Manual vs. automatic time tracking: which one is better? Good question indeed. Accurately tracking your employees’ time and attendance is essential for payroll, audit, and invoicing boosting the work efficiency of your teams and seamless project management. There are 2 methods for the same – traditional and modern.
Manually tracking your time includes spreadsheets and time-consuming paper logs but is best for non-computer work. Automatic time logging on the other hand is best for computer and digital work but can be expensive for small businesses. Both have advantages, disadvantages, and specific applications, so it’s essential to understand which one is best for you.
So in today’s blog, I will compare manual and automated ways of tracking time in detail. By the end of this post, you will have a complete idea of how each works and will also have every insight you need to select the right solution to accurately track your time. With that out of the way, let me get started right away with it.
An Overview of Manual Time Tracking
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When talking about manual time tracking, what comes to my mind are spreadsheets, manual timers, and paper-based clocking. These were the ones used before computers and related devices were introduced and are the simplest and easiest-to-use methods of tracking work hours. Although, these days they are outdated, many organizations still use these time logging techniques.
3 Manual Time Tracking Tools
To manually track your time, you may use 1-2 or all of these techniques.
- Spreadsheets: These are the digital versions of paper sheets, where you might use fixed templates or just make a few headings to manually input time values. You can manually log your time daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Paper-Based: This is the oldest method to note work-time. What you do is put your time entries in paper sheets that form a logbook. These will update daily and when the pages run out, you will need to get a new logbook.
- Manual Timers: This means getting a countdown timer run on your watch, phone or computer while you are working to record your time.
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2 Pros & 6 Cons of Manual Time Tracking
As it’s said, everything comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Traditional time tracking included. However, according to my expertise and experience, manual time logging has more of the latter than the former.
Advantages
Here’s how manually tracking your time is beneficial.
- Low Cost: Manual timers and paper-based logbooks are affordable and so are spreadsheets. On the other hand, if you can’t afford Microsoft Excel, then you can simply use the default spreadsheet software to input time entries.
- Flexibility: Your employees can input time entries flexibly according to their schedules. For example, irregular schedules or non-standard tasks. Here automated or automatic time entries may not be applicable, such as:
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- Creative work
- Meetings
- Projects that require time outside the office.
Disadvantages
However, the above is what there is to the advantages of traditional time logging. Here’s why you need to switch to its automated counterpart.
- Prone to Errors: Did you know that around 2-7% of gross annual payroll goes to loss due to errors in tracking time? Manually entering your work-time is prone to errors. This is because when you are working, your entire focus is on the task at hand. Thus, logging time later from memory is just guesswork, which I don’t recommend.
- Time-Consuming: consider manually logging your work-time as another one of your tasks. It will consume more of your time, which can be expensive.
- No Real-Time Insights: Manual time entries only provide you with the total task and employee clocking time. Other than that, you don’t get any insights that can help you boost productivity.
- Extra Workload: It also adds more to the workload of your management and HR teams. As your business grows, it can become more time-consuming. I don’t care about anything else, but this can also delay timesheets and payroll processing, which can result in delayed payments and unsatisfied employees.
- Limited Scope: Another problem I see with timesheets, manual paper-based logs, and manual timers is limited space for jotting detailed information, which you may need in the future.
- Potential Time Theft: Did you know that time theft can cost you around 20% of every dollar earned? This sums up to around $400 billion in annual lost productivity and is something that I too experienced before implementing automated time tracking software.
- What used to happen was that my employees would intentionally input wrong time entries, which resulted in a loss for my business because I had no choice but to pay them for the time they didn’t work. What could I have done? I had no other proof.
An Overview of Automatic Time Tracking
So now you know the cons of manually logging your time entries. So it’s time to switch to its better counterpart, automatic or automated time tracking software. Trust me. It’s much better, faster, and more accurate than what I discussed earlier. To automatically log your work hours, you need advanced software that will take all the processes of manual timesheeting, digitize it, and make it much more accurate and efficient.
