Activity tracking: making team time management child's play

If you're still not familiar with activity tracking, you won't be when you've finished reading this article.

The HR process known as time management enables you to keep track of your projects and your employees' activities.

So what is activity tracking, and how do you go about setting it up in your organization? We explain it all to you, with a bonus Excel timesheet template to download.

See all software Time Tracking

What is activity tracking?

Activity tracking is the daily monitoring of your employees' presence and absence, taking into account all possible scenarios:

• overtime,
• night work
• staggered working hours,
• business travel, etc.

You can define different customizable axes:

• by project,
• by department
• by task
• by customer, etc.

This provides you with different filters for analyzing your company's activity.

You can also define your own time units: date of day, hour, minute, etc. It's up to you to choose the periodicity of your monitoring, i.e. weekly or monthly.

Why track activity?

Why implement a time management tool in your company?

• Control costs by tracking time spent.
• You gain greater visibility over your activity.
• You can calculate working hours much more easily, even on a temporary basis.
• You can adapt the distribution of assignments according to time spent.
• You can manage your project resources more effectively.
• You have a support tool for your HR and financial management, thanks to the traceability and historization of hours, in order to update pay slips or vacation balances, for example.

☝️ In short, activity tracking generates benefits for both :

• for employees, who can better visualize their overtime hours, hours to be recovered... and communicate them transparently to their managers and HR;
• for HR, who can keep a close eye on employee working hours and ensure compliance with regulations on working hours;
• for the company, which can manage budgets and resources more effectively.

How do I track my activity? Rules and steps

Step 1: Define your needs

Every organization has its own specific needs. For example, some employees carry out part of their work from home.

The activity monitoring process must therefore take into account :

• the company's organizational structure,
• working time regulations,
• employee needs.

Step 2: choose the right tool

Many companies use Excel spreadsheets to track their activity. But as we'll see later, this isn't necessarily the most practical tool.

In any case, opt for a solution that suits your budget and respects the following rules: simplicity and conformity.

Time and attendance also enables you to manage your employees' working hours more effectively.

Step 3: Support your employees

Whichever method you choose, you'll need to provide your employees with the best possible support in setting up and deploying this approach to monitoring working hours.

Indeed, a perfect understanding of the new rules is necessary for their adoption by the teams. Training in the use of the tools may also prove useful.

Step 4: Validate and analyze the data

Your employees have now entered their working hours.

The next step is to have them validated by their managers, then to export the data which will be used, among other things, to :

• prepare pay slips,
• invoice customers,
• draw up reports to help manage the company's activities and budget.

Excel activity tracking table to download

Would you like to track your employees' hours and manage your teams' time and activities in an Excel spreadsheet? Appvizer offers you a free download of this template!

Which tools for activity tracking?

Why choose a genuine activity tracking solution?

There are many reasons for choosing an activity tracking solution:

• reducing time spent on low value-added tasks,
• process simplicity,
• greater visibility of project progress,
• data reliability and security,
• reduced risk of errors.

Unfortunately, on these points, Excel quickly shows its limitations.

In comparison, specialized time management software will bring you a whole host of advantages:

• You automate your processes and reduce the administrative burden on your staff.
• You save time.
• Say goodbye to repeated file exchanges.
• Secure your data.
• Gain visibility of your business through reports.
• Manage your activity in real time.

Selection of work time management software

To help you make your choice, here is a selection of 11 time management software packages 👉

• Apidae is an intuitive, scalable HRIS that gives small and medium-sized businesses a global view of their teams' activity and working hours. Teams can easily enter their working hours on a daily basis, creating a 360° view of daily tasks. This optimizes scheduling and team organization within your organization.
  
  
• Beebole is a tool designed to keep track of your teams' time, with the simplicity of an Excel timesheet, plus automation and reporting. Flexible, it adapts to all sizes of organization. Its strengths? Fast learning curve, advanced interface customization and a support team always on hand to help.
  
  
• Elite Paie-RH is a complete HRIS: it integrates time management, payroll and expense management, for example. And it's 100% customizable, so it can be adapted to any business activity. This means you can manage all types of time organization, as well as time allocation by project. Last but not least, a wide range of reports are available to keep track of time and attendance.
  
  
• Traxxeo, the solution for field teams, digitizes the management of field teams in sectors such as construction, infrastructure and engineering. Its mobile time and attendance application is simple and easily adopted by teams. Information is fed directly into a tracking platform, where HR managers quickly deal with anomalies thanks to an alert system. The finance department is more responsive thanks to the tracking of hours by task. The platform also enables workers to be scheduled and absences to be managed.
  
  
• Eurécia Suivi des temps is one of the modules in the software suite published by Eurécia HRIS. On the employee side, this solution enables employees to simply and autonomously sign in or complete their timesheets online. For HR, it enables time to be tracked by recording hours worked, arrival and departure times, and so on. And for managers, a timesheet validation process is integrated into the solution. Reports and analytical tracking enable you to track time spent by period, by project, by customer, etc.
  
  
• Factorial Gestion des Absences is a complete HRIS tool. It features a dedicated module for activity monitoring, with time recording, intelligent dashboard, schedule management and more. This software gives employees greater autonomy and management control, as well as greater transparency and flexibility in exchanges.
  
  
• idylis.com is a software package dedicated to the management of VSEs and SMEs in the trading and service sectors. In addition to accounting and sales management, it incorporates project-oriented time management functionalities, for greater control over resource allocation and thus profitability. What's more? Your data is hosted and secured on servers in France.
  
  
• JourOff is defined as a collaborative workspace enabling employees to coordinate their work. It is particularly suited to teams working in project mode and following the Kanban method. JourOff offers two approaches to time management: the standard approach (each employee enters his or her own time), and the intuitive approach, where data is automatically generated by the solution from the shared diary system, project management tool, planning tool, etc.
  
  
• With Kizeo Forms, you can create your own customized timesheet forms to meet your company's specific business needs. Customizable, the software is particularly well-suited to tracking worksites and field interventions. Data can be entered wherever you are, and exported and analyzed directly into the system for real-time monitoring.
  
  
• monday.com HR is an HRIS tool that supports HR managers in improving their processes. It's an all-in-one platform that's easy to learn and use, with fully customizable functionalities. In terms of activity monitoring, you can boost your performance with visual dashboards and efficiently manage your employees' presence and absence: overtime, travel, night shifts, etc.
  
  
• Teamleader is a CRM for small and medium-sized businesses. It streamlines your processes and helps boost productivity. Featuring a wide range of functions, the software is easy to use and requires no installation. You can track the working hours of each employee, set deadlines for each project and add tasks by grouping them on the platform. The interface is also customizable and modern for greater visibility.

See all software Time Tracking

Keep track of your activity

Time management in business is a key issue, as it affects your company's project management, human resources management and sales management.

Dedicated software becomes a real decision-making tool, giving you both flexibility and the ability to react in the short and medium term. Have you chosen yours?