How Time Tracking Can Help Contractors Improve Revenue and Productivity?

Last Updated on June 7, 2023 by Admin

When we talk about time tracking, what is the first thing that comes to our mind? Looking into the working hours of the employees, keeping an eye on to ensure that everybody is reporting on time and complete their designated hours? Traditionally, these activities were mainly performed by human beings who manually kept an account of the working hours of the employees.

The coming of technology, however, has automated a lot of these processes. We have software in contemporary times that handle this stuff without much human intervention.

However, that is not all. Software like timesheet can not only handle activities like keeping track of working hours of employees or maintaining payroll but they also have proven to be useful when it comes to improving the overall productivity and efficiency of the project.

This software is not built to specifically look into issues of attendance and payroll, rather it is built to handle most types of data related jobs and hence it shouldn’t come as a surprise when people argue about their usefulness in improving the overall productivity of a project and becoming an asset in project management altogether. So let us delve a little bit deeper into how time tracking can help contractors improve revenue and productivity.

Increase productivity

When it comes to labour-intensive sectors like construction, paying salaries to your employees becomes a major chunk of your overall cost. Hence it is important to keep an account of the cost incurred in the project and the revenue that is coming in to keep a track of the profit and time tracking software can help you a lot with that.

It can help you keep an eye on total productivity, extra working hours and will also save you the pain of manually going through the data to spot discrepancies because the automated system will take care of the process.

By giving you a way to analyze profits, you can also use that insight to come up with ways to cut down your cost without compromising the well being of your employees.

Automation and transparency

It is an established fact that accounting and time tracking software will save you a lot of effort in terms manual labour and monitoring when it comes to keeping a track of employee’s working hours, their payroll etc.

However, automation doesn’t just ensure a decreased manual labour which can be now be utilized somewhere else, it also brings in transparency and accountability. Let me tell you how. This software give you real-time data and hence you don’t have to wait till the end of the day to sit and calculate the overall productivity, it definitely helps yo stay on top of things

Moreover, with a clear picture of overall productivity, you will also have an upper hand when it comes to bidding or selling to your client. When you have a clear data-backed argument about your project, you don’t have to rely on a superfluous argument.

You can simply show to your clients how and why you are better in the areas that you claim and why should they pick you instead of your competitors. This induces transparency which could not only just have an immediate impact in terms of you having an upper hand in getting the deal, but in the long term too, you will reap the benefits of this transparency

Lastly, there’s also the question of being accountable to your employees. Your employees are your backbone and hence you are accountable to them as well. Having a transparent automated system that will clearly show their working hours, overtime, payroll will also make them trust you and this trust will reflect in the work that they do for you.

Reducing the risks of double entry

As a contractor, it is expected that your sphere of action would include both your office and your construction site and hence a syncing of data between both these spheres becomes quite a crucial part of your work.

Automating this system using coming of age software will make this entire process seamless and way less prone to error. You don’t have to devote time or resources to ensure that there is symmetry between these data and whether any error intentional or otherwise has crept into them

Also as mentioned before, handwritten reports are more prone to error and while these errors can appear insignificant in the beginning, a constant repetition of such errors can go on to create a significant negative impact on your budget even and hence on your overall profit.

Making better decisions in future

As you constantly get real-time updates on productivity, working hours of your employees, it can help you plan better for your future projects. It will definitely help you get a better idea about the budget of your project where can you cut costs in the future where do you need to devote more resources.

This integrated software will add to your overall project efficiency and guarantee better and speedier delivery of your projects.

As a contractor, attention to detail is a skill that you have to master. You are in charge of the entire project and you will be responsible for the smallest of the smallest discrepancy.

Hence situational analysis becomes a very important part of your job wherein you understand the micro factors which can affect your project. To be on top of things you need to access data related to your project, analyse them, and take calls on what needs to be changed and what can be done better.

This will help you get an estimate of your project timelines and will also enable you to take better and timely decisions.

Despite the immense utility of these integrated time management software, many contractors continue to refrain from upgrading their system to integrate this technology. The reluctance is understandable. The manual system of keeping records has been around for a long and to give it up in one go can be quite a challenging task.

However, in today’s day and age when things are changing in a matter of seconds, it is important that one updates himself or herself so that one can extract the maximum benefits out of a particular technology.

If you are nervous about taking this leap, take a small first. Use this automated system at a small scale to see how far is it contributing to your overall project and once you’re convinced with the results, then take the next big step.