Just like everything in this world, timesheets do also have few limitations. However, its benefits are great, and their uses are not a mystery. From time back, Timesheets were used specifically for billing and payroll. Today, they are also used to disclose a trend in employees as well as managers. Time tracking is paramount in a business in order to make profitable business decisions, Tracktime24 offers a number of features that will help to run your business more efficiently. What does this mean? Well, there is no doubt that time management is important to a business.
Any business that does not track time is like a fisherman fishing without bait. Therefore, when it comes to business, where a lot of money is involved, you will want a guiding light of important data. As such, what are these benefits? We discussed them with the guys at TrackTime24 and this is the article we created in light of our chat.
- Billing And payroll: – It is important to know the hours an employee has worked for the payroll, especially when it comes to hourly based employment/labor. Every entrepreneur knows that sometimes it is profitable to bill based on hours rather than by project or contract. Also, it can be used to keep track of a specific project time as a way to collect important data for future budgeting and timeline.
- Project Forecasting: – Tracking project time data does reveal performance history, profitability, expenses, and project duration. The benefit of collecting such data will help in future budgeting and project timeline calculations.
- Budgeting: – Every financial year, a business must calculate everything, including estimating future project budgets, labor, improvements, profits, and more. Without proper tracking data from time used and expenses used on a project, it will surely be challenging to come up with an accurate budget.
- Productivity: – One of the biggest benefits of Timesheet is collecting personal employee productivity data. What does this mean? Well, by comparing the working hours against the output, a business owner can accurately calculate employee productivity.
The Limitations Of A Timesheet
Many business managers try to fit all employees into a box. In such a situation, Timesheet is not really effective. In fact, it is virtually impossible to use a Timesheet to try to fit an employee into a box.
What Do We Mean By ‘Putting An Employee Into A Box’?
Well, this simply refers to the constant monitoring of employees when or during working hours. Many managers often apply this technique to avoid employee time-wasting or socializing during working hours. But does it really work?
This is something that is up for debate. However, what is clear is that every employee has their own style, limitations, strength, and motivators. Furthermore, fitting an employee into a box will either make them lie, fail at their duties, or even both.
Remember, some employees need social interaction for them to be productive and even creative while at work. Therefore, Timesheet is not good when it comes to:
- Spying: – Timesheet is not good when it comes to spying on employees, and most often, this will lead to lying.
- Changing Employee Behavior: – If a manager thinks that recording an employee’s time will help change their behavior and hold them accountable for the way they spend their time, clearly, this will not work.
- Reducing Excessive breaks: – Sometimes, an employee who takes a lot of breaks may be told to document their break, to correct them, or simply to dock pay. Sometimes this technique works, but most likely, an employee will continue to take the same number of breaks but lie about it.
- Improving efficiency: – A Timesheet is not going to help a business improve efficiency. An employee that is not efficient is not going to change because you have started to keep track of their time. In fact, the chances are that they are going to exaggerate everything. Maybe they are not efficient because they are not allowed to be themselves.
