Time management software & mobile app for easy time and attendance tracking

Time and activity management software is a human resources (HR) management tool that enables you to manage employees’ time by tracking time and activities. How do you choose one? And how do you set up a computerized time management system? Follow the guide.

“Time and Activity Management”: time tracking and task management

The definition of time and activity management is twofold. First, it includes time and activity management as an HR activity, by referring to the management of employees’ working time, in the broadest sense of the term: tracking hours worked, managing absences, attendance, schedules, etc.

Time and activity management then also refers to a time management tool, or time tracker, sometimes a simple HRIS functionality, sometimes a separate software application (a time management app), dedicated to the digital management of these processes.

Depending on the size of the business and its sector of activity, time tracking and task management will play a more or less important role in the company. As a result of this, the time and activity management software chosen will be more or less complex.

For example: in the case of a business with mobile staff, such as in the construction sector, the time tracking and task management software must be able to adapt to the needs of mobile workers by providing a mobile time and attendance app.

The importance of time tracking and task management in business

Good time and activity management is essential for any company in order to have an overview of the hours worked by its workers, in real time or afterwards. 

Tracking time and activities provides the ability to monitor the availability of staff or the distribution of working time by function. In this way, time tracking and task management tools provide a better understanding of the company’s needs in terms of manpower and skills, which enables better staff management.

In the construction sector, for example, time and activity management also enables the allocation and progress of labor budgets to be monitored and see how much time is being spent on a project, in order to reduce the risk of overruns.

In addition to the benefits for HR management, effective time tracking and task management provides many advantages.

What is time tracking and task management software?

Time tracking and task management software is HR software that is dedicated to the tracking and management of the work hours of a company’s workers.

Many aspects of time management can be automated by using time tracking software. Using such software, sometimes with a mobile app, can simplify and enrich:

• Tracking hours worked and their details: overtime, weekend hours, unsocial hours, etc.
• Attendance tracking;
• Absence management: vacation, time off in lieu, unscheduled absence, special leave, etc.;
• Tracking of hours worked per person, the amount of time spent per job, etc.;
• The time and attendance system, with or without badge readers;
• Etc.

 Its functionalities (digital timesheets, absence planning, reporting, etc.) vary from one business to another, depending on the specific needs of the sector of activity, for example.

Why use a time tracker?

 As soon as a company exceeds a certain size, time and activity management software becomes an indispensable aid. It allows you to efficiently keep track of the time worked by all staff, for optimal day-to-day management.

Finally, using time tracking and task management software enables better reporting of your activities. Having accurate and regularly updated information on the working hours of your staff allows both 

Advantages of time and activity management software:

• Uniqueness of information
• Unique data entry
• Freshness of data
• Analysis, optimization, rationalization

Time tracking and task management software: who is it for?

 A characteristic of time and activity management is that it affects several departments in the company:

• The workers themselves, for recording time and attendance, absence requests, schedules, etc.
• Managers, for activity planning, validation and control of declared information, anticipation of needs, etc.
• The HR department, for approval and final checking, anticipation of needs and skills management, etc.
• Payroll managers, for the collection of variable payroll elements and the correct processing of salaries;
• The finance department, for monitoring salary costs and labor budgets if staff are mobile;
• Management, for managing the wage bill, monitoring productivity and costs, etc.

 Therefore, the efficiency of the company’s time and activity management software will impact the company on several levels, from day-to-day management of working hours to planning the long-term strategy.

Time management tools and task management software in a company

A time and activity management software solution has to meet different HR objectives as well as the needs of a range of users. Work time management software generally includes different modules to meet these distinct needs.

1. Payroll management – Timesheet software

 Collection of variable payroll elements

At the point of generating pay slips, questions arise: how many hours have each of my employees worked? How many overtime hours need to be counted? What about weekend hours? Keeping track of the time in various categories can quickly become a real headache for HR at the end of the month.

