time is money, and for businesses, making sure to allocate your resources correctly plays a huge role in determining your bottom line. While it may seem like micromanagement, monitoring an individual’s hours clocked and tasks ensures productivity. However, with several options available out there, finding the right application and software can seem daunting given that the good ones require payment.
So for stakeholders looking to find the most suitable time management software, seeing which timesheet app has the most customization and reliable features is essential. The use of the right management can help set your processes in order, drive productivity, and have the capability to be integrated with your company’s existing tools.
Besides this, looking at mobile accessibility and how viable it is for remote workers is another factor worth considering.
Understanding the Importance of Timesheet Apps
Timesheet saves considerable amounts of time that would normally be spent in manual data entry or calculation. From an administration, accounting, and project management standpoint making use of timesheets ensures your data is accurate and readily available through a cloud online.
Besides being more convenient and quicker than traditional methods, making use of timesheet apps has proven to improve productivity and accountability in organizations after implementation.
These apps automate the calculation of billable hours and generate detailed invoices based on the data collected. That said, it’s important that managers and those tracking payments cross-check metrics with the stakeholders privy to the individual’s overall productivity.
Essential Features of Timesheet Apps
Now that we’ve covered the critical importance of timesheet apps, let’s explore the key features that set the best options apart. The right timesheet app for your business needs should offer:
User-Friendly Interface
For both employees and managers, a user interface needs to be easy to understand and navigate. In general having tabs, menus, and dropdowns that are straightforward and uncomplicated means ease in completing tasks.
For organizations working with people from different technical backgrounds, ensuring that your timesheet interface is easy to interact with is vital. If you’re looking for the best user interface, setting the parameter for it to be fool-proof when it comes to making entries is worth considering.
If you’re unsure how you feel about a particular software, testing out a number of them within a small group of individuals in your organization can help ensure you get your money’s worth if you’re looking to make use of an annual or customized plan.
Robust Time Tracking Capabilities
At its core, the effectiveness of a timesheet app depends on its time-tracking capabilities. For anyone working remotely, looking at apps that enable Geofencing can help restrict users from wandering around during working hours. Along with this, features that help managers track a mix of their time spent online and offline can be invaluable.
For employees, geofencing or apps that track their location can feel invasive. So while it can be effective, knowing what is most suitable for the work culture you’ve established is also important. On the whole, however, for effective tracking, look at apps that facilitate real-time tracking and are capable of running offline. This when paired with data syncing at set intervals can offer considerable value to your workforce.
Project and Task Management
At the end of the day, an employee’s efficiency is measured by the tasks they carry out and their performance data. When it comes to tracking time spent usefully in the workplace, having a time estimate with a buffer can help track time spent efficiently.
In general, having managers set standard operating procedures or a limited number of hours for specific projects can ensure productivity. In doing so, Project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Taiga allow users to integrate third-party tools or software to track time spent on individual tasks.
Project management entails multiple tools and software that are well-integrated. With timesheet apps, you can understand and make corrections to ensure delivery stays on schedule.
Reporting and Analytics
Time utility and time spent on tasks are critical metrics when it comes to extrapolating analytics. With the right timesheet app, you should be able to create reports to measure performance and hours worked. For freelancers, this can help significantly when it comes to tracking billing and spotting any time spillage due to inactivity or inefficient time management.
When exporting data, being able to create configurable reports can help ensure your data can be imported on a wide range of software and tools used in data analytics. From a manager or upper management perspective, it also helps track productivity, attendance, and time spent on tasks on a real-time basis.
Making use of a timesheet application that is capable of exporting data pertaining to specific projects can help keep stakeholders informed on progress and time-overspill if any.
Integration with Other Tools
The right timesheet app plays well with others through open APIs and integrations. Look for seamless connections. Project management tools and accounting software for calculating payroll can be integrated to help calculate salary and delays.
Besides this, hours worked for projects on projects and actual hours billable can be tracked efficiently. Integrations allow time off and leave requests initiated in the timesheet app to flow through to your HR system.
Mobile Functionality
Timesheet apps have changed the way we track and manage our work hours, offering mobile functionality that enhances productivity and convenience. These apps, specifically designed for mobile devices, deliver impressive user experience when compared to traditional mobile websites.
When looking for the right timesheet for your business, making sure that it has functionality both on desktops and a dedicated mobile app can make things a lot more simple. Besides this
GPS enables precise location monitoring, allowing employees and managers to keep track of work-related movements.
Ensuring mobile functionality can ensure that your employees can punch in and punch out remotely, as well as update time spent on tasks and apply for time off even while on the go.
Choosing the Right Timesheet App
With a large number of timesheet apps on the market, choosing the right solution for your business can feel overwhelming. But in doing so, make sure you establish or outline the essential features of your company.
Based on your teams’ workflow and capability you can compare options that suit your requirements best. For those unsure, don’t hesitate to take advantage of free trials or demos offered online. In doing this, a hands-on experience lets you understand and get a better idea of how simple or robust the software is for business needs.
In general, make sure to check online reviews. This can be in the form of independent user ratings and reviews on third-party sites like Capterra and GetApp. On the whole, however, make sure to get unbiased insight into real-world pros and cons from a user’s perspective.
