How to Choose the Best Time Tracking Software for Improving Productivity

Let’s face it - there are dozens upon dozens of different time trackers out there and you only need one. This huge selection makes it hard to select  the best time tracking and invoicing software.

Once you pick the right employee timesheet software, it’ll become an integral part of your company and all the projects and business processes. So there’s marginal room for error and you have to think about everything - its price (whether you’ll settle for a free clock app or you want a more upgraded and comprehensive tool), its features, and all the way to the details such as customer support, data storage, interface design and so on.

One of the best advice anyone can offer you when faced with the task of choosing the best work hour tracker app is to align its implementation, use and the features it offers with your business goals. Basically, the first question you should be asking is ‘What do I want to accomplish if I track my time at work and my employees’ performance?’

There are any number of answers to this question and if yours helps your business and your employees in a direct, tangible way, then you should focus on it when choosing the right software.

This article in particular is for those of you whose answer happens to be: ‘I want to improve productivity and efficiency of my employees’.

Useful Features for Tracking Productivity

The first and arguably the most important thing to think about when deciding on the best time clock app for accomplishing your set goal are the features you can use to track and improve productivity. We’re going to mention a couple that you should definitely look for.

App and Website Categorization

Every system that has even the slightest chance of getting onto the ‘best time tracking software 2019’ list needs to be able to do one thing - categorize the apps and websites that your employees use into ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’. This is the basis for all productivity stats and reports you’ll get.

And the software you want leaves this categorization decision up to you. Making the call on which apps are considered productive and which ones aren’t is the only way to get an accurate representation of everyone’s job roles and really see whether they’re using their time effectively.

If you’re worried about having to go through this process for each of your 1,000+ employees, look for a system that lets you group employees into teams and departments so that you can do the categorization more smoothly.Productivity Overview and Timelines

These are the reports that will really help you get a grip on individual employee productivity. The top time tracking software will be able to tell you the ratio of time spent on productive and unproductive activities as well as how much active and inactive time was recorded for every worker, meaning how long they actually spent using their computers.

This provides a great insight into the current productivity of your workforce and gives you an opportunity to pinpoint where improvements could be made.

Another type of report you should consider is a clear timeline of productivity, which will tell you when each employee is most productive, when they start their daily activities, when their concentration tends to drift off and so on. All of this data is crucial in optimizing the workflow.

Team Biorhythm

When looking for the best employee time tracking software, you might also want to consider some sort of team productivity overview.

One such feature is biorhythm. It lets you see when employees from a specific team or department are active, when their productivity peaks and drops and basically everything else that individual timelines show you. This makes it easier for you to make improvements on a team level, which is particularly critical if you have a lot of employees.

Productivity Trend

Finally, one more feature worth considering is the ability to calculate productivity trends for employees and teams. This is basically a piece of data telling you whether productivity has improved or declined and by how much in percentages.

The best time tracking system calculates this trend automatically and allows you to choose the length of the time period that you want to compare the statistic against.

This feature lets you track productivity progress and improvements in order to see whether your efforts are paying off or it’s time to try something else.

Other Things to Consider

Apart from the specific features that measure productivity, you should also consider some of the more general aspects of time tracking software. Let’s go over some of them, in no particular order:

• Implementation process: Simplicity is the key. Spending days just trying to get the time tracker to work probably goes against your principle of high efficiency in your company.
• Data storage: If productivity is the main thing you’re after, you don’t need complex self-hosted solutions to keep your screenshots and keystroke monitoring data. Your software needs to be lightweight and cloud-based.
• Access options: Sometimes the best way for employees to improve is by looking at and analyzing their performance data themselves. So try to find a solution that offers employee access.
• Price: A free employee time clock might save you some money, but it probably doesn’t have all the features you need for tracking productivity. As with anything, finding a good value for money is the ultimate goal.
• Other companies’ experiences: Don’t forget to check out time clock software reviews to see what others have to say about the systems that you deem worthy candidates.

Conclusion

Having chosen the business goal you want to achieve with the use of time tracker, the first step towards making the right decision is completed. The rest of the work involved in choosing the best app for employee time tracking is just details. And, hopefully, after this quick read, you’re closer to ticking off this box as well.

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