Where is your cell phone right now? If it’s not near you, you know where it is, right? Most of us keep our cell phones close at hand. This is especially true when we rely on that phone for business. We’re checking emails, texts, and voicemails, responding, and reaching out to our business contacts. And in the middle of all that we’re keeping up with our personal lives. 

Our phones are calendar keepers, alarm clocks, social organizers, personal reminders, and taskmasters. When used as a force for good, they can be pretty amazing helpers.

Because our phones are incredibly portable, they are the perfect resource for tracking time to stay on top of our work lives. All you need is a really great time tracking app.

Benefits of using a mobile time tracking app

First and foremost, cost savings is one of the most obvious benefits of using a mobile app for employee time tracking. Not only does it eliminate the need for expensive hardware and software systems, but it also reduces the risk of expensive repairs and replacements due to system failures. Since teams may be dispersed over different locations, remote time tracking with a mobile app becomes much easier than having physical time clocks in each location.

Accuracy is another major benefit of using a mobile app as a time clock. Physical clocks are subject to wear and tear as well as potential malfunctions, so using an app helps ensure that employee hours are accurately recorded without any discrepancies along the way. 

Data collected from a mobile app is easily transferred and stored online – meaning there’s less hassle associated with storing paper timesheets if you decide not to use the cloud-based options within the app itself. Additionally, mobile time tracking apps are often integrated with other services such as payroll, so businesses don’t need to manually enter employee hours each week or month.

Convenience is another key benefit of using a mobile app for time tracking. Employees are able to simply tap in and out from their own computers or smartphones, making it easy to record their hours on the go. This eliminates the need for employees to physically be present at the workplace in order to clock in, meaning that businesses can better manage employee absences or other scheduling issues. This is a huge help in light of the growing number of remote workers. 

Finally, mobile time tracking apps can also help businesses save time by automating many of the processes associated with collecting and managing employee data. By eliminating manual entries and streamlining other processes, businesses can save a significant amount of time that can be used to focus on more important tasks. Automated processes also reduce errors that may occur when manually entering or reviewing employee information and timesheets. 

Easier contact with your team

Staying up to date with employees is an essential part of running a successful business in today’s interconnected world. Mobile tracker applications allow employers to easily access and assess their employee's activities out in the field. 

For example, let’s say you have a cleaning business. As a professional cleaning company, tracking apps provide a variety of benefits such as being able to track the location of the cleaning crew while they’re on the job and make sure they’re at the right client’s property. 

Through these mobile tracker apps, you can learn which clients your team visits each day and no one goes unpaid. This adds convenience and provides you with peace of mind knowing you are up to date on what your team is doing while they are away from the office.

Mobile time tracking apps allow for employer transparency into how much time their cleaners spend at each customer’s property. This gives insight into how efficiently their employees are working, which further optimizes your team's performance and helps manage costs associated with payroll and other overhead expenses for cleaner service staff. 

Having a mobile tracker app as part of your business model offers insight and assurance that your staff is working effectively, a seamless way to invoice clients, and most importantly, keeps you in compliance with any labor laws.

Progress communication

Monitoring progress with time tracking apps can provide helpful and insightful reports that can be used to maximize efficiency. With various customization options, it’s possible to really hone in on specific areas of the project or task. 

This helps both managers and clients gain an understanding of exactly where their money is going and the progress being made with the allocated resources. Reports can be broken down by individual, task, week, or month, allowing for data that helps you keep tabs on productivity levels.

In addition to providing an accurate overview of how much time was dedicated to certain tasks, these timesheet apps also feature a chart detailing any relevant points related to the project’s development over a given period. These graphs allow for deeper examination, making it simpler to not only monitor your team’s workflows but also observe where improvements or consequent shifts are necessary.

Integrating reports into communication channels such as emails or Slack enables sharing of vital information in addition to promoting updates on impending deadlines and identifying problem areas at a glance. In short, it keeps you on the same page with your team!

Project management

Time tracking apps are quickly becoming an essential tool for anyone looking to improve their project management practices. By utilizing time tracking software, it is possible to gain a more accurate picture of your team’s performance, track the progress of current projects, and adjust the scope of future projects in real-time.

Time tracking apps can improve estimations by gathering various types of data from your team and then combining them with metrics from other sources. For instance, if you’re running a software development project, you may need to factor in milestones or technical debt that could affect the timeline or cost estimate for the project. 

Since time tracking apps make this kind of insight easily digestible, estimations for new projects will become increasingly accurate. Similarly, managing costs associated with any given project is greatly simplified when the entirety of a project has been logged properly into a streamlined system — including all expenses related to personnel, materials, and services needed to complete said project. 

This type of comprehensive data available through time tracking apps gives project managers an edge so they can make decisions more confidently. All in all, these advantages offered by time tracking apps have redefined how projects are managed in modern times and as a result, have become an invaluable resource in improving efficiency and achieving desired objectives. 

Increased productivity

Having an awareness of how and where we spend our time can be a powerful tool for improving productivity. With the help of time tracking apps, users can gain insight into exactly how they become distracted throughout their day, as well as what may be slowing them down and creating operational inefficiencies. 

Not only can these platforms provide visibility into which websites are stealing focus, but they can also be used to gauge the frequency of context switching and just generally identify the routines that are more prone to stagnancy. Essentially, you can identify your squirrels.

