Nowadays it is hard to find anyone who have not at least heard something about time tracking especially in the field of business. You need to track your time to understand if you are productive and efficient and if you want to improve both personally and professionally.
Over the years numerous ways of tracking work time and measuring productivity have been developed from paper timesheets to modern automated time tracker applications. Electronic spreadsheets are still popular in many small companies and fewer large ones. There are some advantages of using a spreadsheet over a paper timesheet: easy to fill in, revise, and store larger amounts of data, no paper needed, more convenient to analyze, easy to collaborate, support of charts and diagrams, etc. One could have though that no better tool is needed to solve problems related with time tracking, time and attendance, timesheets, payroll, and productivity monitoring. But this cannot be further from the truth. Obsolete spreadsheets cannot keep up with progress and satisfy all the needs of modern and efficient businesses. The problems with using a spreadsheet for a complicated task of time tracking, attendance, and payroll are numerous:
- Not unlike its paper predecessor, a spreadsheet has to be manually filled in which takes a noticeable amount of time, and more importantly, leaves a room for human error, forgetfulness, or even adulteration.
The automated time tracker of CrocoTime is free of these disadvantages. Monitoring agents installed on employees’ computers collect a workday data without a need of human input, preventing mistakes and allowing employees to be productive instead of spending time on filling in timesheets. Manual time tracking feature is also supported, taking only a few seconds to click a button and making adulteration almost impossible since a manager can always compare the data collected by monitoring agents with the data submitted by an employee. - A spreadsheet is convenient to use when you have a few employees who are only required to clock-in and out every day. It is easy for a manager to analyze the data of 10 employees for a month. But what if you have hundreds or even thousands of employees and need to analyze the data of their productivity not for a week, but for a month, or a year? Even using the little possibilities of visualization that spreadsheets offer it becomes impossible.
Again, this task is not a problem for the automatic time tracker. CrocoTime is capable of supporting up to 10,000 employees, which are grouped by departments (in accordance with an organization’s structure, received from Active Directory). Employees and departments can be easily sorted by productive time, nonproductive time, etc. within a selected period. The detailed data collected by the time tracker is reliably stored and can be accessed by a manager anytime without a hassle. - Spreadsheets cannot monitor what kind of software employees use while working at computers and for how long. It won’t let you know the websites your employees visit during a work day. Therefore, you won’t be able to analyze the data and make informed decisions on improving profitability and productivity of your company.
This task is one of the numerous tasks that the automated time tracker of CrocoTime was designed to solve. It provides you with all the necessary information about programs and websites your employees use, grouped in productive tools and distractions and presented in an easy-to-use visual way. - It is next to impossible to integrate a spreadsheet with other programs and devices implemented in a company: business calendars, turngates, telephony, and other enterprise software. The chain is as weak as its weakest link, and using a slow and obsolete tool where a modern and convenient should be used makes efforts to improve and advance fruitless.
A support of web API allows CrocoTime time tracker to integrate with numerous business applications seamlessly, removing unnecessary work and making the whole process fast and error-free. Use the time tracker to track business meetings, events from a calendar, phone calls, and attendance information, and tie it to specific projects and/or customers.
We could go on but we believe that you already see and understand the obvious advantages of the automatic time tracker over a manually-filled spreadsheet. To make sure that CrocoTime is a system to suit all your needs of time tracking, attendance, payroll, productivity, and others, please see our online demo.