What is the most precious resource other than your employees? It’s time. How you and your team members utilize time will define the success or failure of your projects. To do this, it is imperative to track time to gain an advantage. It’s a fact that if people can achieve more work in a shorter duration of time, then there is a scope for better profits. One way to measure and enhance productivity is by time tracking. You can do this by implementing a time tracking app that can manage resource planning, scheduling, tracking utilization, and workload management. A cloud-based team time tracking software enables your employees to enter their effort and time on various projects and tasks from any location, device, and at any time. Such a tool assures to improve your efficiency by tracking the effort and the time spent by a team or a resource in a specific time period.
Key Benefits of a Time Tracking App as eResource Scheduler
Here is how a time tracking app helps in optimizing your time and resources.
- Quick and easy timesheet entries
This resource management app has an easy-to-understand interface and intuitive design, which makes it very easy to enter your timesheet data. You can also easily copy and paste some information from the schedule. Because of this feature, you can enter time-related data in a few seconds and very efficiently.
- Monitor how your team members utilize their time
A team comprises of different types of resources. Some would be very motivated and highly driven, but some others would not easily take on responsibility. So, how can you, as a project manager, get all the tasks completed in a limited time? How will you ensure that every member is utilizing their time productively and not wasting it? Using a time tracking app can be of big help here. A team time tracking software such as eResource Scheduler not only offers a real-time view of when, how, and for which task or project is every resource spending their effort and time, but it also provides you all this data in a daily, monthly, and annual reports. It also highlights if someone is being unproductive and wasting time on non-productive activities. This also helps in prioritizing everything so that the project timelines are easily met.
- Save all key data and information in the timesheets
With a time tracking app like eResource Scheduler, you and your team can record all critical information about the project and the effort spent in the time entries. For example, hours of effort utilized, as per resources, or which date were the tasks are done, project name, booking, specific task, etc. What’s more? You can capture each team member’s role, location, etc. Saving all this detailed information enables comprehensive and precise reporting.
- Find any leakages with planned and actual effort/utilization reports
If you utilize the available timesheet management data coupled with the scheduling estimates, you can easily create various comparative reports. Some examples are planned and actual utilization, financial, and resource availability reports. This helps in performing a comparative analysis and analysing the effort against the timelines, budget, etc, which further helps in finding any resource leakages or gaps.
- Estimate the total project hours
A team time tracking software aids project managers to estimate the total project effort or hours, which is the billable time for a project. If a project has a total of 500 project hours in two months, and the 300 hours are already used out of that, then the team only has 200 hours of billable time/effort left to be spent. Hence, you should plan to complete the project in 200 hours of time/effort otherwise there could be cost overruns. Leading resource management apps come with a built-in feature that tracks the team’s effort, productivity, utilization, and project status.
- Add any extra information in time entries as comments
The time tracking app such as eResource Scheduler lets you add any additional comments or extra information with each time entry. So, if you want to record any additional details of what tasks or work has been done, if there is any comment you want to leave for the reviewer or approver, etc. When you download the timesheet as a spreadsheet, all the time entries will be exported along with the relevant comments.
- Colour-code your time entries to categorize them into submitted, approved, or rejected
Categorizing each resource’s time entries into different statuses is very important. For example, is a time entry submitted, or approved, or rejected by the project manager. eResource Scheduler’s time tracking app enables you to colour-code the time entries, which helps in identifying the exact status accurately. So, if your time entries are highlighted in green, they have been approved. If they are in blue, then they are submitted, and entries colour coded in red mean they are rejected. Thus, the colour coding feature helps to get a quick snapshot of the status of entries in just a quick glimpse.
- Both automatic and manual approval is possible
The project managers may want to manually check and approve timesheets for some team members and do it automatically for some others. The team time tracking software like eResource Scheduler helps in defining the specific approval method – be it manual or automatic – for all resources. In case you have selected the manual approval method, then only those people who have the approval rights will be able to approve the timesheets. But if it’s automatic approval, then the timesheets get approved automatically after being submitted.
- Configure your timesheet settings as per resources, projects, or at a global level
A timesheet management software like eResource Scheduler helps you to configure timesheet settings at various levels. This, in turn, allows standardizing the settings across the entire resource pool and projects. You can also select specific settings for any individual resources or particular projects, as required.
- Import or export the timesheet entries in Excel format
With the eResource Scheduler time tracking app, it’s very easy to import and export all time entries in an Excel format. This helps you to pull out all the needed data and share it with relevant people quickly. You can also easily export the time entries data for a team member or entire team in an Excel sheet in just a few clicks.
- Integrate your time data with any third-party tool
eResource Scheduler also helps in conducting a detailed analysis of time entries or timesheets. You can do a comparative analysis or reporting by using any third-party tools. For this, you just have to import the available timesheet data into an Excel format or simply use open REST API to perform an integration to pull or push some specific timesheet data.
- Create better workflows
A time tracking software also offers relevant information needed to evaluate your company’s current workflows. One of the key roles of a project manager is to review the project schedules determined by all the stakeholders. The next step is to compare it vis-a-vis the output of the team and identify any resource shortages or gaps. This enables us to highlight the exact areas where improvement is needed. If the workflows are made better, your team members can use their time more efficiently and enhance their utilization.
- View timesheet reports as per projects or team members
eResource Scheduler is a team time tracking app that reports the consolidated timesheet data according to the actual resource utilization. If you just want to check the consolidated timesheet data, you can easily do so. Or if also want to view the planned resource utilization to get a clearer perspective, then that is also available. That’s not all. Timesheet information can be viewed for some particular team member or project. You can also easily configure your reports in multiple views. For instance, in days, weeks, and months, or maybe various units such as hours, percentage, etc.
- Successfully manage any deviations or scope-creeps
Even after thorough planning, at times some unexpected scope-creeps can happen. Thus, it’s better to be prepared for any such deviations that may come up that affect the overall budget and profitability. However, implementing a time tracking app like eResource Scheduler to track your team’s effort, time, and project cost is a game-changer. This tool flags any discrepancies such as possible scope-creep much in advance so that you can find resolutions well in time.
- Manage the pricing effectively
If you want to reconsider your pricing for some client, how would you determine whether the revision is needed or not and if it is justifiable? With the right resource management app such as eResource Scheduler, you can do this easily. The analytics from this AI-based team time tracking app enables you to decide your budgets, and expenses and compare it with your pricing. You can easily calculate the total effort for a project, deduct the expenses and decide if your existing pricing is good enough or not. Top-rated time tracking app like eResource Scheduler comes with AI-enabled algorithms that tell you how you can boost your profitability and revenues by optimal utilization of the resources at hand.
Go for the Award-winning Time Tracking App – eResource Scheduler
Whether it’s managing a distributed team seamlessly, monitoring a team’s performance, or checking the status of various projects, eResource Scheduler is your best bet. The employees can fill out timesheets easily and keep a tab on their effort in real-time. So, get this time tracking app to gain clarity about your existing resource pool, overall capacity, resource utilization, availability, etc. You can also integrate it with many other tools. So, if you want answers to your questions, book a free trial and restructure your time tracking and resource management processes.
