The Complete Guide To Agency Time Tracking: List Of Essentials

It may seem difficult to keep track of your time, particularly if you manage your own staff or work with several clients. Today, we'll look at agency time tracking software—a crucial component of managing a profitable business. 

Do you know even, more than 40% of workers don't track this time at all. This untracked work time costs companies that bill clients using timesheets $52,500 year per employee.

Without a reliable time monitoring system in place, it's simple to mismanage your schedule and do less than is necessary to satisfy your clients and turn a profit. 

Continue reading to find out how to set up a productive system that will free up more time for you to work on the things that are most important to your business, including client interactions and lead generation!

Whether you're just getting started or are prepared to add new tools to your routine, our comprehensive guide to smooth time tracking will provide you with all the information you need to make the process simple and pleasant.

What is Agency Time Tracking?

Through agency time tracking, the organisation may monitor and document the amount of work that staff members have finished for a particular customer.

Billable hours, working hours, and total project man-hours can all be tracked using it.

It also helps agency owners remember projects and deadlines.

What are the four major benefits of time tracking?

Do you believe that your business is missing out on sales? Do you have any projects you'd want to concentrate on but find it difficult to find the time in the day?

You may be paying for ineffective workflows and time spent on tasks that don't advance the business.

Do you believe that your business is missing out on sales? Do you have any projects you'd want to concentrate on but find it difficult to find the time in the day?

You may be paying for ineffective workflows and time spent on tasks that don't advance the business.

You can identify precisely what you're missing out on and how to fix it with the use of time tracking.

The following are the four primary advantages of precise timekeeping.

1. Stop wasting money and appropriately bill clients

Time tracking enables you to identify the main causes of your income loss, including:

• Ineffective work processes
• Overstretching (having more employees than necessary)
• Not measuring the results of your marketing campaigns
• Your clients' overdue payments
• fees for services you don't really need or use
• Rent, materials, and other costs associated with running an office

Numerous of these problems are interrelated. For instance, ineffective workflows could lead to overstaffing if you believe you require seven employees to complete a task that can be completed by five.

Overstaffing can increase overhead costs without necessarily increasing revenue. This ultimately results in increased expenses for your company.

Here's how time monitoring can assist you in resolving these typical problems:

• Workflows that are inefficient: This is very important. You can identify bottlenecks in your system by using time tracking. It is impossible to determine what is causing delays if you do not know where the time of your team is being spent.
• Overstaffing: You can quickly ascertain whether the resources allocated to a project correspond with the volume of work and project scope by keeping an eye on each team member's productivity.
• Client late payments: The majority of time tracking systems provide interfaces that let you handle reminders and invoices from the same dashboard, which makes it much easier to get payment on schedule.
• Charges for unnecessary services: Monitor the apps that your staff members use to see which ones are truly worth the fee.

2. Boost openness and confidence

Time monitoring can benefit your company by fostering a culture of openness and trust that benefits both parties.

Trust via openness: It is possible to feel micromanaged by your employer or that you are the boss in any office or business.

Bottlenecks: You may not be aware of the problems that lead to workers devoting more time to assignments and projects. Most managers don't realise they have a bottleneck until they have an excessive amount of work and are behind schedule on projects.

3. Boost output

The saying "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it" may not be familiar to you. This quotation comes from Peter Drucker, who is regarded as the father of contemporary company management.

One of the fundamental concepts of productivity measurement and time tracking is this. You can work to increase your productivity by measuring it.

In an eight-hour workday, the average employee is only productive for two hours and twenty-three minutes. Time tracking is about using data to inform decisions and learning from your own behaviours, not about imposing unreasonably high standards on yourself.

You may determine how long it takes your team members to finish a certain assignment by keeping track of their time. This enables you to create precise timeframes.

4. Create better project estimates

No one likes feeling rushed. But that’s exactly what happens when you give a marketer two hours to complete a project that might take 12.

Having an accurate record of how long a past project took will give you a better baseline moving forward.

But instead of pulling them out of their work to think back to a previous project and guess a number of hours, you can use time tracking data. 

This saves you and your team from a ton of unproductive back-and-forth. Not to mention the blame game later on when the estimate doesn’t end up being right.

Time tracking helps you avoid this.

What are Agency Time Tracking Methodologies?

Agency time tracking methodologies are essential tools for managing and optimizing the utilization of resources within an agency setting. 

These methodologies help agencies monitor and measure the time spent on various tasks, projects, and clients. Here are some common agency time tracking methodologies:

Manual Entry: Employees record their work hours manually on timesheets, specifying the tasks and projects worked on during a given period.

Excel Spreadsheets: Timesheet data is often compiled and managed using Excel or similar spreadsheet tools.

Desktop Applications: Software installed on employees' computers automatically tracks the time spent on different applications and tasks.

Web-Based Platforms: Cloud-based time tracking tools accessible via web browsers, offering flexibility and real-time tracking.

Task-Specific Logging: Employees log time against specific tasks or projects, providing a detailed breakdown of hours allocated to each assignment.

Project Management Integration: Time tracking integrated with project management tools, ensuring seamless collaboration between tracking and project planning.

Apps and Mobile Platforms: Time tracking applications designed for smartphones and tablets, allowing employees to log hours on the go.

Fingerprint or Facial Recognition: Biometric systems track employee attendance and working hours using unique biometric identifiers.

Integrated Billing and Time Tracking: Systems that link time tracking directly to client billing, streamlining the invoicing process. One can also use accounting software solutions to timely track the payments.

Location Services: Especially relevant for fieldwork, GPS-based tracking monitors employee movement and allocates time based on location.

Sprint and Iteration Tracking: Time tracking aligned with Agile methodologies, focusing on sprints, iterations, and specific tasks within the Agile framework.

