Activity monitoring: when managing team working hours becomes child's play

If you're still not familiar with activity monitoring, you won't be when you've finished reading this article.

The HR process known as time management simply allows you to keep track of your projects and your employees' activities.

So what is activity tracking and how do you go about setting it up in your organisation? We'll explain it all to you, with a bonus Excel timesheet template to download.

See all software Time tracking

What is activity tracking?

Activity monitoring consists of tracking your employees' attendance and absence on a daily basis, taking into account all possible scenarios:

• overtime
• night work
• staggered working hours
• business travel, etc.

You can define a range of customisable indicators:

• by project
• by department
• by task
• by customer, etc.

This gives you different filters for analysing your company's activity.

You can also define the units of time as you wish: day, hour, minute, etc. It's up to you to choose the frequency of your monitoring, i.e. weekly or monthly.

Why monitor activity?

Why implement a time management tool in your company?

• You can control your costs thanks to analytical monitoring of time spent.
• You gain greater visibility over your activity.
• You can calculate working hours much more easily, even on a temporary basis.
• You can adapt the distribution of assignments according to time spent.
• You can manage your project resources more effectively.
• You have a support tool for your HR and financial management, thanks to the traceability and history of hours, so you can update pay slips or holiday balances, for example.

☝️ In short, activity monitoring offers benefits for both :

• for employees, who can get a clearer picture of their overtime hours, hours to be recovered, etc., and communicate these transparently to their managers and HR;
• for HR, who can keep a close eye on employees' working hours and ensure that they comply with regulations on working time;
• for the company, which can manage budgets and resources more effectively.

How do you monitor your activity? Rules and steps

Step 1: Define your needs

Each organisation has its own specific characteristics. For example, in some organisations, employees carry out part of their work from home.

The activity monitoring process must therefore take into account :

• the way the company is organised,
• working time regulations
• the needs of employees.

Step 2: choosing the right tool

Many companies use Excel spreadsheets to monitor their activity. But as we'll see later, this isn't necessarily the most practical tool.

In any case, opt for a solution that suits your budget and respects the following rules: simplicity and compliance.

Time clocking also makes it possible to manage your employees' working time more effectively.

Step 3: Support your employees

Whichever method you choose, you need to provide your employees with the best possible support in setting up and deploying this approach to monitoring working time.

The new rules need to be fully understood if they are to be adopted by the teams. In addition, training in the use of the tools is sometimes useful.

Step 4: validate and analyse the data

That's it, your employees have entered their working hours.

The next step is to have them validated by their managers, then export the data, which will be used, among other things, to :

• prepare pay slips,
• invoicing customers
• draw up reports to help manage the company's activities and budget.

Excel activity tracking table to download

Would you like to keep track of your employees' hours and manage your teams' time and activities in an Excel spreadsheet? Appvizer lets you download this template free of charge!

What tools should be used to monitor activities?

Why choose a genuine activity tracking solution?

There are many issues involved in activity tracking:

• Reducing the time spent on low added-value tasks,
• simplifying the process
• improved visibility of project progress,
• data reliability and security,
• reduced risk of errors.

Unfortunately, Excel quickly shows its limitations on these points.

In comparison, specialist time management software will give you a whole host of advantages:

• You automate your processes and reduce the administrative burden on your staff.
• You save time.
• You say goodbye to repeated file exchanges.
• Secure your data.
• Gain visibility of your business through reports.
• Manage your business in real time.

Selection of working time management software

To help you make your choice, here is a selection of 11 time management software packages 👉

• Apidae is an intuitive, scalable HRIS that gives VSEs and SMEs an overall view of their teams' activity and working hours. Teams can easily enter their hours worked on a day-to-day basis, creating a 360° view of daily tasks. This optimises the scheduling and organisation of teams within your organisation.
  
  
• Beebole is a tool designed to keep track of your teams' time, with the simplicity of an Excel timesheet, plus automation and reporting. It's flexible and can be adapted to any size of organisation. Its strengths? Quick learning curve, advanced interface customisation and a support team that's always on hand should any problems arise.
  
  
• Elite Paie-RH is a complete HRIS: it includes time management, payroll and expense management, for example. It' s 100% customisable, so you can adapt it to all your activities. So you can manage all the different ways in which time is organised, as well as allocating time by project. Finally, there are numerous reports available for tracking time.
  
  
• Traxxeo, the solution for field teams, digitises the management of field teams in sectors such as construction, infrastructure and engineering. Its mobile time and attendance application is simple and easily adopted by teams. The information is fed directly into a monitoring platform, where HR managers quickly deal with any anomalies thanks to an alert system. The finance department is more responsive thanks to the tracking of hours by task. The platform can also be used to schedule workers and manage absences.
  
  
• Eurécia Time Tracking is one of the modules in the software suite published by Eurécia HRIS. On the employee side, this solution makes it easy to sign in or complete timesheets online, in complete autonomy. HR staff can monitor their time by keeping track of hours worked, arrival and departure times, and so on. And for managers, a timesheet validation process is built into the solution. Reports and analytical tracking enable you to see how much time has been spent per period, per project, per customer, etc.
  
  
• Factorial Gestion des Absences is a complete HRIS tool. It offers a module dedicated to activity monitoring, with a time recording system, intelligent dashboard, schedule management, etc. This software gives employees greater autonomy and management greater control, as well as greater transparency and flexibility in exchanges.
  
  
• idylis.com is a software package dedicated to managing VSEs and SMEs in the trading and service sectors. As well as managing accounting and sales activities, it incorporates project-based time management functions to give you greater control over the allocation of resources and hence their profitability. The best part? Your data is hosted and secured on servers in France.
  
  
• JourOff is a collaborative workspace where employees can coordinate their work. It is particularly suited to teams working in project mode and following the Kanban method. When it comes to time management, JourOff offers two approaches: the standard approach (each employee enters his or her time), and the intuitive approach, where the data is generated automatically by the solution from the shared diary system, the project management tool, the planning tool, and so on.
  
  
• With Kizeo Forms, you can create your own customised timesheet forms to meet your company's specific business needs. Customisable, the software is particularly suitable for monitoring worksites and field operations. On the user side, data can be entered wherever you are, and exported and analysed directly into the system for real-time monitoring.
  
  
• monday.com HR is an HRIS tool that helps HR managers improve their processes. It's an all-in-one platform that's easy to learn and use, with a range of fully customisable features. In terms of activity monitoring, you can boost your performance with visual dashboards and effectively manage your employees' presence and absence: overtime, travel, night shifts, etc.
  
  
• Teamleader is a CRM tailored to VSEs and SMEs. It streamlines your processes and helps boost your productivity. With its wide range of functions, the software is easy to use and requires no installation. You can track the working hours of each employee, set deadlines for each project and add tasks by grouping them on the platform. The interface is also customisable and modern, for greater visibility.

See all software Time tracking

Keep track of your activity

Time management is a key issue in business, because it affects your company's project management, human resources management and commercial management.

Dedicated software becomes a real decision-making tool: it gives you both flexibility and the ability to react in the short and medium term. Have you chosen yours?