Employee management impacts almost every function of an organization. Which is why there are thousands of time tracking software options available in the market.

A time tracking software is more than a simple assessment of employees’ time of coming and leaving the office. Modern-age time tracking software provides unique features with incredible benefits for a company.

When you find a software for your business, think about following essential features and their benefits:

1. Versatile Timesheets

Timesheets provide a centralized presentation of billable hours. You can call it attendance reports, as they include information related to holidays, time-offs and absence of employees.

Benefits: Not all software providers offer timesheets. But they are effective in managing the payroll and invoicing. With timesheet feature, you can export CSV, PDF and other formats of billable hours and prepare invoices conveniently.

2. Project Management

In companies, a project management system requires time tracking features as well. Which is why smart software providers include essential project management features in their time tracking software as well.

For instance, such a software can allow team leaders of a project to set deadlines, assign tasks to the present employees. Similarly, features include tracking the progress of a project in terms of daily tasks, weekly goals, and monthly achievements.

Benefits: Tracking time of a project saves from wasting too much money on the same project. Projects with restricted budgets require on-time completion, hence, such a software seems logical.

3. Time Tracking

This core feature is essential in all time tracking software tools. The tool should be able to capture worked hours accurately and create an easy-to-understand record of it.

Benefits: With time tracking, project managers and company leaders can monitor the project completion periods and track the performance capacity of employees at the same time.

In fact, the records of previous projects help in estimating the deadlines for an upcoming project as well. The records of worked hours help in deciding a project strategy.

4. Online Invoicing

Online invoicing allows you to bill clients as per hourly and minute basis. The accurate time tracking and automated bill generation become possible with this feature.

All the process of billing takes place transparently without any human errors. Employees simply enter their “in/out” time and the payroll system receives the date from the time tracking software.

Benefits: The automation of the process saves from time-taking efforts of bill generation. The transparency saves from unwanted disputes regarding the bills and payments.

5. User Management

User management feature involves the creation of teams, departments or working groups. Then, the management feature assists in managing those groups as users.

Team-focused reports get generated, which are shareable with other authoritative individuals. User types include admin, a manager or a staff, which defines the type of accessibility.

Benefits: With group management, each team leader can get the best-suited report associated with the performance of the team members.

Well-designated reports make quick analysis of teams easier for business leaders and help in modifying the productivity of the overall functionality.

6. Notifications

Notification feature assists in creating alerts in important situations. For instance, an employee can get a reminder whenever he or she misses to check in/out.

Team members can get regular notifications regarding the upcoming project deadlines. These notifications are automatically distributed to employee emails or mobile phone numbers.

Benefits: Keeping employees disciplined and helping them with the project deadlines become easier. Reminders allow employees to perform with the motivation to complete the tasks at hand as efficiently as possible.

7. Analytics and Reporting

The visibility and understanding of data are essential for any software. Hence, a time tracking tool has to provide a comprehensive analytics including all the relatable data.

The view of the data should be easy-to-understand. Plus, the managers should have the features to generate reports with graphs, charts, and other visualized elements. Reliable software and tools come with customizable analytics and reporting features.

Benefits: Reliable analytics and reporting features help attaining daily and weekly stats and generate visualized reports. Custom reports align the software with the company goals regarding time tracking and project management.

8. Ability to Integrate

As mentioned before, a time tracking software impacts almost every department of a company. Hence, the software should provide the ability to integrate with other systems utilized in a modern-age working environment.

Benefits: Integration of time tracking with other software and tools offers better control over employee management and project.

Company leaders can obtain broad insights and look at a huge picture of performance and productivity. As a result, a company can align employee performance, payments, accounting, projects altogether.

Apart from all the above-mentioned features, you can also look for features such as lightweight design, free trial, and others.

Now, you know all the essential features of a time tracking software. Evaluate potential software providers with respect to these features and choose a reliable option.