Own Your Time: Powerful Time Tracking & Productivity Hacks

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      Timesheets and time tracking have long been part of the working culture. Today, companies use them for diverse purposes. The main objective of timesheets is to track employee working hours, which is the basis for calculating employee productivity. In addition, it helps with time resource allocation, implementing accountability, and invoicing. 

      Every business has different working hours and uses various timesheet templates tailored to their needs. However, the standard templates are effective for getting started with Timesheets.    

      What is a Timesheet?

      Timesheet

      Timesheets record employee working hours on a particular task or project within a specified period. Your business may require them to be maintained daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, or by project.

      Daily timesheets are designed to record time hourly. Employees of all types, including full-time, part-time, and shift workers, track time at one or more job sites and submit it at the end of the day. These timesheets provide insights into employees’ working hours, patterns, and attendance.  

      Traditional timesheets were paper-based, but now you can use templates that offer ease and more reliable record-keeping options. Below is a Daily Timesheet Template that you can use to track your employees’ hour-based time. 

      Free Printable Daily Timesheet Template

      Timesheet-template

      Components of Sheet

      1. Employee Name: Employee’s full name
      2. Employee ID: ID assigned by the company
      3. Date: Record Date
      4. Manager Name: Name of the manager responsible for that employee
      5. Hourly Rate: Hourly rate decided mutually 
      6. Hours of the Day: Hours worked during the day
      7. Regular: Hourly working pay
      8. Vacation: Approved vacation leaves
      9. Sick: Approved sick leaves
      10. Other Paid: Other approved paid leaves
      11. Total Hours Rate: Total hourly rate, including the paid leaves
      12. Total Hours: Total hours the employee has worked
      13. Gross Pay: Total pay of the day
      14. Employee Signature: Employee signature for approval
      15. Date: Employee signing date
      16. Manager Signature: Manager signature for approval
      17. Date: Manager signing date

      How to Use the Template

      This template is perfect if you have decided on an hourly rate with your employee. 

      • Write the name and ID of the employee and the date of recording.
      • Write the manager’s name and the hourly rate mutually decided with the employee. 
      • Write the hours in the “Regular” column.
      • If the employee is on vacation and is paid, write the hours in the “Vacation” column.
      • Similarly, if the employee is allotted sick leave, write the hours in the “Sick” column. 
      • Write the hours to the employee in the “Other Paid” column. You can add other payments here if the employee is being paid double in any hour. 
      • You get the total amount, including the sum of Regular, Vacation, Sick, and Other Paid in total hours rate.
      • The gross pay is calculated by multiplying the total hours and hourly rate. 
      • Once the calculations are done, get employees’ signatures and ask them to write the date of signing.
      • Then, take the manager’s signatures and ask them to write the signing date. 

      Benefits of Using Timesheets 

      Daily timesheets are essential for compliance with labor laws and regulations regarding working hours, breaks, and overtime. However, they offer many other benefits for the business. 

      Track Time Accurately

      Track-time

      Daily timesheets offer a systematic method for companies that want to record employee hours thoroughly. The employees and the managers signed the templates to ensure accuracy, and both parties consented to the tracking. This accuracy is crucial for ensuring that employees are compensated fairly and are satisfied with the terms. 

      Promotes Transparency and Accountability

      Promotes-Transparency

      Timesheets build a culture of transparency and accountability within the organization. 

      Employers and employees witness the systematic break of the hours, and there is no room for conflict. Also, it creates a sense of responsibility for the employee, who take ownership of their work as they know they are accountable for this time. They become more efficient and aware of the company’s requirements.

      Looking for a Time-Tracking Tool that Ensures Accountability?

      Download TimeBeearrow

      Seamless Project Management and Resource Allocation

      Project-Management

      Timesheets offer data and insights for resource allocation. You can accurately assess the availability of the resources and the reasons for falling behind in the project’s progress. This data-driven approach helps prevent resource shortages, optimize workloads, and effectively meet project deadlines.

      Insights into Productivity Trends

      Productivity-Trends

      Daily timesheets provide in-depth insights into productivity trends within the organization. You can compare these sheets to get weekly, weekly, or monthly data. You can identify peak productivity hours when most employees were available, recurring inefficiencies, and areas for improvement. 

      With this comparison, you can make informed decisions about workflow optimization during peak hours and create strategies for improving employee performance. In addition, you can deduce team productivity and pinpoint the issues quickly. 

      Limitations of Using Daily Timesheets

      Limitations-Timesheets

      While daily timesheets offer numerous benefits, they also have certain limitations. Let’s examine them so you can make informed decisions about whether or not to use them for your business. 