In addition to these hours, there are other elements to be taken into account to ensure fair remuneration of employees: travel allowances, lunch allowances… together with the hours worked, they constitute what is called the variable elements of pay.

To issue pay slips correctly, it is necessary to ensure that this information is correctly transmitted to the HR department by users. Too often, due to a lack of appropriate resources, these elements arrive incomplete or incorrect, putting considerable pressure on payroll management teams at the end of each month due to the amount of time taken up by rectifying these problems.

One of the primary roles of digital time management is to ensure a more efficient and structured collection of these pre-payroll elements.

The challenge: making pre-payroll data reliable

The consequences of errors in employee payroll are enormous. Who wants to receive an erroneous salary and have to chase after a correction? Because of these significant consequences, errors must be avoided at all costs.

However, most errors are caused by the inadequacy of the tools used. Paper or Excel timesheets, which are still too often used in the construction sector in particular, require a lot of re-inputting, which encourages human errors.

The employer is therefore responsible for providing users with reliable time and attendance and data entry tools. The choice of a time management software solution designed for the sector provides the answer to this need (mobile time and attendance module for users in the field, semi-connected application…).

In addition to the quality of the data, time tracking software offers many advantages for payroll management.

2. Absence management

Just like working hours, absences must be tracked and managed efficiently. This is the role of absence management: to categorize, track, plan… the absences of all workers.

There are many reasons for an absence. The main types of absence: vacation, compensatory rest, sick leave, time off in lieu, maternity or paternity leave, training… there are a multitude of reasons that can justify the absence of an employee from their workplace. These different types of absence must be categorized and listed rigorously.

Time management software allows you to plan, enter and follow up absence and leave in a structured way: leave request, entry of the reason for the absence, monitoring absenteeism, etc.

3. Administrative management

Ensuring compliance with legislation (labor code, collective agreements, specific laws and regulations, etc.) is an integral part of personnel administration.

 Time management software can be a significant aid to help you comply with and follow legislative updates, in order to ensure compliance with collective agreements or other legislation.

 For example, by integrating the rules of different collective agreements into the time recording tool, you can be automatically alerted to any rule violation, depending on the status of the worker (employee, temporary worker, subcontractor, country of residence…).

 Additionally, an administrative document management platform, such as the one offered by Traxxeo, will allow you to automate the collection, reading, processing and sharing of your workers’ administrative documents (internal and external), thanks to artificial intelligence.

4. Time planning

Planning the work of teams is a complex task and can take a considerable amount of time. Managing staff schedules requires taking into account multiple parameters, which go far beyond the simple creation of a daily, weekly or monthly schedule for your employees.

In particular, planning the work of teams requires keeping abreast of and complying with the legislation in force on working hours, or monitoring the profitability of teams and projects in order ensure optimized allocation of resources.

In addition, consolidating the schedules of your workers cannot be done without taking into account absence and leave, planned or unforeseen (illness, accident, bad weather…).

Finally, managing team schedules requires a solid and consolidated knowledge of the skills of each worker in order to correctly distribute work.

A scheduling management software solution, such as the one offered by Traxxeo, will provide you with a global view of your needs (per site, per project, per day, per week…), of the availability of your resources (absent, already allocated…) and of their skills (trade, certifications, overtime…).

5. Management and dashboards 

The HR dashboard is a visualization tool that summarizes HR data, generally in the form of visual graphs. It allows you to monitor your main HR indicators at a glance.

By summarizing all your results together, the HR dashboard is a valuable tool in your decision-making. It allows the human resources department to ensure that the results obtained are in line with the HR objectives set upstream (absenteeism rate, types of absence, skills monitoring, training, etc.)

Online or digital dashboards are real strategic management tools. Integrated with powerful data collection and management tools, such as Traxxeo’s, they allow for an instant diagnosis of the company’s situation at any given moment.

Reactive and dynamic HR management is essential to guarantee the well-being of employees, and to enable a more human approach to HR management: monitoring of absenteeism rate, turnover, work accidents rate, training rate…

How does work management software facilitate time management in the company?

