Efficient project management is an essential part of running a succesful business. The more projects a company has running, however, the more difficult it becomes to manage. Team time tracking, ensuring things stay on track, following up with invoices, and reporting job completion all take a considerable amount of time and resources unless you have the right tools to help you with the process.
Managing multiple projects manually can become highly complicated for both your business and the clients you serve. Improving your project management should be a must for any business to run successfully.
Thankfully, an online time clock gives you the ability to drastically improve project management and focus on getting the work done and not micromanaging individual tasks or handling logistics. With numerous automated features and integrations, there are several ways you can improve project management and achieve better results.
Improve Time Management
One of the easiest ways to use online time clock software to improve project management is by taking advantage of the main timesheet management features to that help streamline time and attendance tracking. This can be done in several ways.
For starters, you can track employee hours and productivity to ensure they are staying on top of the assigned task and getting it done. If you notice an issue with a task or a project taking too long, you can address the issue quickly. In some cases, you may need to retrain employees, assign more personnel or move personnel around to suit the needs of the individual project better.
The next way that online employee time tracking and time management can improve project management is by looking at historical data to estimate better how long a project will take. All the time tracking data you have is recorded and saved automatically. Since the data is saved and easily accessible, you have a library of information available about the time it takes to complete specific tasks.
Improve Project Costing
With all the project data you can gather with an online timecard system, one of the other ways that you can improve project management is by improving your costing of projects so that you have less risk of overages or not bidding high enough to cover materials, labor costs, and other expenses.
Just like tracking time provides a wealth of information regarding how long an individual task or job will take, tracking costs helps improve the bidding process for projects and improves your business’s bottom line.
While every project has some differences, you can use similar past projects to determine the number of resources necessary and plan ahead. Project costing is about preparing for what you can expect to the best of your ability so that you minimize extra expenses and maximize profits.
Improve Invoicing
Accuracy is essential in all aspects of your business. This includes when you go to send a request for money to the client. Managing a project effectively means that invoices are on time and as accurate as possible with the right details so that clients know what they are being charged for whenever they see the invoice.
With proper labor costs and material and resource costs, your invoices should be much more accurate. You can use an online time clock to create itemized invoices that show clients exactly what they are paying for and why. Not only that, much of the process is automated. Automation means less chance for errors and faster processing of invoices so that you can get paid for the projects that are completed. Faster payments equal the ability to move on to other projects quicker and overall better project management in the process.