How to Increase Timesheet Adoption with ClickTime
It’s 5:00 pm on Friday. Timesheets are due in thirty minutes.
And the team at Signal Communications is scrambling, desperately trying to track down missing time entries.
Managers are pulling their hair out, attempting to figure out who hasn’t turned in their hours, while employees are struggling to remember all the tasks they had completed over the past two weeks. The stress is palpable as the deadline for submitting timesheets approaches.
The process is a mess, but no one does anything to fix it.
It’s just the status quo.
The Problem with Bad Timesheet Habits
As our fictional friends at Signal Communications know, failing to create a healthy culture of timesheet adoption causes myriad problems. From increased anxiety to depleted profits, poor timesheet habits have ramifications throughout your organization.
- Significant Loss of Revenue: Missing or inaccurate timesheets cost businesses billions annually. In 2015, Harvard Business Review estimated that the US loses $7.4 billion a day in productivity from workers who haven’t logged their hours.
- Wasted Time: Inefficient timekeeping practices can cause managers and finance personnel to spend considerable effort tracking down missing entries, resulting in squandered resources.
- Delayed Client Billing: Tardy timesheets hold up the billing process, leading to delays in payment and potential loss of trust from clients.
- No Visibility into Project Progress: Without accurate, up-to-date timesheets, it can be difficult for managers to track project progress and make informed decisions. This lack of visibility can negatively impact the project’s ultimate success.
- Unnecessary Stress on Finance Teams: Late timesheets place unnecessary stress on finance teams facing tight deadlines for payroll and invoicing. The problem compounds if the time data appears inaccurate, forcing finance managers to play detective as they authenticate entries.
Easy Timesheet Are Good Timesheets
See what our customers have to say about ClickTime’s ease of use.
Introducing ClickTime: Easy-to-Use Time Tracking Software
For teams who are dissatisfied with clunky, difficult-to-use, and disjointed timesheets, ClickTime is a modern time-tracking software that provides you with features built to increase timesheet adoption.
Unlike spreadsheets, ERPs, payroll software, project management software, or HRIS platforms, ClickTime was purpose-built for project time tracking.
And after 20+ years in business, we’ve uncovered the tools and techniques that enhance timesheet precision and deter delinquency.
6 Steps to Ensuring Accurate Time Data with ClickTime
At ClickTime, we believe that your software is responsible for your team’s timesheet adoption. With the right tools in place, every managers can get their team to log hours habitually. Below, you’ll find six simple steps your manager can take to increase timesheet adoption and the tools ClickTime provides to help them along the way.
1. Give Your Team Convenient Options for Logging Hours
Every employee prefers to track time differently. Offering your staff various methods of logging time allows them to track their hours conveniently and efficiently. With ClickTime, your employee timesheets will fit seamlessly into any workflow.
- Mobile App: Employees who are always on-the-go love tracking time via ClickTime Mobile.
- Week View: Logging hours for multiple days simultaneously is lightning fast with ClickTime’s convenient Week View.
- Stopwatch: For teams who need precise time data, logging hours via a stopwatch provides unparalleled accuracy.
- Slack Integration: Tracking time in Slack is an excellent option for teams already using the tool.
2. Make Time Entry Fast and Easy
The easier it is to enter time, the more likely your employees will develop healthy habits. ClickTime makes time entry as simple as possible for end users.
- Provide Employees with an Intuitive Interface: Your employees shouldn’t need extensive tutorials to log their hours (although we have those available). Instead, entering time should be intuitive from the moment they log in to the app. ClickTime’s product design team has watched thousands of users navigate our application to help create the most streamlined experience possible.
- Tailor Timesheets to Individual Users: No one wants to sift through hundreds of projects to find the one they’re working on. By restricting projects and tasks, managers can ensure that each employee only sees time entry options relevant to them.
- Use Predictive Logging: For employees who work on the same tasks and projects often, our “Quick Day” or “Quick Week” functionality allows users to copy over their previous time entries, allowing them to log hours faster.
3. Ensure Timesheets Are Helpful for End Users
Traditional timesheets only communicate information in one direction – upward.
While managers, finance, and leadership benefit from time data, employees view timesheets as a tedious task without any personal gain.
ClickTime addresses this issue by transforming timesheets into a useful tool for employees.
Our timesheet dashboard presents employees with clear and actionable information about their time allocation. It displays how much time each team member has left for each project, enabling them to efficiently prioritize their tasks.
By making timesheets helpful to employees, they are more likely to complete them accurately and promptly, resulting in improved time tracking and overall productivity.
4. Frequently Check Your Team’s Time Entry Completion
ClickTime offers a Time Entry Completion Dashboard that gives managers real-time visibility into their team’s timesheet status, making it easier to coach employees and instill healthy habits among their team. The dashboard highlights which team members are logging their hours daily, allowing managers to proactively address any poor timesheet practices and ensure that employees log hours in a timely manner.
With a clear understanding of their team’s timesheet completion, managers can help ensure that all hours are adequately accounted for, leading to more accurate time tracking and better overall productivity.
5. Let ClickTime Play “Bad Cop”
Continuously reminding employees to submit timesheets is exhausting, takes away from important managerial tasks, and leads to an increase in negative interactions between managers and their teams. At ClickTime, we believe in a smarter approach to time tracking.
That’s why we offer automatic timesheet reminders in our platform. Employees receive email notifications when timesheets are due or past due, freeing managers from the hassle of constant reminders.
6. Grade Your Employees on Timesheet Completion
By making timesheet completion part of your annual review process, your employees will be more likely to develop healthy time entry habits.
ClickTime provides an Employee Performance Dashboard, which shows a variety of employee metrics, including timesheet completion. Quickly see how many days your employee logged their minimum required hours.
Never Rely on Faulty Time Data Again
The team at Signal Communications mentioned at the start of the article may be imaginary, but the obstacles they encounter are all too familiar.
Inaccurate time tracking can cause significant losses in productivity and hinder business operations. To prevent such problems, it is crucial to establish a culture of consistent timesheet use.ClickTime is purpose-built to increase timesheet accuracy and prevent tardiness.
By following the six steps outlined in this article, teams using ClickTime increase timesheet adoption, ensuring accurate time data for their entire company.
