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How employee time tracking has evolved over the years

Running a business is never easy, and while it can be very rewarding, it does come with its problems. Those problems are usually related to office politics and employee-manager relations.

There’s definitely nothing more complicated than being in charge of people and making sure they do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Of course, being on time is one of the most important things for this to happen, and we have all been in a situation where conflicts have arisen because of that.

And this is why employee time tracking has emerged as a solution to end all conflicts. Gone are the days when you had to rely on someone to jot down when employees were coming to work and leaving, and employees now have a sense of freedom because their managers aren’t breathing down their necks all day to find out if they finished their tasks or not.

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Over the years, time tracking has definitely evolved, and we’re here to walk you through this wonderful world.

Written format

While many people assume that time tracking is a new invention, it actually dates back hundreds of years ago. Some even claim as far as Ancient Egypt.

It makes sense if you think about it; people have been working for ages, and therefore the notion of time tracking was always important to bill that work so workers could get paid.

In ancient times, the idea was simple. They used ledgers to track time and identify how many hours someone spent working on a particular task.

Ledgers actually have a lot of advantages; they are portable and easy to carry around, which is why they’ve been used for a very long time.

Believe it or not, though, ledgers are still used to this day by some companies and businesses. If you walk into certain offices, can find an open ledger next to the door where each employee would sign their name and their hour of arrival and departure at the end of the day.

They’re definitely not perfect, though, and it’s not exactly a suitable format for this day and age. It’s a lot more time-consuming to monitor productivity and attendance on a sheet of paper than it is using a software, especially considering the fact that when it’s time for billing, you’ll have to enter the numbers manually.

There’s also the fact that a ledger isn’t reliable since it can easily get damaged or misplaced. That’s not even considering the high probability of error. Timesheets (software or physical)

This notion started in the late 1800s with something called a ‘time clock,’ which was used to do exactly what the name implies: Keep track of employee working hours using a somewhat more sophisticated approach than the ledger.

The notion started evolving into a more automated form, which led to the creation of employee timesheets, which are quite possibly the most sophisticated format thus far. This format started being implemented with the rise of computers, and it takes on different forms.

You can either use a software, timesheet or a physical document that is much more advanced than the old form of paper sheets. The great thing is that you can find ready-made templates online, which is great for people who have no idea what this document should look like.

You can get samples of an employee timesheet from ExcelTemplate.net, which offers templates that any business could use. It gets even better; you can have simple templates to record things like ‘time in/time out,’ as well as more advanced features like tracking the cost of projects.

The timesheet has certainly changed how businesses keep track of employee efforts and working hours. For starters, the fact that you could have them on every computer in the office was a breakthrough, and it made massive changes in the quality of workflow.

Employee productivity started improving, and people’s focus was shifted towards completing their tasks on schedule because they know that all their efforts are being monitored and recorded through the timesheet.

Timesheets also made it much easier for businesses to keep track of billable hours, which made the process of billing clients a lot smoother because you have actual proof of how many hours your people spent working on a certain project. Then there’s how the sheets affected the quality of work because managers could monitor each and every phase of a project to understand where the recurrent problems occur, and in turn, work on improving them.

Web-based software

While the previous timesheets are basically Excel documents that come with a myriad of features, web-based software is a whole other ballgame.

It’s relatively new, but ever since its conception, companies have been racing to provide a time-tracking service for businesses.

Web-Based Software is pretty flawless if you think about it. For starters, you can access it from any device, which means you can keep track of a project’s progress on your phone while you’re on vacation if need be.

You no longer need to be physically present in the office to monitor progress.

It’s also infallible when it comes to keeping track of employee working hours, which means it can’t get scammed by people claiming they worked longer than they actually did.

A web-based time tracking software also helps in preventing errors that might occur when employees enter their working hours and progress manually, assuming they are actually honest about it. This will naturally help you run a tight ship with no room for error, accidental or not.

Time tracking has significantly evolved over the years, and it’s actually pretty impressive to look back and see how far technology has come. It’ll always be an integral part of any organization that wants to monitor its productivity as well as make things easier with billable hours.

Using a time tracking software or sheet can take your business to the next level, and you’ll start noticing its effects on employee productivity and efficiency as time goes by.

There’s no telling what they’ll come up next, but what we have now is any indication, then we’re definitely moving in the right direction.

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