Tracking employee time looks easy at first glance. Simply have your employees mark the hours they worked on a timesheet or punch a clock, and then turn in their time cards at the end of each week or month. What could go wrong?
It turns out that there is a lot. One of the most important tasks that a business must do is to accurately track employee hours. Timesheets and time cards can provide valuable data to your company about how efficient you use employee time, labor costs, and areas where productivity can be improved.
Both for small and large businesses, it is crucial to find ways to make time tracking easier for both employees and managers. This will help improve margins, bid accurately on projects, and ultimately, make your company more successful.
Time tracking trouble?
Employers have relied on manual timecards for years to track employee hours. Either employees clock in and out, or they are responsible for recording and reporting the hours worked. This manual aspect can lead to mistakes, miscalculations, estimates, and other errors.
44% of business owners said they struggle with timesheet mistakes in a 2018 survey. A staggering 92% of respondents stated that errors are usually caused by users. The biggest problem? Employees forgetting their time. Employees also forgot to record their time or went to the wrong job.
You can simplify your timekeeping and increase accuracy by using the following time tracking best practice.
Educate employees on time tracking
Your employees need to understand the importance and how time tracking works. Walk each new employee through the time tracking tool and the guidelines for tracking time. Let employees know, for example, if they must check-in to a mobile application daily (rather than entering data later).
Give them information about the length of their breaks, what kind of personal business is allowed on the job, as well as how to correct errors. Educating your employees can not only reduce errors or misinformation but also prevent time theft.
Automate your time tracking system
To improve employee time tracking, you should get rid of manual timesheets. Instead, use paper time cards to clock in. Automating your record-keeping has many benefits. It makes it easier for employees and office administrators to track their work. Automating your timesheets ensures that you have accurate time sheets, eliminating the need to round time.
Time tracking apps are available on some platforms that allow employees to record when they started working. Automate breaks and lunches to ensure they are included in the report. You can also set rules to ensure employees work the hours they need.
Time tracking made easy for managers
Some employees find time tracking difficult, but it can also be a frustrating part of a supervisor’s job. Managers are required to collect all employee timecards and reports, verify their accuracy for overtime and billable hours worked, and correct any errors. Even though it seems simple, this task can easily take hours per month or week. This is especially true if employees are not good at reporting their work hours.
Time tracking software solutions simplify time tracking for employees and reduce workload for managers. Your managers will be able automate their reporting, find missing information quickly, and headquarter all employees’ time data in one location.
These 3 mistakes in time tracking are avoidable
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