One of the harder parts of running a small business can be keeping track of your employees' time in order to bill clients, account for their productivity and measure projects. There's some great pieces of software that can really help out managers and teams alike as they try to get a few last minute projects finished up before the holidays...
RescueTime
RescueTime is a great app that lets you analyse how much time you're spending where. If you run the software on your computer, you'll be able to track where you're losing hours of your time on tasks that aren't important or on distractions that are sucking away your productivity. There's a lot of benefit in knowing where in your day you could be saving some more time!
Toggl
Toggl can make time logging and time sheets a much easier process and system to track and manage. If you need to record how much time your staff spend working on client projects, this is always a key part of your business functions, and reducing the friction would be hugely effective. You want to remove any barriers to your staff keeping accurate records!
Zoho Time
If you use any of the Zoho software pieces, this is particularly useful. However, the app does work standalone, so if you do want to have a mobile friendly time tracking app, you might look into using Zoho Time. A great choice for any businesses who have staff in the field or offsite, as they can manage everything from their phones.
Harvest
One of the best things about Harvest is the awesome reporting. You can export graphs and stats on the way you've spent your time so that you can clearly visualise where there could be areas to tighten up or automate some of your tasks. The reports could even be used to devise better workflows for existing projects.
Tech doesn't have to just be a distraction, and if you're mindful about where you and your staff are spending your time, there's a good chance you'll be able to streamline some of your inefficiencies. A good team is one that works well together, and is aware of where projects run into time based issues. A missed deadline may be forgivable at other times (although it probably shouldn't be!) but when you're about to break for the holidays, it becomes even more crucial that you keep track of your time.
