An easy way to improve overall efficiency across your business is to streamline employee productivity by using time tracking software. In fact, time tracking is most likely already an existing function of your business today, whether you realize it or not. 

In this article, we’ll lay out the benefits of using time tracking software, as well as how the right tool can maximize efficiency in your business.

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Benefits of employee time tracking software 

By tracking time and expenses, you can capture critical project data that allows you to learn from the past, keep current projects on track, and better estimate future projects.

Increased efficiency and ease of use

Tracking time and productivity by hand can be labor-intensive without the aid of software or an app. Time tracking software provides speed and ease of use, which are some of the primary benefits of utilizing a time tracking app. With a time tracker versus a timesheet, you can track:

  • Time spent on tasks
  • Billable hours
  • Budgets and profitability
  • Resource allocation

Easier insights into resource allocation

For your business to improve and grow, you need to analyze areas that are costing you money and valuable resources — but doing so can be time consuming. Time tracking software, like Harvest, allows you to keep track of not only budget (over- or underspending), but also hours worked to ensure you’re staying mindful of your team’s workload.

Additionally, tracking billable hours will help you accurately calculate the time spent to accomplish projects and the resources used to finalize them, providing you with better future pricing strategies and resource allocation decisions. 

Insights into employee performance

Time tracking features also provide valuable insights into employee performance. Gaining insights into how team members best utilize their work time — including downtime — allows you to add tasks to projects or identify areas where you can provide additional support to your team. 

How employee time tracking software maximizes efficiency 

The combination of the benefits mentioned above transforms your time-consuming work processes into efficient, streamlined project and team management practices. Here are a few things that are much easier with the right solution — like Harvest. 

Coordinating your team projects and tasks

Every project has many moving parts — from vendors and clients to team members, resources, and more. Coordinating every aspect, between your team, the project itself, deadlines, unexpected client requests, and budget management, can be daunting. 

Fortunately, time tracking software allows you and your managers to easily allocate your team members' time and streamline coordination between projects, resources, and bandwidth. Ensuring that everyone is aligned means you’re able to keep track of expenses, stay within budget, and meet team deadlines. 

Rewarding and supporting performance  

With the ability to produce customizable reports, you can better assess employee performance. These reports can be as specific or broad as you want, and you can use this data to reward high-performing employees and ensure everyone is working to their full potential.

Additionally, you have the ability to track progress and identify areas where employees may need more time, training, and resources.

Maximizing profits 

The tool’s customizable reporting capabilities also help with cost-cutting efforts and identifying areas where productivity may be falling short. This allows businesses to make informed decisions about where to allocate resources further while maximizing profits.

Additionally, time tracking software allows businesses of every size to stay organized and on top of their finances by documenting billable hours, expenses, and revenue.

Streamlining employee productivity

Additionally, you’re better equipped to optimize your operations and systems by streamlining your processes when utilizing time tracking software. Intuitive, customizable reporting and time tracking apps, like Harvest, provide insights into how you can: 

  • Improve time management
  • Avoid burnout 
  • Optimize resource allocation
  • Know when it’s time to grow

Improving the workflow for every team member ensures that the project is accomplished on schedule and within budget. By improving the workflow, you’re ensuring there are fewer mistakes and that inefficiencies are eliminated, saving you time and keeping you on budget. 

Time tracking as project management software

Another way that time tracking streamlines your employees’ productivity is that the software can also act as a project management tool giving you more control over a project. These tools allow you to determine gaps in the project, monitor employee productivity, and learn when to pivot to reallocate and utilize valuable assets.

Taking advantage of time tracking software will make your operations more efficient, identify underachieved areas and/or resources, and help improve productivity. With insights gained from time tracking, you’ll be able to:

  • Outline objectives more effectively
  • Assign roles and responsibilities 
  • Develop better standards of operations and systems
  • Track and report project progress and cost overruns
  • Overall better team management and asset allocation

Project management benefits

Together, these functions provide pathways for improved productivity and resource management, keeping projects on time, on track, and within budget. 

Outline objectives: For a team to accomplish its goal, it is crucial to know the objective and the steps required to complete it. Detailed instructions and step-by-step follow-throughs require good data that time tracking provides. 

Assign roles: For every team to be successful, each member needs to know and understand their roles and responsibilities and incentivize those who want to achieve more. 

Develop SOP: Standards of operations (SOP) let every team member on a project know what to do, the time it will take to accomplish it, and who to communicate with throughout the length of the project. 

Track progress: Understanding every team member’s roles and objectives allows data analysis to make detailed progress reports and revisit necessary asset allocations. 

Manage your team better: Information and data are crucial to set your team up for success. Insights gleaned from the time needed to complete a task, the amount of labor to produce, and the resources required will better equip management to reallocate as needed, providing better overall team management. 

All of these functions will help your team members better understand their roles and the project objectives while outlining the procedures and systems in place to accomplish those tasks. 

Easily track your projects and team members with advanced insights into your team’s performance and project timelines with the easy time-tracking software from Harvest. 

With Harvest as your partner, you’ll be better equipped for your team to thrive. 


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