Time tracking software: purchase guide
What is time tracking software?
Definition
In your company today, do your employees have different schedules?
Time tracking software helps you to monitor and organise the working hours of these employees:
- manage full-time, part-time, daily, flexible and annual employees
- manage night schedules, teams, on the move, work cycles
- manage overtime and excess hours, time off
Moreover, you can use time tracking tools allow you to track your employees' working time with current regulations:
- Joint and company agreements
- Different types of contracts: fixed-term contracts, permanent contracts, internship agreements, temporary workers, etc.
- Different public and private statutes
How does it work?
With time tracking software, you can accurately track the working hours of each of your employees. You have an online interface to view each employee's attendance times and manage times by activity.
These times are automatically calculated by the tool, this includes:
- timesheets completed by employees
- Clocking in with an intranet badge or a smartphone
Your employees have an online interface to enter their working hours to send to their manager, consult the total number of hours worked, and view the recovery counter.
You have an administrator interface to manage your payroll:
- View and approve your teams' timesheets
- Monitor the time cost trend of each project
- View in real-time the employees present, absent, late, etc.
Time tracking tools can be configured and integrated into your HR information system (HRIS) to automate the edition of payslips, manage schedules, leave requests, etc.
Synchronised with your accounting tool (or via a simple export), you automate the recording of accounting entries and the payment of salaries.
What are the main features of time tracking software?
Time management by employees
The time management tool centralises and formalises the time spent by each employee at the workplace. Each employee has an account that is customised according to the information of his employment contract: type of contract, amount of work, hours, etc.
The tool collects daily working hours (in and out), breaks and absences. Moreover, it automatically retrieves the information from your badge reader.
Manually your employees would complete timesheets and send them to you:
- Indicating arrival and departure times
- Breakdown of their day: indicating the time spent for each activity
With time tracking software, you can calculate overtime, additional hours, etc., of your teams. The software has a time counter that calculates (in real-time) for each employee the number of remaining paid holidays, night hours worked, public holidays worked. In the event of an anomaly (delays, unexpected absences, early departure, etc.) you are automatically notified.
Your employees have an online or mobile interface on which they can follow their schedule, enter their time, request leave (automatically transmitted to the supervisor), observe the balance of the recovery counter, etc.
Human Resources Management
Your interface allows you to obtain real-time reporting of each employee's working time.
Advanced analytical features (cross sorting, Gantt) allow you to track time by activity, project, customer, etc., and calculate the cost of your payroll. This can greatly simplify your invoicing processes and cost accounting. It can also serve as a basis for the development of an optimised and realistic future-oriented planning.
Customisable dashboards allow you to analyse your payroll performance and measure trends:
- Measure the rate of absence by gender, age, service
- Identify odd conditions: services with frequent delays, etc.
Who uses time tracking software?
Time tracking software are useful for all organisations (companies, associations, hospitals, communities, public bodies, etc.) in all sectors of activity: industry, retail, public service, hotels, etc.
Internally, they are transversal to all functions:
- Employees who record their working hours
- Managers who use them to manage staff
- The HR managers who motivate them to carry out strategic HR management
They are also of interest to internal management controllers who calculate the cost of a product or project.
What are the benefits of using time tracking software?
Timesheet solutions are useful to obtain an indisputable tracking of the attendance times of each individual. However, these tools have some disadvantages.
Advantages
- Transparency and traceability of each employee's working time, monitored by activity
- Automation of HR processes: printing of electronic payslips (and social declarations), calculation of overtime, night hours, etc.
- Calculation of the cost center related to the payroll
- Compliance with legislation and automatic notification in case of anomalies
- Compatibility with HRIS, accounting and payroll tools used internally
- Strategic management tools by anticipating schedules, budget monitoring (planned and completed)
Disadvantages
- Activity-based time recording can be difficult for employees
- False anomalies due to small delays (one, two minutes) can flood the messaging systems of human resources managers
- Employees may feel like they are being overwhelmed
How to choose a time tracking software?
Time tracking software for SMEs are flexible and versatile. They are similar to small modular HRIS that include not only time tracking, but also leave management, planning, payroll data processing, etc.
Tools for large companies and public institutions are more specific. They focus on time and activity management and offer more complex functionalities: automatic scheduling under constraints, for example.
These management solutions are available on PC, smartphone or tablet.
Available in SaaS, you do not have to manage maintenance and updates.
