Have you ever heard about time tracking?
If you don’t, keep reading this article so you can know why this will help you have a better understanding of your projects.
How many times do we find ourselves completely lost in our own projects? Probably more times what we should. Yet the important question here is: why does this happen?
The main reason is that we don’t keep track of the time we spend on that project, and we should! Time tracking touches some of the most important areas of your business, giving you a complete understanding of your projects.
It lets you know if things are on track to meet their budgets and deadlines, and if your team is working at a healthy rate.
Effective project management is about organizing your time and resources wisely to get work done efficiently; but did you know that time tracking can help you improve your project budget?
When you have full control over the time spent on individual projects your time management will change forever across your business.
Accurate time tracking allows you to set estimates and make sure you meet them. In addition, it tells you exactly how much time is left at any moment, and whether you underestimated the project or where a buffer can be helpful.
By tracking your time you’ll be able to analyze and take results into account for future projects. Without time tracking, many businesses don’t realize that some of their projects are actually unprofitable.
We get it: managing a business requires control of many things, and sometimes it feels like too much. However, when you use a tool like Teamwork, you get to streamline, connect, collaborate and keep your projects on track.
Introducing Project Time Budget by Teamwork
This feature allows you to set a budget of time on any given project, and then said time to calculate the remaining budget over time. This leads to a better understanding of efficiency, time utilization and how well a project is running overall.
With Project Time Budget, you can:
- Easily estimate how much time you need for every project.
- See real-time tracking of the project against the estimated time.
- Avoid having to rely on estimating time for every single task.
- Get early warnings when running out of client retainer hours.
Every project is composed of a certain number of hours, and every hour represents a cost. Said cost is based on how much you pay your employees for doing that work. If you want a better understanding of your projects you need to make sure that the total price you’re charging the client is greater than the cost to your business for completing that project. The only way to figure out your costs is to figure out how many hours went into the project. That’s why time tracking is so important.
With time tracking, you can see if you’re on track to come in under budget while the project is still underway. You can also see if you’re using up hours more quickly than you anticipated. This gives you the chance to talk to your employees and make the right adjustments before the project runs off the rails.
The best way of knowing how productive your team can be is by tracking time.
Still, not sure about time tracking? Here are 5 ways you can use Project Time Budget:
1. Quotes and proposals
You’ll be able to give clients more accurate estimates in terms of timelines, SLAs and ensure your team doesn’t have to spend additional billable hours on any given project.
2. Retainer management
You can easily prioritize which client projects to work on, and you don’t run the risk of spending disproportionate amounts of time on one project over another.
With Project Time Budget, you can even set up proactive alerts to notify you when the budgeted time is reaching certain thresholds.
3. Project planning and estimating
Quickly calculate a Project Time Budget using the sum of estimated time on existing tasks. This is really helpful for providing you and your clients with more accurate forecasting and timeline development.
4. Real-time reporting
With Project Time Budget, managers can easily see which projects are having a disproportionate amount of time spent on them. Or which ones are exceeding their allocated time budget. This way they can course-correct and move resources where needed.
5. Retrospective reporting
With this extra layer of understanding it’s easier for you and your team to apply learnings from successful projects into new projects.
Teamwork is a software suite that works together to make work more efficient. Thanks to powerful features such as Project Time Budget, you will take your team’s performance to the next level.
Want to know more about this software or any other product? Contact us. In Gb Advisors we are ready to help you find the right solutions for your business needs.
