5 reasons to track time in a company

From entrepreneurs we work with we often hear: “Tracking work time simply won’t work in our company. People will not want to click anything. Our company deals with various complex projects, charging clients in various ways, sometimes per project, and sometimes per hour. Besides, our CEO knows perfectly well what time particular tasks take and does not need to have any special program for that. ” But is that really the case? Often our impression is nothing more than wishful thinking and not reality. Why is it then worth tracking work time? Here are the most important reasons:

1. Defining the profitability of projects
2. Optimization of processes in the company, dropping off unnecessary activities
3. Effective management
4. Relevant projects and services quotation
5. Increase of efficiency

1. Defining the profitability of projects

Recording actual work time spent on a particular project (time of you or all employees involved in it), you are able to evaluate how profitable the project is

for you. It may turn out that constant phone calls from the customer or endless amendments take so much time that the project is on the verge of profitability. You won’t know it until you measure how much time you actually dedicate to this issue.

2. Optimization of processes in the company, dropping off unnecessary activities

Can you tell how much time particular processes in your company take? Do you know how long it takes to prepare the files? How much time did you spend in meetings last month? Perhaps you subconsciously know there are activities in your company that take too much time? For example, creating content for social media takes so many hours that it would be more efficient and cheaper to outsource it to a specialist. You won’t find it out until you measure how much time you actually spend on a monthly / quarterly / yearly basis. Consistently collected data show a broader view of the company, highlighting red inks such as, for example, long meetings or excessive red tape. However, to be able to get rid of these losses – you must first notice them.

3. Effective management

Having hard data on the time spent on a particular project, it is much easier to manage both a company, a project, and a team. Reliable analytics are helpful in making key decisions for a company. For example, knowing that despite all that time your employees invested in selling your product over the phone over last month, the outcome turned out to be miserable, you will be able to correct your decisions and direct actions towards greater return on investment. On top of it, with a software that shows you in real time what tasks your people are on, you can reliably assess which employees are overloaded and who at the same time has a space to take care of an urgent task.

4. Relevant projects and services quotation

Have you ever misquoted a project? Have you underestimated the number of hours? Or perhaps it happened that you did a service but gained nothing. Did you do the service for the client and in the end gained nothing? Tracking your work time, you can avoid such errors. Errors that are often expensive. Thanks to the data collected earlier, you are able to determine how much time you need to perform a service or product, and what’s more in the case of Work Time – you can also estimate how much this project will cost you, even if the people working with it have different hourly rates. With data, you gain a competitive advantage – you don’t have to guess anything, you know exactly.

5. Increase of efficiency

It is not about charging yourself or an employee for every minute spent in the company. The idea of ​​Work Time has either nothing to do with controlling people, but recognizing value of their work time and collecting datas to allow management that contributes to the company’s development. Recording our work time spent on particular tasks, makes us more attentive and aware, makes us switch to the most effective work mode, that is: monotasking. We are not distracted, we focus on one task, which in the end makes us – faster, disciplined – and thus more effective. The goals is not about us working more in a shorter time. Instead of working more, let’s work more wisely. Saved time we can then spend on things that we have always lacked time. 🙂