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Time Tracking Software Buyer's Guide
Table of Contents
- » What is The Meaning of Real-Time Tracking?
- » What is Time Tracking Software?
- » How does Time Tracking Software Work?
- » Is it Worth Investing Money in Time Tracking Software?
- » What are The Features of Time Tracking Software?
- » What are The Benefits of Time Tracking Software?
- » Before Selecting Any Time Tracking Software
- » How to Select The Best Time Tracking Software?
- » Questions to Ask a Vendor When Buying The Best Time Tracking Software
- » Pricing of Time Tracking Software
- » Conclusion
We certainly know how important it is to have a disciplined workforce to make steady progress. It takes a lot of hard effort to keep the manpower in control. Every individual has their own flaws to overcome, sometimes that directly puts an effect on your deliverables. For instance, if your certain employees can't help themselves from spending too much time on social media at the office, they would probably never turn around before the deadline ever, no matter how small a task you put them into. But imagine, if someone can do this for you. Yes, that is certainly possible when you have an ideal Time Tracker Software by your side.
» What is The Meaning of Real-Time Tracking?
Time tracking means to track and record the time every employee in your organization spends working. It helps you determine how many hours your workforce puts into their roles every single day, which, in turn, helps compensate them accurately. Time tracking is also crucial to effectively manage projects and bill clients.
» What is Time Tracking Software?
Time tracking software is a top-notch solution that can fit right into the systems of all your employees and watch their activities on a real-time basis. The major work involves keeping track of their activities such as check-in/check-out, the total number of hours worked, time spent on non-working kinds of stuff, projects completed, milestones achieved, and making a summary of all the above-such elements on a dashboard to have an overall look. In short, it will empower you to have active control of your employees the way you want.
» How does Time Tracking Software Work?
It tracks the working time of your employees by reading their biometric inputs at the check-in and check-out meter. The software tracks their screen to see if they are hanging on to any website too long to pretend to work and sends them push notifications to get them back to work immediately. It integrates itself with other software of your office to work in synchronism. Moreover, it allows you to take screenshots of individuals while they are involved in any unpleasant activities to make your argument stronger during their interrogation.
» Is it Worth Investing Money in Time Tracking Software?
It is no surprise why many companies put stress upon having a streamlined workforce to continue to grow in the future. It is certainly a well-known truth that your success comes from the individual efforts of every team member. With that being said, it is also easy to acknowledge that taming a team of grown-ups the way you want is not easy. They will come up with a number of excuses to prove you wrong as a boss. Now with software, if you can make your arguments stronger there would certainly be no room for disobedience at all. In this regard, irrespective of company size, the time tracker software seems to be an ideal investment to be made by every business owner.
» What are The Features of Time Tracking Software?
The time tracking software can do a number of tasks for you apart from just keeping a tap on your employees. Here are some of the common features that you will find in almost every type of Time Tracking Software.
› Time Usage Report
One of the primary tasks of every employee time tracking software is to track the daily working timeline of your employees. It checks the individual working process, how much time they spent on work and leisure, which project costs more billable hours to the company etc. Thus, it will be easy for you to identify the inefficiencies easily before they cause your revenue cycle to slow down.
› Record Videos and Take Pictures
This feature enables you to make your arguments stronger while addressing the slow performers of your company. The time clock software can seamlessly get integrated with CCTV systems to record individual employee activity. You can record any particular action or can take the screenshot for future references. Easily identify time wasting, distractions, inefficiencies and address them with ease.
› Chat Monitoring
Apart from monitoring employee activity, the time keeping software can also help you see how much time is spent on chat, and video calls with different clients. If you can easily identify the unnecessary meetings that eat much of your productive time, you can definitely be cautious not to repeat the same next time.
› Powerful Dashboard
When you see your weekly or monthly progress broken down to crucial performance metric scores, you get an idea of where to improve. The employee tracking tool collects the data of your performance and breaks it down to groups such as hours worked; clients handled, tasks completed, etc. You get your own time usage statistics and thereby get cautious on controlling time-wasting behaviors.
› Calculates Payrolls
You can manage both client billing and employee payrolls from a single dashboard. It works beyond as an employee time tracking system - it automatically calculates payrolls based on fixed salary or hours tracked in just minutes.
› Pop-up alerts
An employee time tracking software can send push notifications to employees sitting too much time idle in front of their pc to kill time. For instance, if someone has opened a website to fake working on a project, the software can sense that and will send a notification saying "Are you still working?". Thus, it can keep an eagle's eye on your employees thereby letting you free from the same.
» What are The Benefits of Time Tracking Software?
Helps to build transparency between you and client:
If you go for the best time tracking app, you will get help to make your client's access to the software white-labeled with your brand logo appearing above. Your client can have restricted access to project progress and timeline progress that will help to build a stronger relationship between two of you.
› Enables employees to self-correct their behaviors
There are times when employees spend too much time browsing social media websites or watching videos on YouTube. One can certainly get weekly statistics of his/her online behavior through the software. On the other hand, you as an employer can order them to do the needful with proofs in your hand.
› Saves you time from paperwork
As already discussed under features, an employee attendance tracker software is well capable enough of auto calculating payrolls and client bills; you can save a lot of productive time for sure. Also with the process going automatic, there will be hardly any room for errors.
› Flexible configuration
As every company is different, so the user and time setting will also be altered. In this regard, having a time keeping software of configurable options allows you to adjust the settings even after the initial set-up is over. For example, you can set the required time for each team, edit min daily working hours, create/modify user accounts, many such things at your will.