Mouse and Keyboard Activity: Tools that monitor mouse and keyboard activity to determine when an employee is actively working on a task.

Predictive Analytics: Advanced systems that use machine learning to predict time requirements for specific tasks based on historical data.

Employee-Entered Data: Employees log their own hours and activities, providing a level of autonomy and personal responsibility.

CRM and ERP Integration: Time tracking tools integrated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for holistic business management.

Choosing the right time tracking methodology depends on the nature of the agency's work, the preferences of its employees, and the level of granularity required for accurate reporting and billing. Many agencies opt for a combination of these methodologies to create a customized time tracking approach that best fits their specific needs.

How Clientvenue can help you track time

We created ClientVenue, a time tracking application, in response to personal need, so we know what makes a good one.

Our decision to create a time tracking tool based on openness, control, and access to your own data stemmed from our experience starting a remote business without knowledge of what was being completed, how teams were operating, or which activities were taking the longest.

The goal of clientvenue is to provide comprehensive and extremely helpful benchmarks while making time tracking as simple as possible for all users.

A significant portion of what we do is transparent. Clientvenue was purposefully created to make it obvious how to use the app and what is being recorded.

Users get access to all of their information and have control over how much time they spend working thanks to the programme. They will receive alerts informing them when the timer is about to expire, and they can always erase the time and any associated data.

There are several features in Clientvenue that can make time tracking more efficient. Let's examine the most significant ones.

1. Timesheets

The most popular (and used) feature is this one.

Following time tracking, you may view each person's or your team's daily, weekly, or monthly timesheets.

Additionally, time can be manually added, edited, and deleted. Workers can enlarge time entries by adding notes. After that, you can use the app to transmit payments and accept or reject timesheets.

2. Proof of work features

The goal of these features is to simulate being in the same office as everyone else, but without the interruptions.

As a team, staying informed and providing updates is made simple with ClientVenue.

By calculating activity levels based on mouse and keyboard usage, the software can assist you in identifying periods of decreased or increased productivity.

You can see from the dashboard which websites and apps your staff members use in order to track their time.

It may be appropriate to check in on a team member when you are able to see both. They may be able to take on new projects or they may simply be overworked.

Any employee has the ability to erase their time, and with it, all associated data and screenshots. Giving them more control over their data can be achieved in another way.

3. Employee scheduling

Paper schedules are sometimes used by businesses that also employ paper timesheets.

With ClientVenue, you can plan and schedule one-time or recurring shifts, which streamlines both of these processes.

Once a shift is set, you may monitor attendance to observe when team members clock in and out, which will allow you to determine when shifts are missed, late, or early.

This data can be gathered through detailed reporting, which makes it simpler to discuss with a team member in the event of a problem.

Shift scheduling usually makes it clearer when and where someone is expected to be working.

4. Project budgets

Set project budgets according to hours or expenditures, and receive notifications as you move close to them.

You decide when you wish to get notifications. This enables you to make the required modifications to stay within your budget.

The spending limits you have are:

• Budgets for weekly and daily projects (specific to that profession)
• Budgets of the client (for all projects)

5. Payroll

Although it's rarely the case, paying your staff should be quick and simple.

We have made an effort to reduce the period between monitoring time and paying your team in light of this.

You can specify each team member's hourly rate, frequency of payments, and mode of payment in ClientVenue. Both manual and automatic payments are supported by the app.

Next, transmit money straight using one of the most widely used payment processors, such Bitwage, PayPal, Payoneer, or Transferwise.

After receiving a reminder to check timesheets, you can quickly send payments.

6. Invoicing

It's possible that your invoicing procedure is delaying the payment of your invoices. Allow us to clarify.

You run the risk of delaying when your client receives your invoice and, consequently, when you get paid if you manually create invoices by adding up timesheet hours or performing your own computations.

Not to mention the possibility of human mistake preventing you from receiving payment for the hours worked. Worse yet, if your invoice is excessively ambiguous or confusing, customers may wonder what they're really paying for.

Said another way, manual, labor-intensive invoicing can have no positive results.

For this reason, ClientVenue makes it simple to quickly and easily create invoices that appear professional. 

7. Reports

These thorough time reports might be useful whether you're an avid data lover or simply want to see how things are progressing.

More than a hundred fully customisable reports are available in ClientVenue. They can be filtered by client, project, date, and team member. Sending reports to clients, other stakeholders, or yourself can also be scheduled.

8. Budgets and limits

Check the proportion of weekly and daily limitations that have been met, as well as the amount of project or client budget that is still available.

• Verify transactions and balances for time off.
• Find all the latest information on team and client invoices, including totals, paid, unpaid, and past due.
• View finished, delayed, departed early, or skipped shifts
• Observe when team members entered and departed job sites.

Conclusion

Effective agency time tracking is a critical component of successful business management. The guide has provided insights into the importance of agency time monitoring, outlining its features and benefits. By tracking billable hours, working hours, and project man-hours, agencies can enhance transparency, boost productivity, and make informed decisions.

The four major benefits of time tracking, including stopping wasteful spending, fostering transparency and trust, increasing productivity, and creating better project estimates, emphasize the significant impact it can have on the overall efficiency and profitability of an agency.

The article also delves into various agency time tracking methodologies, offering a comprehensive overview of the tools and approaches available for managing and optimizing resource utilization. From manual entry to predictive analytics, agencies can choose methodologies that align with their specific needs and preferences.

By adopting a robust time tracking system like ClientVenue, agencies can enhance accountability, improve workflow efficiency, and ultimately contribute to the success and growth of their businesses. Time tracking is not just a tool for recording hours; it's a strategic approach to optimizing agency operations and achieving long-term success.