This sense of knowing that one gain from their own personal analytics allow for better mindfulness and the ability to adjust accordingly for improved results. Having information available at all times surrounding these cycles means you no longer have to waste precious brainpower worrying about potential pitfalls. Instead, you have a tangible resource that positively contributes towards improved focus and ultimately productivity. 

Determine your most productive work

Time tracking apps have become an essential tool for businesses of all sizes that want to maximize the efficiency, accuracy, and productivity of their operations. By utilizing intuitive user interfaces, cloud connectivity, and sometimes even a mobile device companion application, your team can quickly and easily keep tabs on their work while they’re cranking away on the job itself. 

As an alternative to clocking in and out of tedious time clocks or setting up troublesome timers, these tools allow employees to focus more energy on the important tasks at hand instead of being continually mindful of the time ticking away. Adding automation into this mix only further kicks up the possibilities for businesses seeking maximum gains in efficiency from their workflow management systems. 

Modular configurations can be tailored to meet specific industry needs so that not a minute is needlessly wasted, leaving organizations across all industries with plenty more productive hours spent advancing key goals for their brand.

Awareness of team capacity

Having a clear understanding of your capacity is an essential part of maintaining a healthy workflow, as well as learning how to gauge the sustainability of your business. Time tracking apps are incredibly useful for showing how much capacity you have in real-time, which helps to lighten the workload and preserve productivity within the team. 

For instance, allowing individuals to track their performance can help them understand when it might be necessary to take on fewer tasks or ask for help from their colleagues. You can use these same tools to ensure that workloads are evenly distributed throughout your teams. 

Working with an understanding of each person's capacity also makes it easier to plan ahead and allocate tasks accordingly while taking into account all existing commitments they may have. This prevents any single person from becoming overburdened or burnt out and keeps everyone's morale high.

Increased profitability

Time tracking apps can be instrumental in improving profitability for businesses. By recording all the effort put into a piece of work, time tracking apps help businesses identify where they are over- or under-delivering on a specific project. 

Making every project's work visible provides a comprehensive insight into project costs, allowing businesses to make more informed decisions when setting future rates. This means that businesses can ensure they are pricing services and products at an appropriate level to ensure they remain profitable while delivering on customer expectations.

Time tracking apps also enable accurate quoting and budgeting, which helps businesses save money and avoid potential losses due to unexpected costs or overruns. This technology makes it easier for you to track time spent on various activities and tasks connected with a project, giving more accuracy when predicting project timelines and avoiding inflated budgets or elongated timelines from unrealistic estimates. 

Tracking data can also be used by your business in judging the performance of employees and inform decision-making around further investments in products or services, ensuring only those worth investing in remain financially viable.

Discover missed work

It’s easy for small tasks to fly under the radar and be overlooked when it comes to releasing an invoice or tracking hours. Without a system in place, employers and employees can quickly lose sight of how long certain projects take or how much of their workday is spent on meetings and communication — both of which should be compensated. That’s why having a time tracking app, particularly an automatic time tracker that captures all activity, including internal communication and task management, is essential.

By using an automated time tracking system, you get a comprehensive record of your business activities that can be used to improve processes and effectively manage overtime. Having detailed information about your work helps you balance priorities across the team more easily and increases efficiency in internal operations, while also giving you better data with regard to team utilization. 

This will ensure you are charging clients for all billable hours so that you know what rate you should be working at the right price. All in all, with the aid of a comprehensive time tracking application, businesses can keep track of their resources without having to overlook crucial duties — no matter how small they may seem.

Client value assessment

Time tracking apps are an excellent tool to evaluate the value of clients and decide which ones offer the best financial returns. By quickly reviewing data across multiple projects, businesses can identify potential budget overruns and make timely adjustments. This ensures that resources are allocated to the most profitable clientele, while any needed revisions in expectations are instituted before losses start to accrue.

Time tracking apps can also be used for long-term planning purposes such as assessing trends with certain clients or projects and curtailing activities which yield slim profitability margins. Insightful data collected over time can help you focus your energies on areas that bring in the most return and make informed decisions about how to commit financial resources. This allows companies to maximize existing relationships and realize future values from their investments in customers.

Accurate work rate calculation

When setting prices for a project, knowing how to calculate accurate work rates is essential. Time tracking is one of the best ways to accurately measure how much time goes into a certain task and it can also help identify inefficiencies when dealing with similar tasks. By aggregating your time and costs across similar tasks, time tracking apps can help you establish fair and profitable rates for each type of job. This way you are more confident that your prices reflect the true value of your work and that customers are charged fair prices.

Time tracking apps are especially useful when setting rates for long-term projects or discounts for repeat business. They allow you to quickly assess the expected profits from the job and make it easier to keep track of whether the initial estimates have been met in terms of the budget and time spent on specific tasks. 

What’s more, they incorporate automated features that eliminate manual input errors, ensuring accuracy throughout the duration of the project. With such a tool by your side, determining reasonable working rates becomes significantly easier — allowing businesses to increase profits while meeting customer requests in a timely manner.

To sum it up

Imagine all of these benefits in the palm of your hand. Your team doesn’t need to be attached to their laptops, they can easily use Harvest’s mobile application straight from their phones. 


Check out how Harvest’s mobile application will help your employees track their time, get paid faster, and work more efficiently. Start scaling your business with a free trial of Harvest today - at your fingertips.