So you need to track hours for payroll and maybe to invoice your clients. We know employees don’t necessarily love (if not hate) filling out timesheets. Making the time-reporting process simpler helps reduce errors and save time. ‘Simpler’ is a very ‘complicated’ term – a simple timesheet for HR is very different from a simple timesheet for employees. A good time tracking system should bridge this gap.
While date and hours is the most basic information required in the timesheet, based on your business you may also track start time – end time, description, customer and task information. The key operating phrase being ‘based on your business’. A good time tracking system should be customizable to suit your business needs. It should show only the required fields and hide what is not required. Also, within each field, an employee should be able to select only the correct information. For example, the end time should always be after start time, or the employee should see only those customers and tasks they are assigned to.
Then there is other information that HR and management need for payroll and reporting, but it is unfair to expect the employee to enter the information like payroll code and class. If you let the employee enter this information, you will have to add a verification process to make sure the information entered is correct. A good time tracking system lets you setup rules to enter this information automatically, thus reducing errors, and saving both employee and management time.
So how much information is too much information?
Any information that is not required for your business, or that the employee may not instinctively know how to enter is too much information.
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