“Time is money” – This might sound as a cliché, but over ages this has been one of the fundamentals that have separated success from failure. A job attended on time can open new opportunities and effective time management can increase productivity. In a technology driven world, businesses are adopting tools that help them manage their time efficiently and offer them competitive edge over competitors. Gone are the days of manually filling time sheets and tabulating them to separate the performers from the non-performers. A project manager can easily manage operations smoothly and increase productivity using a Time Tracking Software. Here, we shall take a look at ways in which you can maximize productivity using such Software.
1. Accurate Planning
Planning is one of the most important tasks for a project manager. You would need to make time and cost estimates for each project. Here, you can take aid from good historical data on actual time spent on similar projects executed in the past. Being able to set accurate project initiation and delivery dates to add credibility to your name as well as firm. With correct estimates in hand, you can also prove the need of additional resources in your team to the management.
2. Assigning Tasks
As a Project Manager, one of your key roles is to assign jobs to resources. This can become a complex affair when you are working on multiple projects. These tools would give you a clear picture of the availability of resources and tasks already assigned to them. Apart from this, you will also be able to sort resources according to their skills and expertise. Thus you can effectively plan the execution of the project and assign tasks to available resources without any discrepancies. A Time Tracking Software also allows you to make quick changes to your plan if the need arises such as a resource falling ill.
3. Prioritizing
One of the biggest challenges that project managers face is with prioritizing their work. The deadlines and urgency levels vary and you will need to plan their execution accordingly. With the help of online tools you would be able to determine projects that are most important and also the ones that need least amount of time. You can simply re-estimate the time required on each project at any time and judge the productivity levels. You will also be able to rework on the schedule if required. This helps you adhere to the deadlines set on each project.
4. Identify Wasted Opportunities
Often there are situations when some of your resources are lying idle or spending a lot of time executing simple tasks. This not only brings down the productivity levels, but can also create friction between resources who are overburdened and those who lie idle. As a Project Manager, you need to keep a check and maintain a balance between them; a time tracking tool can aid you in this task. Once you identify the wasted opportunities, you need to take corrective measures and distribute work evenly for a healthy work environment.
5. Record Keeping
Microsoft Excel and other similar tools have been used for many years for record keeping. In most cases, this would mean recording only the start and end time of specific tasks. These files used to be shared between the resources and the project managers and mined from the archive in case of old projects. Time Tracking Tools allow employees to record time and project information in detail. The users/employees can easily insert special notes and comments for every day’s task and projects handled. As a project manager, you would have access to all this information on the dashboard. You can also access historical timesheets and data with a few mouse clicks.
6. Generate Invoices
As a Project Manager, you would need to generate invoice for clients. Sometimes, it is a complex task to handle the billing cycle along with the hourly rates for different clients, also it is highly time intensive. Modern Time Tracking Software also have Invoice generation feature, whereby you can generate error free invoices for each client as per their billing cycle. There are options to mail an invoice to the clients from within the tool. Apart from generating the invoices, you can also send timely reminders to the clients in case of pending payments.
7. Continuity
No task in any organization should be dependent on a particular resource. Time Tracking Tools aid in business continuity. They allow seamless transition of all the projects from one manager to another. Since every aspect of the project is recorded on the time tracking tool it allows any individual to take charge of the operations.
These are some of the ways in which Time Tracking Tools can be useful for better business management. Try Invoicera with a free plan up to 3 clients for all your time tracking and online invoicing requirements.
