Modern Workers Require Modern Tools

Regardless of when they entered the workforce, most team members today are seeing the dividing lines between their tasks and projects become increasingly blurred. Increased flexibility in the ways we work, too, means that many of us tackle any number of responsibilities in a given day, and often by jumping between them.

Sending emails, meeting with clients, researching trends and reviewing reports, staying on top of industry news, and syncing up with team members all take up our time. In the midst of all that, who has time to enter how long was spent doing each? The amount of attention it takes to even remember to document your time spent on your team’s many tasks might be enough to make you start thinking about early retirement. Thankfully, there’s a solution.

Digital vs. Automated Time Trackers

While digital time tracking means you’re focused on gathering good workforce analytics and using that data to manage teams, projects, and budgets, it also means you’re missing a lot of information and adding a lot to your team’s plate. It’s nearly impossible to consistently — and accurately — get time data into the necessary systems, and they require frequent interruption for the average employee, resulting in lost productivity, annoyance, and unreliable data.

On the other hand, automated time and expense tracking software records all the time you spend in different apps, websites, locations, and more.

Automated Time Tracking Apps 101

Automatic trackers tell you what you worked on in a given time period versus you telling the tracker. While this might sound like an impossible idea, many of us have, for example, already taken the leap from simply programming a coffee pot to automating our homes with smart home technology. One of the most basic features of a smart thermostat is the away function, which allows the thermostat’s app to talk to the device itself. When the app — which happens to be on your phone — gets a certain distance away, the thermostat knows to respond accordingly, depending on how it’s been told to perform. If you can use such a feature, you are ready for the bold new world of automated time tracking.

At its most powerful, automated time and expense tracking software removes the need for team members to manage time or input data manually by documenting the work being performed. This happens in two primary ways:

• Automatic Data Capture: This method of time entry looks at the time actively spent in applications and on websites and logs it accordingly. Automated time capture knows that you spent two hours in virtual meetings, an hour in email, and five hours working in your company’s business systems, including your existing accounting, HR, and project management systems.
• AI-Created Timesheets: Don’t worry, you won’t find yourself in a battle for your job with a version of yourself that doesn’t require sleep. Artificial intelligence time and expense tracking apps like Journyx use custom rules, past entries, and data pulled from your other existing business systems, even your calendar, to auto fill timesheets with smart suggestions. With consistent use, your automated timesheet will use machine learning to get to know you so well that you’ll just need to click accept in your timesheet entries.

Benefits of Going Automated

Simply put, making the shift to automated means spending more time on the work that matters instead of keeping track of it. With automated time tracking, your company can:

• Reduce the Cost of Time Tracking: Employees who use digital time tracking software spend roughly two hours a week just logging their time. Couple that with the amount of time spent by managers ensuring that time is entered accurately. Automatic data validation and custom rules that work for you, such as those that limit unauthorized overtime, take the frustration out of approving and correcting timesheets.
• Increase High-value People Hours: By reducing the amount of time spent on time tracking, you will find that there is not only more time for high-value work, but an increase in focus, satisfaction, and relationships among team members. People are happier when they can see their accrued time off and make vacation requests that can be approved quickly and easily.
• Improve Timesheet Accuracy: Time entry errors cost money, both at the payroll level and at the project budget level. Increased accuracy through automated time and expense tracking software allows your company to track internal inefficiencies and unprofitable tasks as well as account for missed billable hours.

Partnering with Journyx

Partnering with Journyx can help you streamline your billing and payroll by using our tools as a single point of entry for employee time tracking. You can take the guesswork out of time data collection by enabling autofill suggestions and collecting data from your:

• Calls and contacts
• Calendar events and tasks
• Project activities
• Emails
• Locations