2 Automatic Time Tracking Tools
To automatically log your time, there are two types of tools. I preferably use the first one on my list.
- Time Tracking Software Solutions: Simply put, these are advanced feature-rich tool packages that track your employees’ task time. Furthermore, the tools also provide you with detailed insights into employees’ work-time utilization, productivity, and work performance trends.
- Artificially Intelligent Tools: Artificially intelligent tools for tracking time are even more accurate than your standard software for tracking your time. These tools can also compare historical data and provide suggestions for improving, for instance, time management.
- However, I still prefer the first tool I mentioned because artificially intelligent software might suggest slightly irrelevant things and can get repetitive in certain applications.
10 Pros & 2 Cons of Automatic Time Tracking
There are many pros of using tools for automated time tracking, 10 to be precise. So, let me tell you why I use software to log my and my employees’ time automatically.
Advantages
Here’s why you need to use advanced automated software for logging your work hours.
- Accuracy: When you use automated software to track time, the biggest pro you get is accuracy, the software will track and provide you with accurate work-time utilization reports of your employees with details between clock in and clock out.
- Time-Saving: Letting software log your work hours automatically saves you a lot of valuable time, which you can spend doing crucial work that matters.
- Better Project Estimates & Tracking: Insights from the time-tracked data will give you clarity on how much time and resources you need.
- Dedicated Issue Identification: Automatic work-hours tracking also lets you identify issues with a project before they stall it. For example, you will easily notice in the report if a task is taking way more time than expected. What I would do in such a situation is reallocate the tasks, teams, time, and resources to get the desired work performance results.
- Improved Team Performance: Another result of using software to automatically track time is Improved team focus, efficiency, and better work performance. By now, you know how it all works.
- Minimum Human Intervention: What I mean by that is you will just have to configure the software once right. Later, all you have to do is view the results that the software is giving you and tweak the settings accordingly.
- Editable Time Entries: At times, even the advanced software can get slightly inaccurate. During such cases, what it allows you to do is edit the time entries to get them more precise.
- Enhanced Accountability & Transparency: Automatically logging your work-time also enhances the accountability of your employees as analysing real-time insights lets you know who is responsible for any work-related issue. Plus, there is 100% clarity as well because your employees must also know why you are tracking their time.
- Real-time Insights: Automatically tracking time also provides you with real-time insights into employee work-time including productivity, work performance, activity, task time, and more, which helps you maintain work integrity.
- Detailed Reporting: Contrary to spreadsheets. Advanced software provides you with detailed reports on employee productivity and work-time utilization efficiency. Based on this data, you can identify:
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- Top performers, whom you need to keep for long.
- Slackers who need to be discontinued from your organization.
- Average employees who need a little training to become better at their work.
Disadvantages
There are only a few disadvantages of using automatic time trackers in the manual vs. automatic time tracking comparison.
- Higher Costs: Advanced software solutions to track time are more expensive than traditional methods. That’s because the costs are on a /user/month basis. For example, if a time tracker costs $10/user/month and you have a large team of at least 1000 employees.
- That’s $10000 monthly for just a tool that will help you improve employee focus and efficiency and not the entire reason behind it. Plus, add-on features might incur extra costs. Furthermore, this price is even costlier for small businesses as they have low budgets.
- Less Flexibility: Automatically tracking your time with advanced software will not work in certain areas such as labour work where the schedules are unusual. For instance, construction labourers.
Comparing Manual vs. Automatic Time Tracking: 3 Key Factors
Okay, so now it’s clear, which one is better. However, I also see it wise to have a manual vs. automatic time tracking comparison to see the individual applications where each method works precisely.
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While manually tracking your work hours provides more control, it is very much prone to errors. For example, if you forget to input a time entry, then this mistake cannot be undone. |
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Manually tracking your time is a cheaper alternative. However, it is more costly in terms of errors, inaccuracies, and inefficiencies. On the other hand, automated time trackers seem expensive at first. However, the investment is good as you get many long-term benefits. |
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Automatic or automated software for tracking time provides a steep learning curve. Especially for your non-tech employees. However, once you are used to it, there are no issues. On the other hand, to use manual methods, you need consistent effort and memory. |
Manual vs. Automatic Time Tracking: Which One Should You Choose?
