Necessity or a Commodity: Time Tracking Software for Small Business

Large, established companies use time clock management systems to enhance their performance, optimize processes and increase overall efficiency. For them, it’s not necessary to know where every second of the day is spent, because their existence is not on the verge as it is with smaller businesses.

In a small team, every second counts and every second matters. Even when you look at the number of people on a team, if someone is unexpectedly out of office in a small business things can go downhill easily. At the same time, one person out for a large team is not an issue, because there’s always someone to cover for them.

And while employee time tracking devices are definitely a commodity in a large company, for small businesses employee time tracking programs are a necessity, and here’s why.

Why Use Employee Time Tracking Software for Small Business?

Before you go ahead and purchase the first time tracker you find, you should know why exactly it’s vital for a small business. What small businesses can gain with the use of time trackers? How can they help them improve? And why should they be an essential part of your toolbox?

There’s Only so Many Working Hours in a Day

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Regardless of what you do - your time at work is not limitless. Sure, small business owners and entrepreneurs usually spend a lot more than 8 hours per day building up their business, but none of them will ask their employees to do the same.

In a small team, employees usually wear multiple hats, so your marketing person is probably your salesperson as well. And you might be a software developer by trade, but right now you’re also an accountant, HR, and a problem solver on duty. When you’re handling so many roles, it’s easy to lose track of time, and at 5 o’clock ask “where did the time go?” while you keep listing task that you couldn’t complete.

Accomplish More in Less Time

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With a timekeeping software for small business you can sit back at the end of the day and check exactly where your time went. Once you understand how much time, and why, you spend on certain tasks, you’ll see opportunities for improvement. Meaning that you’ll have time for other tasks.

Make Better Business Decisions

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Remember when you took on that one client and everything went sideways? You’ve put in days into the project, only to have them bail on you because you couldn’t complete the project on time. But it’s okay, you weren’t as experienced and you weren’t using employee time clock software for small business, so you didn’t really have a way to know how much it will really take you to finish what was required.

Now, when you have the software, you can easily go back and check for similar past projects, how much time they took, and what was the timeline for their completion. Use this knowledge to make data-driven decisions to accept or pass a project, as well as to provide more accurate estimates to your prospects.

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Focusing on Improvements

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When you’re running from one task to another, without a sense of what’s coming next and which hat you should put on it becomes hard to think about the ways your company could improve. Whether it’s improving the product, updating a process, or enhancing your overall business strategy - you just don’t have enough time.

Once you figure out where your time goes, and start reorganizing the workload, soon enough you’ll realize there’s time left to sit with the team and brainstorm some new strategies. 

Final Thoughts

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You might be thinking that you don’t have time to go through the hassle of finding a perfect tracker, or that it could be way out of your budget. However, there are plenty of free time tracking software for small business available out there, waiting for you.

Furthermore, the time you’ll spend searching for a perfect time tracking solution is a time well spent, because it will contribute to your business’ success.

We hope you learned from this that an employee time clock software for small business is truly a necessity for all small teams, regardless of your industry.

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