[R&D] Track your time management to boost productivity

Time management is often seen as the prerogative of human resources departments, when in fact it concerns the whole company. Employees are asked to fill in their timesheets, and managers are involved in managing leave and absences, for example.

In the specific case of research & development (R&D) teams, time tracking is particularly important in the context of the research tax credit (CIR) or innovation tax credit (CII). appvizer sheds light on the use of time management software in companies, and guides you through the process.

See all software Time Tracking

Time management: definition

Time management is an HR concept still perceived today as a means of "monitoring" employees' work. On the contrary, it's a way of ensuring compliance with legal obligations (working hours, rest periods, overtime, etc.) and reacting to productivity imperatives.

In concrete terms, this involves monitoring and reporting on working hours: arrival and departure times, number of hours worked over a given period, days of leave or RTT taken, etc.

Time tracking is used, among other things, for project invoicing and scheduling. In short, it enables you to proactively manage your business and boost the performance of your employees.

Why time management in R&D?

Benefit no. 1: optimized project management

You can improve the quality of your project management thanks to a single environment. You manage the project, tracking resources and budget, the progress of tasks, and so on. This allows you to check that resources are allocated wisely.

Benefit no. 2: time savings

You save time when creating and updating schedules. You'll know which resources are most efficient for which tasks. As a result, you'll be able to monitor tasks more comprehensively.

Benefit #3: Accurate reporting

Follow the progress of your projects in real time, thanks to dashboards and key indicators. You'll know how time is being managed, how tasks are distributed and what resources are being used.

Benefit #4: process optimization

Thanks to the reporting described in the previous point, and a better organization of work, you can adapt your processes to keep only the equations that work best, and boost your performance even further. You formalize your processes within your teams, and gain in traceability thanks to the tools you use.

All these benefits are vital to your company's long-term success.

Time tracking and CIR

The research tax credit (crédit d'impôt recherche, or CIR) is intended for companies with research and development expenditure. These companies can benefit from this financial support, whatever their size or sector of activity.

Is the time sheet mandatory?

In the event of an audit, the company must be able to provide proof of the expenditure claimed under the research tax credit. In other words, it must be able to prove that resources have actually been allocated to research for a given project. This is where time sheets become indispensable.

In addition, the time spent on these specific projects must be known in order to accurately calculate the salaries of engineers, researchers and technicians.

So it's essential to manage your project teams' time from the outset, to ensure rigorous monitoring. To help you in this task, appvizer recommends the use of dedicated software.

Which software to use for time management?

JourOff is an organizational and human resources management solution that helps you organize your company's activity. It includes :

• project management,
• task management in Kanban mode,
• scheduling,
• leave management
• and time management.

• the standard approach, where the employee enters his time in a time and activity sheet. The manager then receives an email notification to validate. This approach is suitable for invoicing or overtime, for example.
• the intuitive approach, where times are calculated using tools already in place within teams, such as diaries, planning, project management software, etc. This approach saves data entry time, especially on large-scale projects.

Please note: JourOff is free of charge for companies with fewer than 15 employees.

See all software Time Tracking

Improve performance with efficient time management

We saw above that effective time tracking is useful both for structuring your projects, and for better managing your business more generally. The benefits are felt not only in terms of productivity and budget, but also in terms of employee satisfaction.

You'll quickly see the return on your time management software investment. You'll be able to improve the quality of your project management, and your R&D teams, in particular, will be able to improve their performance considerably.