Your Timesheets Are a Waste of Time

It's a question that's asked daily by both business owners and employees - is filling out timesheets a waste of time?

Processing traditional timesheets has been a part of most businesses' day-to-day routine for so long that changing things may seem out of the question, but your current process may not be the best use of your (or your employees') precious time. We've put together 5 reasons why your timesheets are wasting your time and costing your business money - and most importantly, what you can do to change things.

Your timesheets are inaccurate

If your business is reliant on manual paper timesheets, chances are they're inaccurate. When employees are asked to fill in timesheets retrospectively weekly or even monthly, recalling the exact times they worked each day can be impossible. Often the times they enter are a 'best guess' - which renders the exercise of filling in the timesheet pointless, and a waste of valuable time your employees could be spending on more productive tasks. There's also no way to prove whether the timesheet is an honest and true reflection of their work or not, which can create issues if disputes around working hours and pay arise.

With modern time tracking apps, your employees clock-in in real time wherever they are, with GPS and facial recognition to ensure total security and provide a clear, precise record of their hours worked.

Chasing missing timesheets costs you time

We're all human, and some employees may simply forget to fill in their timesheets when they have other tasks to prioritise - but without their timesheets, you might not be able to run payroll, so you'll be forced to spend time chasing missing paperwork and sending out reminder messages. Back and forth phone calls between team leaders and managers to rectify issues can also take up precious hours in your day.

You can protect your time by automating this process entirely - send out automatic reminders to forgetful employees when they've not clocked in or out on schedule, and flag any discrepancies to their manager for investigation.

Manually uploading time entries creates errors

When the end of the month rolls around and you need to calculate your employees pay entitlement, you'll likely spend hours manually transferring their hours worked from paper onto your computer system. Further still, this process often involves manually calculating overtime hours for each employee, and then multiplying by different rates for different days of the week, creating more headaches.

This time adds up - and these lost hours spent on reptitive tasks by your payroll team or HR staff are costing you money. Plus, manual processes are prone to human error, causing inaccuracies in your payroll which have to be corrected later. With a modern time tracking system, this data is all ready to export in a few clicks, with no room for error.

Traditional timecards are missing vital information

The information gathered in a basic, traditional timecard only tells half the story; you might know when your employee started and ended their day, and when they took a break, but you're left in the dark as to what they actually spent their working hours doing.

With the ability to track time against a certain job, modern time tracking apps give you a much greater understanding of how long your employees are spending on each job, and which jobs are taking up the majority of your labour budget. This information can be easily collated into job costing reports too, so your clients know exactly where their money is being spent.

They don't integrate with your holiday calendar

A blank time card doesn't tell you a lot - was your employee off sick, on paid annual leave, or did they just fail to turn up to work on those days? If they want to book off holidays, you'll be left to manually calculate how many days entitlement they still have left, and work out whether they'll be leaving you short staffed.

An integrated leave system means employees can request their leave (and specify which leave type they're taking) as well as view their remaining entitlement all from the same app. You can see at a glance who's off when via the wall calendar, and set rules to prevent too many people being off at once.

Ready to make the switch? Try a 14 day, no commitment free trial with TimeKeeper and see how much time cloud-based clocking can save you.