Methods of Recording Time in Projects
Accounting for time spent on projects is one of the most important processes in task-oriented companies’ operations nowadays. It is essential to determine the project’s value and the costs incurred in, such as employee salaries. The information gathered about the time spent on specific tasks enables determining similar projects’ profitability in the future. Below is a list of several ways of recording for time.
I’ll tell you what I did yesterday
One of the easiest ways is to reach deep into our memories and talk about what we did today, yesterday, or a week ago. Such recollection of time is very subjective, and doesn’t allow to determine the precise time spent on tasks.
Manual reporting of working time
This method works well only for short and small tasks that can be completed in a few hours. This technique is not the most accurate. After all, none of us has a stopwatch in our heads, and will often give approximate values. Filling out tables in Excel, entering the start and end times of work on a task has been a common way to record until now.
Task-based accounting instead of time recording
Another way of accounting for project work is accounting for tasks. When you entrust an employee with a task, you set the amount for which the task will be performed. The advantage of this method is that you don’t have to keep track of the working hours of the people who work this way. The cost is known in advance, so how much time someone spends completing the task doesn’t matter much to you after the deadline.
Time tracking apps
Using time tracking apps is one of the best ways to record the time spent working. It allows to precisely determine how much time was devoted to tasks in the project and often provides the possibility of ongoing reporting of costs and revenues related to the projects. One doesn’t need to waste time preparing a summary report in Excel. Most of the time tracking apps support reporting in some way. Moreover, reporting working time doesn’t require too much effort from employees to register their working time. It is often enough to select a project task and click on the start button to start the time tracking. When they finish working, stop the time tracking, and it is done.
Time tracking applications often provide additional useful features such as integrations with various tools used in daily work, browser extensions, mobile and desktop apps, which allows starting time tracking more conveniently and faster.
One such application is Sandtime.io, which offers all the above-mentioned possibilities and more.
Recording time is the first step towards greater success in completing tasks on time.