Most employees don’t use all the paid time off they’re entitled to each year, and overwork carries real costs beyond lost productivity. Chronic overwork has been linked to poor sleep, higher blood pressure, and other health problems. Managers who can see PTO and attendance clearly are in a better position to catch the problem before it turns into turnover.
But absence tracking is only one job a timesheet system needs to do well. Whether you’re picking your first system or replacing one that isn’t working, here’s what actually matters when you compare timesheet management software.
Accurate Time Tracking
The most basic requirement of a timesheet system is also the easiest to get wrong: it needs to capture hours accurately as they happen. Look for a system that records clock-in and clock-out times directly rather than depending on employees to remember and log hours by hand days later. Accurate records also matter for compliance: wage and hour rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act require employers to keep timecards and other records showing hours worked for at least two years.
Absence Management
All businesses need a way to track paid time off, and several departments typically need visibility into it for their own purposes, including HR, accounting, and sometimes legal. Whichever system you choose should recognize and record PTO on its own, so nobody has to update a separate spreadsheet by hand.
Payroll Integration
A timesheet system that doesn’t connect to your payroll process just moves the same manual work downstream. Recorded hours should flow straight into payroll, cutting down on both the time it takes to run payroll and the errors that come from manual double-entry.
Customizable Reporting
A good system should be flexible enough to work for everyone who uses it. The same timesheet or app should work for employees logging their hours and for the managers who need to pull data out of it. Reports should be easy to generate for whichever department is asking, whether that’s payroll needing hours for the current pay period or HR pulling PTO balances for a review.
Mobile Compatibility
Your timesheet system needs to work on a phone. Whether that’s a dedicated mobile app or a mobile-friendly web page, employees who work on-site, in the field, or across multiple locations need a way to clock in and check their hours from wherever they are.
Ease of Use
Finally, a system your team can actually learn quickly is worth more than one packed with features nobody uses. Complicated software slows down rollout and creates more support requests down the road, for both your technical staff and the employees using it every day. This matters even more if the system doesn’t integrate well with your other software, since your accounting and HR teams will end up relying on the reporting tools built into the timesheet system itself, so those need to be easy to use on their own.
Finding the Right Fit
None of these features do much good on their own. A timesheet system earns its keep when accurate hours, PTO tracking, payroll integration, and reporting all work together automatically.
If you’re evaluating options, take a look at what TimeTrakGO offers. It’s built to handle time tracking, PTO, and payroll integration in one place for a small business team.
About the Author: Matt Davis