The difficulties of time management in companies

Effective and constant monitoring of your employees’ activities is not always easy. It is even more complicated when workers are not at the same workplace every day. However, this is the case in many sectors (construction, engineering, energy, cleaning…). The increase in working from home and remote work means this nomadic work is a growing trend, with the consequence that time management has become more complex.

The challenge represented by this mobile workforce is significant. And it is not always the only one. Let’s take the example of the construction industry: 

• Workers are regularly required to work on several sites in the same day.
• Subcontracting and temporary work are common. However, these workers are subject to different legislation.
• The country of residence of the worker, the country where the company is based and the country where the work is carried out can all be different. Depending on the country of residence, the legislation to be applied will vary (authorized overtime, maximum working hours…)

The case of the construction sector illustrates the complexity of developing efficient time management. If there is one thing to remember, it is that the time tracking and task management tool must be suited to the realities of the company’s sector, as well as to its size.

1. More reliable collection of HR data

Time and attendance management software solves the main challenge of human resources: collecting quality information on employees’ activities.

By minimizing human handling, especially re-keying of information, the software tool reduces the risk of human error.

The ideal is to have a single entry of the information, which is directly accessible to all users. This way, everyone uses the same information, which has been verified beforehand.

Let’s take the example of digital timekeeping. It is particularly beneficial in sectors such as construction:

• Information is entered at source, in the field, within a dedicated mobile application
• Hours and additional information are entered in predefined fields (using your time codes…)
• In case of anomaly, an alert is created (maximum hours exceeded…)
• The entered data are sent for validation
• The hours data arrives in the HR department having already been organized and validated

Traxxeo offers a mobile time tracking application dedicated to mobile teams, coupled with a management platform enabling fast processing of recorded hours and exceptions. These data can be directly integrated into your payroll software.

This digital collection of information results in:

• drastically reduced risk of errors
• avoidance of double or triple processing of information
• no more searches for missing data

2. A reduction in the administrative burden on HR

One of the main advantages of time management software is the automation of many recurring tasks. The goal? To free up time for more value-added tasks.

For example, Traxxeo’s time tracking and task management software enables companies to automate the collection, analysis and integration of data related to variable pay elements: hours worked, overtime, night hours, lunch allowances, mileage allowances, etc. This automation saves considerable time, freeing up days or even a whole week for payroll managers at the end of each month.

The time gained can be devoted to other tasks: employee support, workplace wellness development, employee benefits review, recruitment, coaching, etc.

3. More responsive human resources management

Too often, HR managers face delays. The result? Every month-end, it’s a race against the clock. Not to mention the immense pressure on teams, which delays decisions and limits the responsiveness of the company’s HR management.

Should I hire more or fewer temps next month? Is my absenteeism rate under control? How are my employees doing? In order to answer these questions, information is required on time and hours. 

By providing real-time information, the time and activity management software becomes a real management tool.

Traxxeo’s time management solutions allow an unprecedented reactivity. In instances of breach of company rules or legislation (maximum number of overtime hours…), HR teams are immediately and automatically alerted. In addition to enabling better reactivity, it is also a significant time saving for HR teams.

4. Better budgetary monitoring of salary costs

 The wage bill is one of the most significant costs for a company – and one of the least able to be reduced! Time management is therefore an essential link in the budget monitoring process.

However, calculating the exact cost of labor can sometimes be a real headache. This is even more true when the company’s workforce is in the field, performing a variety of tasks with equally varied hourly costs.

By enabling accurate tracking of hours per task, Traxxeo’s time and activity management solution facilitates not only better HR management but also more rigorous budget tracking.

These data on payroll costs are extremely important for the company’s HR management and ensure the company’s profitability in the long term.

5. A software suite integrated with your existing information system

 As paper sheets and Excel files cannot communicate with each other, switching to a digital time management tool opens new perspectives.

