Accurately tracking time is crucial for businesses to understand where resources are being spent, properly bill clients, and optimize workflows. QuickBooks Online provides several powerful time tracking tools to streamline the process. In this article, we’ll explore how QuickBooks Time can automate time tracking to save your business time and money.
The Problems with Manual Time Tracking
Manually tracking time using spreadsheets or paper timesheets can be tedious, error-prone and often leads to incomplete or inaccurate data. Some common problems include:
- Missed time tracking – Employees forget to track time consistently. This leads to lost billable hours and incomplete data.
- Inaccurate time logs – Without timestamps, employees must estimate time spent per task. This leads to incorrect billable hours.
- Lack of oversight – With manual timesheets, there’s no overview of team productivity and time spent per client. Difficult to identify problems.
- Delays and disruption – Manually collecting and processing timesheets is time consuming and disruptive to workflows. Often leads to billing delays.
Switching to automated time tracking provides many advantages for overcoming these problems. Let’s explore how QuickBooks Time can help.
Overview of QB Time Tracking Features
QuickBooks Online offers robust time tracking features right within the software. Here are some of the key capabilities:
- Automatic time tracking – Employees can use a mobile app or browser extension to track time as they work with start/stop timers. Time is captured seamlessly without manual logs.
- Project tracking – Log time against specific clients and projects to capture billable hours accurately.
- Productivity monitoring – Admins can view dashboards of employee tracked time to monitor productivity and capacity.
- Billing automation – Tracked time can flow directly into invoices for instant billing. No manual transfer needed.
- Mobile flexibility – Time can be tracked from anywhere using the mobile app. Employees are no longer chained to the office.
Next, let’s dive into how QuickBooks Time delivers these benefits compared to manual tracking.
Automatic Time Tracking Eliminates Data Gaps
One of the biggest sources of time tracking errors is missed time due to employees forgetting to track. QuickBooks Time eliminates this problem by enabling automatic time tracking.
Employees can start timers as they begin work which track time in the background. This creates complete records without relying on memory. Some ways this captures more data:
- Browser extension timers track time on websites and web apps seamlessly. Easy way to capture billable research/email.
- Automatic mobile app timers via geofencing when arriving and leaving client sites.
- Timers continue running in the background if you switch tasks. No more manual interruptions.
The result is time logs with far fewer gaps in data. This improves productivity analysis and billable hour capture significantly.
Detailed Project Tracking Provides Accurate Client Billing
A common time tracking problem is lack of client/project details in time logs. This leaves gaps in billable hours and makes intelligent project analysis difficult.
QuickBooks Time solves this by allowing employees to label each timer with:
- Client name
- Project names
- Detailed task descriptors
This creates rich project tracking with detailed data on where time is spent.
Some benefits include:
- Billable hours are clearly associated with correct clients and projects. No billing confusion.
- Productivity for specific projects can be measured. Identify problem projects.
- Accurately forecast future project timelines and costs based on past trends.
Detailed project tracking is a essential for agencies and professional services firms who bill hourly. QuickBooks Time provides the data needed.
Administration Tools Enable Time Optimization
Lack of oversight into how time is spent can allow inefficiencies and problems to go undetected. QuickBooks provides powerful administrative analytics to optimize time tracking.
Admins can view executive dashboards containing key metrics like:
- Employee total hours tracked over custom date ranges
- Time per project per employee
- Billable percentages for employees and projects
These data-rich monitoring tools make it easy to identify potential problems like:
- Overallocated employees
- Projects going over budget
- Clients not being billed fully
With these insights, managers can provide coaching, adjust workloads, and fine-tune workflows for greater team productivity. Seamless oversight improves time efficiency company-wide.
Seamless Invoicing Reduces Billing Delays
Manually transferring time data to invoices is time consuming and can lead to billing delays or errors. QuickBooks Time eliminates this friction by integrating directly with invoices.
After time is tracked against clients, projects, and tasks, QuickBooks can instantly pre-populate invoices with the billable hours ready for review. No copying or manual entry required.
This automates billing and allows invoices to be sent immediately after work is complete. Benefits include:
- Faster invoicing reduces payment delays and improves cash flow
- Reduced billing errors from manual data transfers
- Smooth payroll cycles since billable hours are already captured in system
End-to-end integration between time tracking and invoicing improves efficiency and speeds up the billing cycle.
Flexible Tracking from Anywhere
Modern businesses require flexibility in when and where work happens. QuickBooks enables time tracking from any device or location by providing:
- Mobile app for phones & tablets to track on-the-go
- Browser extensions to track time on websites and web apps
- GEO-fencing to automatically start/stop time based on location
Employees are no longer constrained to an office desk to track time. They have full flexibility to capture time accurately whenever and wherever work happens.
Some examples of flexible time tracking:
- Sales reps can track travel or meetings during field visits
- Lawyers can bill site visits directly from their phone
- Remote employees can track productive hours when working from home
Accurately capturing time is now possible even for a distributed or field-based workforce.
Conclusion & Next Steps
In summary, QuickBooks Online provides powerful time tracking features that solve many of the problems associated with manual time tracking.
Some of the main benefits include:
- Automated tracking eliminates missed time
- Detailed project tracking enables accurate client billing
- Robust analytics helps optimize utilization
- Direct invoicing integration speeds up billing cycles
- Flexible mobile time capture
Moving your business to QuickBooks Online Time can significantly streamline processes, improve data accuracy, reduce billing delays, and provide greater oversight into productivity.
Ready to get started? Sign up for a 30-day free trial of QuickBooks Online to take advantage of time tracking and other tools to drive your business forward. The intuitive interface makes it easy to get up and running quickly. Visit QuickBooks.Intuit.com today to start your trial!