Have you heard of the adage, if you can’t control it you can’t measure it? Well, for business, control is all about managing your time resources, and that includes your staff.
Nearly all businesses in the service industry, collect time – but why? In the main, time is collected so that clients can be billed. If you spent 2 hours writing a client’s brief, then you need to be able to charge that out to a client – and that’s where the measurement of time is paramount.
Let’s take a look at three simple ways to measure time.
- Online Timesheets: A variant to the Site Timesheet system (below), whereby a typical user may logon on to a centralized server, using their web browser, and enter their time usage into a live web page.
- Site Timesheets: Timesheets are a favourite and go back years and years, quite possible even to the birth of the modern industrial era with Mr. Henry T Ford and rationalization. Modern timesheets are electronic these days, and the onus is on the user to complete the timesheet when prescribed.
- Time Tracking Software: If you want to jump to what’s hip and modern then today its time tracking solutions. Time tracking is a more modern approach to the problem of measuring time. Instead of completing timesheets, the process is automated in software, allowing the user to focus on the job at hand.
3 different ways to measure time, but are they all the same? Do they have the same pros and cons?
Regrettably, the answer is no. For all types of timesheets, be that online timesheets or pen and paper, there are some inherent problems, especially when juxtaposition against time tracking solutions.
For example, relying on your staff to complete a timesheet is still very much a manual process be that paper or electronic. You still have to say what you’ve been doing, who the job was for and how long it took you. While very popular with service industries, this technique is very poor at capturing all the time used within a business setting, and can suffer as much as 30 to 40% loss in productivity.
The alternative, would be time tracking software solutions. This as a method of time attendance, has none of the drawbacks and inherent problems long associated with timesheet software, in general gathering more accurate data, giving a more meaningful insight into the business using the software.
In all, when you come to make a choice between electronic timesheets, or possibly even online timesheets, do be sure to checkout the latest in computing technology, and test drive the more modern time tracking solutions, you may find the experience more worth while than you would think.
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