10 benefits of time tracking that are important for your business
“Time tracking is cumbersome. Time doesn’t matter, results matter. Time tracking is for control freaks.” Those are just a few objections we at Timeular hear often. While time tracking isn’t necessarily the most fun thing to do (although with Timeular it gets very close to be fun) it has many benefits if done right.
1. Accurate client billing
Time tracking is crucial if you bill your clients by the hour or even fixed fees. It ensures you charge accurately for the time spent on a project, preventing undercharging, which could harm your business revenue, or overcharging, which could cost you your customer’s trust. Customers question invoices often, wouldn’t it be great to have something to back it up with?
How a marketing agency increased customer loyalty with transparent billing
2. Ensuring project profitability
Time tracking helps you understand if your projects are profitable. By tracking hours spent on a project, you can calculate the cost of the project based on your team’s hourly rates. This helps ensure that you’re charging enough to cover all project costs and set aside enough to afford some extras you and your team have been waiting for a long time.
How an IT consultancy became 20% more profitable by using Timeular
3. Refining your pricing strategy
When was the last time you’ve thought about your pricing strategy? Especially if you’re charging fixed fees. What was your margin on the last 3 fixed project fees? Time tracking provides you insights into how long each project phase took so you can re-think and set your pricing strategy with more confidence and not just based on guesstimations.
How a communications agency tracks time to maintain the right level of client servicing
4. Improving project estimates
Talking about guesstimations, have you ever heard about the Time Monkey Effect? In short: your emotions change your perception of time, causing all your estimations to be wrong, unless you train your estimation muscle. Accurate time tracking data from past projects can help you make more precise estimates for future projects. This not only helps in setting realistic expectations with your clients but also aids in planning your team’s time and milestones effectively.
How an agency uses data to be accurate in the planning and budgeting of projects
5. Promoting work-life balance
Time tracking helps maintain a healthy work-life balance or, as we like to call it, work-leisure balance, because work is part of life. By identifying team members that have to commit too many hours to get their work done, tasks can be redistributed to prevent disengagement and burnout. Only by tracking time and visualising over-hours, it will become visible early enough to do something.
How an ADHD coach uses Timeular to maintain focus and prevent burnout
6. Creating a work record
There are situations where you need detailed breakdown of time spent which are less beneficial but mandatory: grant providers, mistrusting clients, EU time tracking regulations, company audits and many more. They all require you to have a detailed breakdown of how your team spent it’s time. “I’ll just create one, when they ask.” Yeah, you can, but why not create a good one right away so you can harvest all other benefits mentioned here?
How a business owner gets an overview of how time is spent across the company
7. Enhancing team efficiency
Time tracking can reveal surprising insights about workflows and communication patterns. You know your team has too many meetings, but have you ever quantified the cost? Same for emails, unplanned work, interruptions, and “just a quick thing”. By putting a number on such inefficiencies you can prioritise changes to improve productivity across the whole team.
How a software engineering company increased efficiency with the help of Timeular
8. Encouraging employee empowerment
Time tracking is often perceived as the evil tool that managers use to control people. Yes, it can be misused for that but we discourage it. Time tracking can empower employees to build awareness for how time is spent and improve work habits. Everyone will get surprising and maybe even uncomfortable insights about their work patterns. The beauty is, it’s not the manager telling you how to work differently. It’s the tool telling you how you work and leaving up to you do to something about it or not.
How a SVP of Business Ops uses data to prioritize her time
9. Informing strategic business decisions
Time tracking provides specific data to guide key decisions. For example, it can indicate when to eliminate, optimise, or automate processes, workflows, or revenue streams, leading to improved business performance. As usual, less is more but how do you know what to do less of?
How Timeular helps a design agency balance their workload and increase productivity
10. Facilitating continuous improvement
Time tracking is not just about monitoring, it’s also about improving as an individual, as a team, and as a company. Improving isn’t just a one time thing, it’s a continuous process. By consistently tracking time, you can identify trends, spot deviations early, and have the insights to make continuous improvements to your business.
How a small business owner doubled revenue and halved working hours with Timeular
Harvesting all these benefits depends on one essential thing – tracking time accurately. That is only possible if you get your team’s buy in and picking a time tracking tool that is easy. We have solution for both: a guide to get your team on board and the most easy solution. Every time tracking solution will tell you that they are easy to use, but just wait until you try Timeular. 30,000+ customers can’t be wrong when they say: Timeular IS easy. Try it yourself, we have a 30 day free trial and a stellar human support team, helping you at every step.
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