How to Set a Time Tracker for Your Enterprise Needs

Photo by Agê Barros

Compared to small firms and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises tend to have much more sophisticated needs. They work with a higher number of employees and operate their facilities across multiple locations. They run numerous projects and activities at once. And since big business means big responsibility, the consequences of compromised data security and non-compliance with government regulations are usually more severe for large organizations than for their smaller counterparts.

Based on this, enterprise needs include:

• Effective long-distance collaboration
• Centralized data management
• Impeccable data security
• Practical tools that help to comply with laws easily

And of course, just like every other business, an enterprise also wants to enjoy exceptional process efficiency, use its resources optimally, reduce costs and maximize profit.

Meeting all these demands is a challenging task, but large companies may choose from many methods and tools that assist in accomplishing it. Time tracking software is one of such valuable tools. And in this piece, we will talk about how you can set it in line with your enterprise needs, using actiTIME as an example.

What Is actiTIME?

actiTIME is a simple-to-use time tracking solution for intelligent and data-driven business management.

Online timesheet interface in actiTIME where every user can select task parameters
they want to see in their timesheets

Besides user-friendly weekly timesheets, this software contains functionality for:

• Project management | Time tracking and job costing reports will enable you to analyze performance results and estimate your works to create evidence-based project plans. And with the help of such features as visual estimate tracker and automatic notifications, you can oversee performance progress with ease.
• Remote team collaboration | Your employees can review current task progress statuses right in their timesheets, task lists or the Kanban board. They may also leave comments next to their time entries to let managers know if everything is going as planned.
• Resource planning | Using the Work Scope Management functionality, it’s possible to quickly create new projects, add tasks to them and distribute work responsibilities across your staff members. Plus, running the Leave Time & Balances Report, you may see employees’ absence history, as well as analyze and predict your future workforce capacity.
• Business analysis | actiTIME’s reporting functionality includes summaries on the use of time in your team, project costs and billing amounts. You can apply them to measure various business metrics and make data-driven decisions.
• Cost management | You can track labor costs and run cost reports to evaluate your current project performance or estimate future tasks. Also, it’s possible to configure actiTIME to automatically notify users about the risk of budget overruns.
• Invoicing | You can set billing rates for different types of work and, after a task or project is completed, quickly generate accurate and branded invoices. Moreover, you can save your billing data in PDF, CSV or HTML formats and easily export it to QuickBooks to streamline accounting even more.

How Can actiTIME Benefit Your Enterprise?

As you can see from the above list, actiTIME has everything necessary to monitor your employees’ activities, collaborate with them even in remote work settings, and process vital data on your multiple projects’ performance in a single place.

But that’s not all.

actiTIME has several important qualities and settings that every enterprise can take huge advantage of:

1. Useful process automation

Process automation equals higher work efficiency, and actiTIME has plenty of things to offer in this regard.

First of all, it includes one-click automatic timers that users can access via the mobile app or the Chrome extension. Secondly, it streamlines overtime and time off accrual, ridding you of the need to carry out complex calculations yourself. And to automate payroll and leave management with actiTIME, you merely have to follow these three steps:

• Set up the accrual rules and work rates in accordance with your preferences, internal policies and labor regulations
• Instruct your team to track time
• Retrieve the required information by generating a report or chart

As a result of these simple actions, you will save a lot of time and ensure impeccable compliance with paid time off and overtime laws.

Another great feature of actiTIME is automatic notifications. They can be configured to remind employees to fill in timesheets on time, alert managers about the risks of project overruns and inform your team about the approaching deadlines. Thereby, this automation helps ensure that everyone stays on the same page and everything is going according to the plan.

And last but not least, actiTIME supports integration with myriads of great apps. You can apply one of its many in-built integrators or connect your account to other pieces of software through Zapier or the Application Programming Interface (API). By syncing your actiTIME with other tools, you will boost workflow efficiency and simplify data export a great deal.

2. High accessibility

When managing a big and regionally distributed team, it is rather impossible to ensure everyone employs the same type of technology. But luckily for enterprises, actiTIME can be accessed through any computer system and any device.

The mobile app deserves a special mention here — besides allowing for a quick overview of productivity data, as well as manual and automatic time tracking, it lets users record working hours in the offline mode. Even if the internet connection is lost, all your time tracking data is saved. And once the user is back online, it is immediately synced with the corporate actiTIME account and becomes available for further processing and analysis.

3. Strict access controls and permission settings

Data breaches are costly, and to prevent them from taking place, you have to have strict data access standards and restrict the unauthorized use of business, project and team information.

actiTIME ensures high data security by letting you configure the password policy, deciding how long and complex each user’s password must be. In addition, actiTIME has an in-built security policy, aka the lockout policy, that allows you to choose for how long and on which conditions your employees will be denied access to their accounts after a series of unsuccessful sign-ins.

actiTIME’s user permissions are also to help you control which team members can see and manage different types of information submitted to the system. For instance, regular users are only allowed to work with their own time tracking data, while managers can be granted permissions to:

• Review and edit others’ timesheets,
• Create projects and tasks,
• Assign them to employees,
• Run versatile reports,
• Add new users to your account and more.

Lastly, you can select the scope of work — tasks, projects and customers — every team member will be able to review and track time for. Plus, you may limit managers’ data visibility to particular team members and departments.

Applying all these access settings and controls, you will make sure your corporate information is well-organized, secure and seen merely by authorized personnel.

4. In-built configurability

As a large company, you need to run multiple activities and implement many software features simultaneously. However, it doesn’t mean you will use absolutely everything a time tracker has to offer. In fact, cluttering your account with tools and buttons no one needs creates unwanted distractions and slows down the work process. Therefore, actiTIME has a flexible configuration that allows you to switch off any features you don’t want to see or apply.

Software admins may turn off such system-wide functionality as timesheet approval and overtime registration, while regular users may choose how to sort information in the Time-Track interface and which features to include in it. This way, actiTIME fosters a highly satisfying time tracking experience that falls in line with individual user preferences and your entire organization’s needs.

Besides, you can make actiTIME your own by:

• Adjusting your corporate schedule in accordance with the way your team actually works
• Setting preferable time-off rules and types of work
• Grouping your data in the most convenient way
• Creating as many workflow statuses and leave categories as you wish
• Customizing reports and embedding your logo in them
• Writing unique notification messages, etc.

And if that’s not enough, you can always customize your time tracker, connect it to other apps and add the missing features with the help of the API tools. Thereby, you can improve actiTIME performance and automate some repetitive tasks, which will bring your software experience to another level and make your overall workflow more efficient.

Need Some Help Customizing Your Time Tracker?

To tailor actiTIME to your enterprise needs even better, you can utilize our additional customization services that cover:

• New functionality building
• Improvements in already existing actiTIME features
• Software integrations
• Development of browser extensions
• Data editing, import and export
• Creation of API scripts

To make use of these services, simply write a detailed request describing what you need to customize. Shortly after we receive it, we’ll send a Customization Service Proposal to you. And once both sides agree on project estimates, costs and expectations, the customization work will begin.

At the end of our collaboration, you will have a chance to test the final product and enjoy a 180-day warranty period during which we will take full responsibility for fixing any issues and bugs if they arise.

For more information on actiTIME customization services, feel free to contact us at csd@actiTIME.com.