Online time trackers: Functions and uses

You’ve probably seen it at some point in your pro­fes­sion­al life: the classic Excel sheet used for time tracking. It is com­pli­cat­ed, error-prone, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly user-friendly. Modern solutions track time online and offer far more than mere time tracking. Some of these tools are also specif­i­cal­ly designed for small business and are rel­a­tive­ly in­ex­pen­sive. And with growing demand, they can often be enhanced.

While a company is being es­tab­lished and just af­ter­wards, its focus is often on things other than tracking working hours. En­tre­pre­neurs often trust employees them­selves to be mindful of adhering to the working hours stip­u­lat­ed in their em­ploy­ment contract.

It’s true that trust is good, however, it’s common knowledge that oversight is better for all parties involved. If you track working hours, you learn not only if someone is shirking their work. You also see if your employees are working too much. That can become a problem as well. On the one hand, overtime hours are regulated by law; on the other, excess work can be detri­men­tal to your employee’s work-life balance and even their health.

With this in mind, time tracking has another function in addition to merely dis­play­ing the working hours that have been achieved: They can also reveal a company’s time and personnel shortages. If your employees work too much, this might mean that you need ad­di­tion­al staff or that processes need to be optimized.

An online time tracker is con­sid­er­ably easier to use and more con­ve­nient than an Excel sheet. It has three different models:

• Web-based time tracker
• Tracking via desktop app
• Tracking via mobile app

Many tools enable all three versions. This has the advantage of enabling the employee to record their working hours com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent­ly of where they are located at any given time. Mobile apps also often allow you to record hours and syn­chro­nize them later on when there is an internet con­nec­tion again. The data is then stored in a cloud and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nized across the various devices.

Workings hours can be tracked in two different ways. With work-related tracking, only the arrival and departure times are tracked, as well as break times.

Example of work-related time­keep­ing

The employee starts working at 9 am. At noon he takes a one-hour break. At 6 pm he calls it a day.

With project-related time­keep­ing, in contrast, in­di­vid­ual ac­tiv­i­ties, projects, or customer service hours are tracked. This is important in many agencies, for example, or spe­cial­ist de­part­ments that do the ground­work for other de­part­ments within the company. In doing so, not only is the total working time tracked; how much time the employee takes to complete a specific project is also de­ter­mined.

With online time­keep­ing, you can set your budgets or hourly rates for specific ac­tiv­i­ties or projects. These tools display the hours that employees have spent on specific projects using de­scrip­tive diagrams. This has the advantage of enabling you to keep an eye on a project’s progress and its cost-ef­fi­cien­cy. If only a limited amount of time or budget is available, then you’ll im­me­di­ate­ly see when this will be reached or even exceeded.

Examples of project-related working hours time­keep­ing

9:00 am to 9:30 am: Read and respond to e-mails

9:30 am to 10:30 am: Team meeting

10:30 am to 12:30 pm: Work for customer X

12:30 pm to 1:30 pm: Lunch break

1:30 pm to 2:30 pm: Work for customer Y

2:30 pm to 3:00 pm: Project meeting

3:00 pm to 4:00 pm: Work for customer Z

4:00 pm to 6:00 pm: Work for customer X

An online time tracker has numerous ad­van­tages in com­par­i­son with time tracking with an Excel sheet or sta­tion­ary terminals, and can be es­pe­cial­ly practical for new busi­ness­es. Below are some examples of how or in which areas the online time tracker demon­strates its strengths.

Online time tracking tools can be quickly and seam­less­ly set up. Normally every employee receives their own login details that are only known to them to access the system. Ad­di­tion­al hardware – a terminal for tracking time, for example – is not necessary. This helps save money that es­pe­cial­ly in the early founding phase is often better invested in other areas.

Most time tracker tools are user-friendly and easy to learn how to use. Currently, the selection is so large that you and your employees can try out different tools to find the most ap­pro­pri­ate one for you and your company’s needs.

Most tools offer one of the three following options for tracking time. Some tools offer all of them.

• Manual tracking: The employee keeps track by hand of when they arrive or leave, take a break or how much time they have dedicated to specific projects.
• Timer mode: At the beginning of a work day or a new activity, the employee starts time tracking and finishes when they are done. Meanwhile, the tool au­to­mat­i­cal­ly counts the time. Pre­fab­ri­cat­ed entries for projects help to cat­e­go­rize the automatic entries.
• Automatic time tracking: The tool records through­out the workday which ap­pli­ca­tions the employee uses and for how long. From this data it then creates an hours-worked profile. This of course only functions if employees mostly work at their computers. At the end of the day you can edit the au­to­mat­i­cal­ly created entries before finally sub­mit­ting them.

The tracked working hours can be evaluated quickly and simply through online time­keep­ing tools. This ranges from a simple overview of whether an employee has ac­cu­mu­lat­ed overtime to a com­pre­hen­sive report for man­age­ment. An exact tracking of working hours also makes payroll ac­count­ing easier. The times that have been tracked can for the most part be exported as Excel files, CSVs, or PDFs. Often there also in­ter­faces for ac­count­ing software that can be used to directly access the hours-worked data.

Many online time­keep­ing tools offer functions that go far beyond time tracking. Some examples:

• Invoice issuing
• Project man­age­ment
• In­te­grat­ed logbook
• Absence man­age­ment

And even when they don’t offer these functions them­selves, many ap­pli­ca­tions can be connected with other programs via in­ter­faces – for example, with ac­count­ing ap­pli­ca­tions or project man­age­ment apps such as Trello or Asana.

You can vet most online tracking tools before you decide to pay for their use. You could give one a try with a 30-day trial phase, for example, or test a free version where some of the premium features aren’t made available to you. The range of functions for the basic version is rel­a­tive­ly limited: it can po­ten­tial­ly only be used by a low number of users or only allows fewer projects and customers to be set up.

If you decide on a com­pre­hen­sive, fee-based rate, you pay for it with either a monthly or annual sub­scrip­tion. The rates are often tiered according to business size, so the more employees you have, the higher the rate. For startups, an in­ex­pen­sive rate is usually com­plete­ly adequate. Should the business grow and the demands increase, you can still switch to another rate later on.

As is the case for every time­keep­ing system, the tool is only as good as the people who operate it. If your employees don’t use it or don’t use it enough, then the online time tracker will not function properly. Yet many ap­pli­ca­tions offer a remedy for this and regularly remind employees to track their working hours.

Re­sis­tance to online time­keep­ing is often the result of employees feeling as though they’re being monitored. To prevent this, it is important that you com­mu­ni­cate the reasons for im­ple­ment­ing online time­keep­ing. Create trust and explain to your employees that they them­selves will also benefit from their working hours being correctly recorded. It is often wise to include the team in the selection of the online time tracker in order to allay any concerns.

Keep in mind as well that a tracking tool tracks the working hours, but not the quality of the work. If an employee requires more or less time for the same task as a colleague, it doesn’t reveal anything about the result of their efforts. You should keep this in mind es­pe­cial­ly when eval­u­at­ing working hours.