› Private and Secure
The time tracking tool comes up with high-standard security protocols that keep your data secure and confident. Every data gets encrypted before reaching to servers, even the screenshots captured. It also gives user privacy protection that states none of your activities get tracked when you are on a break. That means the data will only be collected when you want them to be.
» Before Selecting Any Time Tracking Software
Just make this thing clear in your head that buying such great software is not a one-day process. Though technically in terms of purchasing and installation it is a quick affair, the focus here is on the selection part. No doubt, you will get a lot of offers from vendors against your need but don't get just biased to whatever they promise. Here are certain things that you need to ask yourself before even starting to look for any seller.
› Does My Company Actually Need This Software?
Of course, you wouldn't be reading till now unless you know you need it. The point here is to understand the need for the software in terms of its actual usability. Ask yourself what you are actually trying to accomplish with this software on your end. If you can find more reasons than to keep the attendance of your employees or to set a virtual watchdog, you are going to make the right decision purchasing it.
› How Many User Access Do I Need?
It is a bitter truth that subscription charges of a time tracking tool increase with its number of users. Unless you have a particular figure in your mind, your budget can swell like anything with time.
› Do I Need On-{remise or Off-Premise?
Though most will agree to opt for the cloud version, it has its limitations. For instance, a cloud server, if faced with any virus attack, may lose all valuable data, thereby causing you major trouble. Let's say, both have their limitations at the place. So, you need to decide which option will better serve your purpose without getting you into significant trouble in the future.
› What Should be My Maximum Budget?
You may think you would have done this homework even if not advised, but there is more to it than just having a figure in mind. You never know what extra the vendor has to offer to make the budget go above your level of expectation. You may find yourself in a state of complete confusion with the essentials that may add up later. So, keep a margin of plus or minus 20% of your actual estimation.
» How to Select The Best Time Tracking Software?
Having the working knowledge of the software is not going to help you make a smart purchase. You must know the essential buyer requirements to ask for. If the vendor stands tall on most of the requirements, you can think of moving ahead. Otherwise, it will be a waste of money again. So, here are some essential points to remember to make your arguments stronger on the table.
› All device compatibility
It is necessary that the time tracking software must be all-device compatible to give you the flexibility of monitoring your employees from anywhere at any time. Go for the software that is compatible with Android, iPhones as well as desktops.
› Easy Integration with third-party apps
To make the most out of your investment, select an employee time tracking software that can easily integrate itself with your other existing business software, such as billing software, biometric software, meeting software, account software, etc., to produce powerful dashboard reports for your review.
› Off-track reminders
Unless you ask for this feature, most vendors will not offer it as it is one of the best features to ask for. The software can track non-work related websites and can restrict employees from using it unless you give them permission. Thus, make sure to ask your vendor for this feature.
› GPS tracking
There could be projects that may need your employees to travel frequently. Having a track on them does not necessarily require spending money on another software when your existing time and attendance software can do that at the same price, all you need to do is to ask your vendor for the same feature to customize before purchasing.
› R/W API
The presence of a user-friendly API allows you to manipulate your data inside the software application in almost any way you want. The read and write feature allows your time clock software to fetch data from the accounts and power you to edit them at your comfort.
› Easy Set-up
It's not just about you getting comfortable with the software, rather anyone using it should feel the same way. The software must have an easy setup process that can be accomplished by any novice within a few minutes. You can easily feel that on your first time approach to the software, all by yourself.
› Top Tier Support
Does the vendor provide free training or charges extra? How frequently do your employees need to get trained to understand any update in software? Can the vendor assign any dedicated team for you to get support anytime? A positive response to all these in written format would be necessary to clear any air of confusion before moving ahead with the purchase.
» Questions to Ask a Vendor When Buying The Best Time Tracking Software
1. Would the time tracking software remove the manual tracking of hours altogether?
2. How would the system reduce the administrative burden?
3. Would the software track time for individual members as well as teams?
4. Can the software track time for my full-time, contractual, remote and hourly employees accurately?
5. Does the system include the time-off requesting mechanism?
6. Is the solution capable of calculating overtime and leaves with complete accuracy?
7. Can I export the data into excel or pdfs?
8. Do I need additional hardware to work with the software?
9. What is the product’s learning curve?
10. How do you protect our data? What level of security do you employ?
11. Would the software be accessible on mobile devices like smartphones and tabs?
12. Does it work offline? How long would it take to sync the records?
13. Will it be on-premise or on-cloud?
14. Does the software provide custom views for individual users?
15. Are there user roles and access control in the system?
16. Is software customization available? What all features can we customize?
17. Does the system offer reminders, alerts, and real-time updates?
18. Does the solution offer integration with other software and apps, such as payroll, accounting and project management?
19. Is the system capable of fulfilling our future needs?
20. How often do you update your software?
21. Does the software include reporting tools?
22. Is the software cost inclusive of technical support?
» Pricing of Time Tracking Software
Most companies offer a free trial period to test their software and upon receiving a green flag from your side, starts to charge a monthly/yearly subscription fee. On average, the monthly subscription fee of the best time tracking app starts at $69/month/6 users. It allows you to store data online up to 50 GB. The price increases by $9 with the addition of another user. However, it is always better to opt for the unlimited plan that includes unlimited users and offers unlimited storage space against a monthly subscription fee of $199/month.
» Conclusion
This buyer’s guide is just to make you aware of the features and capabilities of an ideal employee tracking system. You should still add more effort to it from your side to deeply understand the new features that are constantly being added to the software by new market players on a daily basis. Keep your eyes open and take sufficient time before zeroing upon any particular time tracking software.