What can a project management tool with time tracking do for your agency? And how does time tracking save money? In this article, we’ll answer questions like this and provide plenty of actionable advice to help get you started.
Learn how agency time tracking saves businesses money through better performance, more accurate billing, and excessive spending spotlights. Uncover the best way to track hours used when invoicing clients. Then, discover how leading brands use an online project management tool with time tracking to fully understand profitability in new and refreshing ways.
Why time tracking tools are essential
Time tracking tools are essential because they build trust between management and teams, limit time theft, and improve the distribution of project resources. Take a closer look at why you should use time tracking in project management:
- According to Gartner, more than 50% of 239 large corporations surveyed say they monitor their employees’ time through their business email accounts and work computers. Employees are largely unaware that this is even happening. If they found out, there’s a good chance their morale and productivity would be negatively affected, not because they’re being monitored, but because they weren’t told about it in the first place.
In fact, 79% of employees are perfectly fine with managers watching workers as long as their company is transparent about how they do it and they are clear on what concrete business goals the practice serves. - Another reason time tracking tools are essential is because of their ability to limit time theft. US employers lose an average of $11 billion each year to employees accepting pay for work or hours they haven’t completed. Project time tracking tools link hours invested to concrete tasks, which ultimately makes billing more accurate. The Wrike billing guide can also assist you with this task.
- Finally, time tracking tools are essential because they help directors efficiently manage resources. They make it easy to view important details like projected task effort, employee availability, and proof of progress. When employees can openly communicate their workload and obstacles, they’re able to work with management to come up with solutions that keep projects on track and within budget.
Time tracking aids performance and productivity
Time tracking apps improve team performance through features like task timers. In Wrike, you can skip manual time entry and, instead, try the user-friendly clocks that appear at the top of your workspace. Simply start and pause the task timers as needed. Data will automatically save, so users can focus on higher ROI activities.
It’s also easy to improve productivity with employee time tracking apps. For example, Wrike users can gain real-time insights into workflows which means they can respond to bottlenecks or scope creep even before they happen.
Pro tip: Look for an agency time tracking solution with automated tools and the ability to help you more accurately forecast.
Time tracking allows for more accurate billing
How does time tracking save money? Improve the accuracy of project estimates with automated time tracking. Eliminate second guesses, lost notes, or embellished time cards with a concrete data system all project members share. Efficiently view and print time reports for accounting purposes. Show clients exactly how your team works, how many hours they have invested, and how much longer you predict the process will take. Reduce scope creep this way too with plenty of advance warning from time tracking reports you can download whenever you need them.
Pro tip: Review past agency time tracking reports along with their billing to create better estimates for similar projects down the line.
Time tracking shows where you can cut expenses
Discover which low ROI tasks use up too much time over the course of your various projects. Then, eliminate them entirely or find new ways to automate and streamline them. Reassign time-consuming, low ROI tasks to generalists and leave the specialized, high ROI tasks to upper management.
Pro tip: Business operations teams should use a project management tool with time tracking to make sure everyone is being used to their full potential. You may find that it makes more sense to subcontract important (yet time-consuming) tasks to non-specialists.
Agency time tracking allows you to fully understand profitability
Now you know why time tracking tools are important, and why they are the best way to track hours used when invoicing clients. You also know how they can improve performance, create more accurate invoices and estimates, and decrease unnecessary spending. Get started with agency time tracking today with Wrike’s free trial.
