Time Tracking Software for Small Business: What’s Right for You?

The idea of “timesheet software” seems relatively straightforward. It’s a tool that helps you keep track of employee time within a timesheet…right?

Fortunately, we’ve been in the timesheet software industry since 1999, serving businesses across many industries for over 20 years. To help you get a better idea of what you might be looking for in a time tracking tool, we’ve put together a few tips to help you start narrowing down your search.

Keep reading to gain a better understanding of the small business timesheet software market.

Important Questions to Ask When Looking For Small Business Timesheet Software

When you start your search for timesheet software, you’re likely overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices on the market. You might think that one system is just as good as another. But so many solutions are built for very specific niches or industries.

Here are a few major questions that could help you narrow down your options so you can find the tool that’s right for you.

How Do You Want Employees to Log Time?

We can divide timesheet software into two fairly distinct categories based on how you want employees to log their time. While they both produce the same end result — time recorded in an employee timesheet — they have vastly different focuses and use cases.

What Industry Do You Operate In?

Your answer to this next question is often related to your answer to the previous one.

Companies in retail and service, for example, typically need employees to clock in and out with a time clock, often located on a kiosk or work computer. Field service employees or construction workers might also need a time clock, but one that they can access from a mobile device.

For organizations where the type of activity you do matters, you’ll want a more detailed timesheet system. PR companies or consulting firms might charge different hourly rates for different tasks. They might also need to track time against specific client or project budgets. Nonprofits might need to allocate time based on which program their employees worked on.

Do some research to see what type of time tracking solution your industry peers use to help narrow down your search a little more.

Do You Need to Track Billable Time?

If you charge clients for billable hours, you definitely need your staff to make detailed entries into a timesheet.

Your employees will work on a combination of billable and non-billable activities throughout the workday. And they’ll likely work on multiple projects for multiple clients during any given week. You’ll need to know exactly how long they worked on each task for each client — and what their billing rate was for that task — to invoice your customers.

Important Features to Consider in Your Timesheet Software Search

Hopefully your answers to some of those broader questions gave you a starting point in your timesheet software search. Now it’s time to talk about some critical features you should look for in a time tracking solution.

Method of Time Entry

We covered this topic earlier, but it’s worth repeating: the biggest differentiator between time tracking systems is whether you punch in with a time clock or log activities in a timesheet. By understanding how you need employees to record the hours they worked, you can narrow down timesheet software contenders significantly.

Integrations and Data Exports

You can use time tracking data in many ways. But most businesses use it for their payroll and accounting needs. After all, you need to pay your employees for the time they worked, and then you need to record that expense.

Using a timesheet solution that integrates with your payroll or accounting software can save you a ton of time by automating data transfers. At the very least, you need a tool that will let you export your time data to either or both systems. This export is often performed using a .csv file, and most tools offer an export template to streamline the process of uploading your data to another system.

In addition to these more financially-focused integrations, you might also look for a system that integrates with other common types of business software:

• CRM — If you track time by client, integrating with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool could help you track client budgets.
• Project management — Tracking time by project can also help you stick to project budgets. Or from an ease of use perspective, it can also help employees track time from your project management tool instead of toggling between systems.
• HR — You can automatically sync time-off data between your time tracking and HR software and vice versa, reducing the need for double entry and ensuring you can schedule employee hours with a complete understanding of everyone’s availability.
• Communication — If your employees are always in Slack or a similar collaboration tool, an integration with your timesheet system can help them make entries from the tool or even communicate when they’re busy working on a task.

Reports

Timesheet reports will help you get the most out of your timesheet software. You might just need basic reporting capabilities that tell you how many hours each employee worked. But more advanced reports can help you dive into timesheet data to track productivity, budgets, overtime, and expenses. You can then use those reports to improve employee performance, increase profits, and work more efficiently.

And if you really want to understand where your organization’s time goes — and how you can use it more effectively — you’ll want to choose a system that lets you build robust custom reports. Custom reporting capabilities help you see the data you need to see in the way that’s most helpful for your business.

Custom Fields

Custom fields can help you track the information that’s important to your organization. And if your time tracking solution also has custom reporting capabilities, it can help you understand that data on a granular level.

The more deeply you can dig into your organization’s timesheets, the more informed you can be about the metrics that matter to you. And when you’re tracking what actually matters to your organization, you can make objective decisions about how to make the improvements or changes that will actually matter to your business.

How Much Does Timesheet Software Cost?

Understanding your time tracking needs is important. But purchasing business software always comes down to budget, doesn’t it?

If you need employees to punch in and out via a time clock, many systems offer a free option. For those who need employees to log tasks in a timesheet, free options are available for smaller teams. However, those free options don’t typically include robust integrations or detailed reporting options.

Generally, systems that help you track employee time by task start at around $5 per user (per month) for very basic tools. These prices go up as you add more advanced features, such as project budgeting, resource planning, or single sign-on capabilities.

Start Your Free Timesheet Software Trial

ClickTime was built for organizations that need to understand where their employees’ time goes. With ClickTime, your employees can log tasks in easy-to-complete timesheets. Managers can send custom email reminders when timesheets are due. And executives can access both high-level and granular reports to understand how everyone’s time contributes to the organization as a whole.