Whether you’re a manager who wants to reduce business costs or an employee trying to use their working hours effectively, time tracking can become one of the most valuable items in your work management toolkit. And while time tracking methods are aplenty, most of us will agree that the best ones are those that are simple to use and produce the most accurate results. 🎯
So here we are presenting to you the Calendar View — a newly released actiTIME feature that takes time tracking to a new level of accuracy and convenience.
If you want to stay in control of your work schedule and keep a precise record of everything done throughout the day, be sure to read this post through and check the Calendar View in action during a free 30-day trial.
But for now, let’s jump right in!
Calendar View — Your New Time Tracking Hero 🦸
The Calendar View is an excellent alternative to the standard Timesheet View that all the experienced actiTIME users are well familiar with. It comes in the form of a weekly calendar with time cards that you can move around the interface using the drag-and-drop feature:
Each of the time cards represents a single task, while its placement on the calendar points out the exact time you started and stopped to work on it.
Just like regular actiTIME timesheets, the Calendar View lets you track your leave time and work statuses. It also displays the info on total working hours and overtime day by day and for the entire week.
Additionally, if you want your time cards to display more task-related details (such as deadlines, estimates, and so on), you may easily add or remove them from the view in just a few clicks.
How to Make the Best Use of the Calendar View 🙌
The main advantage of the Calendar View over the Timesheet View is that it captures the precise start and stop time for tasks. In other words, it allows for more accurate time tracking and gives a detailed breakdown of every working day by hours. Besides, the feature lets you manage your daily or weekly schedules and even prepare them in advance.
Let’s find out how:
Daily time tracking
If you’re not new to time tracking, you know that it has plenty of benefits for employers and employees alike. And detailed time tracking has even more of them to offer:
Control over overtime costs. 💰
International labor laws are very strict about overtime compensation. Yet legal compliance is not the only reason for taking overtime under control: if employees’ after-hours work is not really required or authorized, your business incurs extra expenses in vain. So, by having a detailed breakdown of employee schedules by hour throughout the day, you’ll not only know when they work overtime but also see why they do that, which helps to both save money and avoid legal risks.
Better time management. 🕑
Hourly task tracking helps to identify unhealthy and unproductive work patterns. Do you tend to stay at the desk for too long without having any breaks? Do you constantly switch between tasks without investing enough time and attention in each of them? Daily schedule tracking and analysis will help you answer these questions, develop a more optimal work routine and prevent burnout.
Sounds enticing, isn’t it? And with actiTIME, gaining these benefits is super easy!
- Just open the Calendar View in the Enter Time-Track interface.
- Click any area on the calendar to create a time card, choose a task to link it to, and indicate when you began and stopped working on it.
- Record time for all the tasks you worked on during the day / week.
- Add your breaks and time off to the schedule if necessary.
Once your schedule for the entire week is completed, you may submit it for manager approval if your company’s policy requires you to do so. Besides, you can run the Task Performance Time Cards Report to review your time tracking results (and in case you have manager permission, you can review other employees’ data in this report as well):
You may apply the reported data to analyze your work schedules and understand where you could improve your routines and time management. Other options are to use it for payroll and accounting or show it to clients to keep them aware of your progress and justify prices for the work done.
Whatever your needs are, actiTIME is ready to help!
Work planning
Have you ever noticed that the most successful people are the ones who have some sort of schedule planning in their lives?
We know, we know — it sounds super dull and boring. But hear us out! There are actually some pretty great benefits to work planning:
Being more productive with your time. 👩💻
If you know exactly what you need to do and when you need to do it, you’re less likely to waste time faffing around or procrastinating.
Reducing stress levels. 🤯
If you know what’s coming up and you’re prepared for it, you’re less likely to feel overwhelmed or stressed out by your workload. And let’s be honest — who doesn’t want to feel less stressed?
Those are just a few of the benefits of work schedule planning. All in all, it helps you stay organized and on top of the game. And if that’s something you’re striving for, here’s how to plan your way to success with actiTIME:
To create a weekly work schedule in your account, you basically need to undertake the same simple steps that apply to daily time tracking: add a task to the calendar and indicate when and for how long you intend to work on it. The only difference here is that you should do that for an entire week in advance. And for this to happen, you need to switch on Working Time Entry for Future Dates in actiTIME settings.
The trick is that these settings can’t be managed by anyone except admin users. So, in case you don’t have relevant user permission but want to schedule your working hours in the Calendar View in advance, make sure to contact your manager.
For the rest, you only need to do your best to adhere to the created work schedule, and if something doesn’t go as estimated, correct your time-track data to match the reality. This way, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of work planning without compromising your time tracking accuracy.
Conclusion 🏁
We are very proud of the Calendar View — it’s one of those features that just makes sense and is truly intuitive and valuable. We hope that it will improve your time tracking experience and inspire you to try out a new way of work management.
If you haven’t tried actiTIME just yet, now would be a perfect time to start with a free trial. And if you’re a long-time user, we would love to hear what you think about our recent product update.
Thanks for reading!