      Increase Administrative Burden

      Maintaining daily timesheets can be time-consuming for both employees and managers. As employees fill out their timesheets, they may get distracted from their primary responsibilities and spend more time organizing timesheets than they would like. Managers, too, must be extra attentive about whether or not employees have fulfilled their sheets accurately. 

      Additionally, keeping manual records becomes even more challenging for workplaces with high employee counts. Also, when the employees are on leave, it becomes the management’s responsibility to fill out for leave. 

      Potential for Errors

      Daily timesheets are susceptible to human errors. Employees can inaccurately record time, omit some information, or add duplicate entries. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are dishonest. These errors can occur due to human error, misunderstanding, or simply forgetting to record time for certain activities. Such issues can undermine the reliability of timesheet data. Further, they can lead to conflicts with the management and discrepancies in payroll processing. 

      Lack of Real-Time Visibility and Accessibility 

      Daily timesheets provide a cursory view of time tracking. They don’t share the project details and lack real-time visibility into ongoing work activities. Also, as the timesheets are with the employees and they submit them at the end of the day, you may not have immediate access to up-to-date timesheet data. In such situations, making proactive decisions about issues and resource allocation becomes difficult. 

      Time-consuming and Storage Difficulties 

      Maintaining daily timesheets takes a lot of time. To calculate the weekly or monthly time, you have to go through multiple sheets, and the accuracy of the calculation lacks reliability. So, evaluating productivity through these sheets becomes strenuous. Furthermore, storing these timesheets for a year takes precious office real estate, however to get a clear picture on employee time, employers must maintain these sheets.

      TimeBee: Automate Your Daily Timesheets

      Timesheets offer numerous benefits for payroll and measuring productivity. The only issue is maintaining and keeping a record of each sheet. This issue can be sorted by opting for automation, and TimeBee can offer that to you. 

      TimeBee is a time tracking and productivity monitoring tool that provides detailed insights into employees’ hourly activity throughout their working day. It tracks employee work hours when they clock in for the day. It also uses this time to evaluate productivity by monitoring employee activity throughout the day. 

      In addition, TimeBee automatically saves the employee time records for up to a year on its servers. This means you no longer must maintain costly paperwork or pay for its storage in your office space.

      Here are a few features that can help you save your time and energy.

      Time Tracking (Employee Timesheets)

      Timebee

      TimeBee tracks time seamlessly and automatically logs it to employee timesheets from when the employee hits the start button. It runs in the background, so the employees don’t have to log their time constantly. They just have to start the timer once, which automates the timesheets and eliminates the need for manual data entry.

      The feature saves employees time, allowing them to focus on their tasks without interruption. Managers gain accurate insights into time utilization across projects and tasks.

      Idle Time Tracking and Distraction Alerts 

      Idle-Time-Tracking

      In addition to tracking active work hours, TimeBee monitors idle time. It is difficult to determine which hours an employee worked in manual timesheets. However, TimeBee detects inactivity and notifies the employee so they can start working again.

      Productivity Reports 

      Productivity-Reports 

      TimeBee generates comprehensive productivity reports based on real-time data and employee activity. These reports provide detailed insights into individual and team productivity levels, including time spent on specific tasks and project progress. 

      Employees’ time is automatically classified as Productive, Unproductive, Neutral, or Unrated based on the websites and apps your employees visit. It then uses this data to generate detailed productivity reports showing employees’ performance. 

      These reports include historical performance reports that you can extract from the dashboard for any time period. These time-based reports can be generated for any number of employees or can even be generated for individual departments.

      With these reports, you can also monitor the project progress based on the hours the employees and teams spent on tasks. Then, you can optimize workflows, identify inefficiencies, and make data-driven decisions without spending too much time sorting and reviewing many timesheets. 

      Screenshots Monitoring

      Screenshots-Monitoring

      TimeBee’s screenshot monitoring feature lets you gain visual insights into employees’ work activities. Periodic screenshots capture snapshots of employees’ screens and offer a transparent view of work progress and task engagement. Employees, too, have access to the sheets, which creates a sense of responsibility, promotes accountability, and ensures that employees remain focused on productive tasks.

      Billable Hours

      Billable-Hours

      TimeBee accurately tracks billable hours, so if you have hourly employees, you can easily calculate how much you have to pay them. You can mention the hourly rate for each employee, and it automatically calculates their pay based on the hours they have worked. TimeBee streamlines the invoicing process and ensures accurate billing, which enhances transparency and trust between management and employees.

      Conclusion 

      Timesheets are necessary for tracking time and ensuring employee productivity. TimeBee’s templates, available in PDF, Excel, and Word formats, are cost-effective and create a collaborative environment, as both management and employees are tracking time.  

      However, TimeBee also provides automated time-tracking and timesheet solutions to help you stay productive and profitable. You get much more accuracy and detailed insights into productivity trends. 

      Need an online timesheet for your business?

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