 The integration of your tool into your existing information system has many advantages:

• You have a unique and shared source of information
• The hours entered by users in the field are available without delay in your management software (HRIS, payroll software, etc.)
• Your HR dashboards are updated directly with reliable data
• And so on.

To ensure efficient HR management from end to end, Traxxeo’s software suite integrates with your information system, providing you with reliable data, anywhere, anytime.

What is the best tool for time management?

When it comes to choosing the best software to manage your company’s time and activities, what factors should be taken into account? It is obvious that your specific needs and budget will guide your final choice, being influenced by the size of your business and its projects.

1. What are the criteria for my computerized time and activity management?

 When choosing your time management software, you will have to consider several criteria. Are you an SME, a microenterprise or a large group? You will certainly not expect the same functionalities from your time tracking and task management system. Your sector of activity can also be a determining factor. The construction or civil engineering sectors, for example, have many workers who are constantly on the move. Taking this mobility of the system’s users into account in your choice of software is essential.

To ensure the success of your digital project, start by defining your needs. What do you expect from your time management solution? How many employees will be affected by this change?

To successfully implement this change, follow the steps in our guide “How to implement a time management solution“.

2. What free tools can you use for time management?

 Are you thinking of free versions like paper timesheets or Excel to keep track of the time? Then you probably have to manage a medium-sized team. Or maybe you are reluctant to change your old habits and consider how much time you could save.

If paper timesheets and Excel spreadsheets have undeniable limitations, they are still easy-to-use tools. Google Sheets, totally free, already allows you to track the hours of a small team, although as more of a summary, but the tool can meet the needs of a small company for a while without taking too much time, at the beginning.

Online, you will find many Excel timesheet templates that can be downloaded for free.

And if you have already come up against the limits of these tools, but you are reluctant to move away from a free version due to the price of specialized software, don’t panic.

Many software programs offer either a trial version of their service, limited by time and/or features, or a personalized and entirely free demonstration of the tool, so that you can evaluate what the solution has to offer, without being restricted by price.

3. SaaS software for time and attendance management

 In the era of the cloud, SaaS (Service as a Software) software and applications are becoming more and more numerous and specialized.

The main advantage of turning to SaaS software is to provide you with a powerful tool, that is directly deployable and proven, for a controlled cost. The packaged price means you don’t pay any development costs, and you immediately have a tool that is adapted to your needs. Not satisfied with the service? You just have to turn to another provider, without worrying about the costs of adapting a solution you would have developed internally.

Traxxeo, your software partner for mobile team time tracking

When it comes to mobile workers, such as in construction companies, it is even more important to consider the user-friendliness of the chosen solution.

Traxxeo’s software and mobile application enable for a close monitoring of worked hours, attendance and activities of remote workers.

Digital entries on the mobile app allow HR to access clocking information on a daily basis, while the integration of the solutions into the client’s information system allows labour expenses to be compared to the forecasted budget.

The mobile time tracking app : easy clocking for mobile employees

 With the mobile time tracking app, your employees in the field can easily enter the information needed for payroll. Your team managers can approve the validated information easily, directly from their workplace.

The mobile application developed by Traxxeo offers a range of features dedicated to mobile teams:

• Offline and online mode
• Data entry aids: copy and paste, drop-down lists…
• Ergonomic and intuitive interface
• Alert system for any anomaly
• Etc.

Your field teams have a tool adapted to their realities, available on smartphone and tablet.

The time and attendance management software platform

Your HR teams have all the information available in one place. Validation of hours, management of anomalies, management of absences… manage all your time management within a single tool.

 The validated information is then sent directly to your management software, for payroll processing for example.

Is Traxxeo for you?

Are you looking to optimize the time management of your mobile teams?

• Improve your HR reactivity
• Save time in managing your time and attendance, absence…
• Refine the management of your activities
• Ensure the quality of your HR data at all times
• Etc.

If you have medium to large teams and want to offer them a more efficient HR policy, get in touch.

Go digital. Request a demo of our solutions.