Well, if you ask me about the better method between manual vs automatic time tracking, then I will say a combination of both. According to my expertise and experience, you need to find a balance between manually and automatically tracking your time. A simple rule for the best results is to automatically track work hours where applicable such as computer or digital work. On the other hand, for unusual schedules such as construction work, I recommend manual methods for tracking your time.
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Manual vs. Automatic Time Tracking: 5 Key Considerations for Choosing the Right One
The above was my advice. However, if you still want to pick one between manual vs. automatic time tracking, then you need to consider a few factors. Here’s what you need to check.
1. Consider Your Payment Method
The first thing you need to check is how you pay your employees. So if you have salaried employees, then only the clock in, clock out, and employee leave data is enough, for which you can integrate your clocking device with your attendance tracking software. However, you need to consider automatic tracking for these situations:
- If you hire freelancers or temporary contract employees, then you need to pay them by the hour.
- If you hire waged workers who get paid by the hour.
2. Requirement Analysis
The next step is requirement analysis. I would recommend an automated approach if your teams mostly work on computers. However, on the other hand, if there is also other work, then a hybrid with manual work hours tracking is your best option.
3. Team Size
You already know that automatic and automated time trackers provide you with real-time insights into employee work-time utilization and are scalable. Simply put, it is the best option for larger teams since manual methods won’t provide this much input.
4. Evaluate Costs
As I mentioned before, automated hours tracking software solutions are an asset that will help you enhance efficiency and focus and not the entire reason behind it. So you need to have a budget for it. Ensuring that the software you choose is cost-effective and provides you with expected or more RoI.
5. Consider Reporting
Lastly, if your business and organization require useful insights into employee work, then nothing can be better than using an automatic time tracker tool. This software solution provides detailed reporting, which helps boost employee productivity.
Boost Employee Efficiency with the Best Time Tracking Software
So now you know the answer to which is better in the manual vs. automatic time tracking debate. Considering the applications, pros, and cons of both, I concluded that you need to use a balance of both traditional and automatic work-hour tracking methods. However, DeskTrack saves you even more money by providing both manual and automatic/automated work-hour tracking. Plus, it has applications for your in-office, remote, and on-site employees as it provides a fully-featured mobile app, desktop application, and web application. Furthermore, beyond work-hour tracking, it provides you with accurate attendance tracking, employee activity tracking, productivity tracking, and project management in an intuitive all-in-one dashboard.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q. Is Automatic Tracking of Time Expensive?
Ans. Yes, automatic and automated time tracking is more expensive than the manual method. However, once you have set it up and learnt to use the tool, then, you will get many benefits including:
- Saved time.
- Enhanced employee focus and efficiency.
- More accountability and responsibility.
Q. Can You Switch from Manual to Automatic Tracking of Time?
Ans. Of course. You can easily switch to automatic work-hour tracking at any time as the tools for it:
- Are easily scalable to meet your growing business needs.
- Easily adapt to any work environment.
Q. What If You Want to Automatically Track Specific Tasks?
Ans. That’s not an issue with automated time trackers as well due to customizability:
- You can customize which tasks to track and which tasks to ignore.
- You can also set the time when the software will pause.
- Your employees can also pause the timer during breaks for precise tracking.
Q. Is Software for Automatic Tracking of Time Secure?
Ans. Yes, automated work-hour tracking software solutions are also secure as they:
- Provide the latest security features such as end-to-end encryption.
- The software complies with the latest data security standards and guidelines.
Q. Do You Need to Be Technically Sound to Use Software for Automatic Tracking of Time?
Ans. It depends on which tool you are using. For example, software solutions such as DeskTrack are easy to learn and use.
