Time management, time tracking, and timesheet software—what do these have to do with your marketing agency? Normally, you spend weeks on multiple projects for different clients, but do you know if your projects will be profitable in the end?

As a service business, what you’re selling is hours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small team or a corporation, every agency should utilize some kind of time tracking software. In doing so, you can understand how your team spends time on tasks and devise strategies to maximize profits.

In this article, we answer the following questions:

• Does time tracking increase productivity? 
• What’s the best way to track time? 
• Why is productivity tracking important?

How to Get Your Marketing Agency Team to Track Time

Keep in mind, employee monitoring can create privacy concerns with your team. In one survey published by SHRM, 79 percent of workers say they would let their employers monitor them if they were transparent about it.

So, make sure you get team buy-in regarding your software of choice. A good starting point is to start by explaining to your team the reasons behind implementing a time tracking solution. Here are some tips to consider:

• Get your teams involved. Your workers are the ones who will actually be using the time tracking tool, so get them involved in the selection process. Let them test out the features of your proposed app and give feedback. Allowing employees to be invested in the time tracking system makes them more likely to use it. You can also use a small business CRM software to effectively manage your team and increase productivity.
• Explain the benefits of time tracking. Your team must understand the “why” of the time tracker to embrace it. Apart from effective workload management, a time tracking system can help you identify tasks or services that need to be outsourced.
• Find a time tracker that integrates with apps you and your team already use. For example, integration with calendar apps or accounting software can save your team plenty of time.
• Provide training on how to use the new time tracking system. A good time tracker is simple to use and offers excellent customer support that team members can access whenever they need assistance.

Why Tracking Time for Your Agency Makes Sense

If your agency bills by the hour, you want a time tracking software that accurately captures every second spent working. Surprisingly, some agencies are still doing it old school – using pen and paper. While it’s simple, it contributes to a lack of project visibility and control, as well as inaccuracy when summarizing data. 

An automated time tracking system is more convenient and ensures proper time utilization. It makes reporting easier, provides insight into your team’s workflow, and streamlines the whole experience. If you aren’t using a time tracker with your marketing team yet, it’s high time you introduced one.

Read on as we discuss further the reasons you should start tracking time for your agency.

Promotes Employee Accountability

Employee time theft is a worrying trend for many businesses. According to an independent survey by TSheets, 49 percent of U.S. employees who track time admitted to time theft. This accounted for $11 billion in losses for American employers each year. The problem might not be necessarily employees, but a flaw in the organization’s time tracking system.

With one in two employees admitting to adding between 15 and 60 minutes to their timesheets, you can imagine how much you can save with proper time management.

So, how can you prevent time theft? Well, you can implement an automated time tracking system. Accurate-to-the-second project time tracking software ensures that all time is accounted for and employees are paid for the hours they actually invested in.

Insightful Time Management

Marketing agencies have hundreds of activities to juggle on any typical day. From content marketing, advertising, and social media marketing to building project plans, teams must understand time distribution across business operations.

A time tracking tool provides visibility into the hours spent on a client project. Team members clock in when they start working and hit “stop” when they are done. You no longer have to guess how much time an employee spent on a project. The software automatically captures the exact number of minutes worked on each project, and by whom.

An excellent time tracking software highlights time expenditures for individuals or groups and promotes better project planning.

Improved Reporting

Agency teams rely on reports to develop future project plans. Whether you’re monitoring billable hours, budget, or app and website activity, time trackers simplify the gathering of information in just a few clicks.

You can then generate different reports to share with your clients to serve as proof of work that will facilitate payment processing.

Agency Time Tracking Prevents Over Budgeting

Do you have clients that demand a lot more time than they are paying for? Time tracking software lets you limit the amount of time your marketing team spends on a client project. You can track project progress in real-time and detect when it’s in danger of going over budget.

Some project management tools with time tracking features will alert you when you have only a few hours left. You can then make the appropriate adjustments to stay within the budget.

Time Tracking Promotes Better Workload Management

A Gallup survey found that 23 percent of team members reported feeling burned out on the job often or always, while 44 percent reported feeling the same sometimes. With 63 percent of burned-out workers more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times more likely to seek employment elsewhere, workload management is essential. 

If you’re wondering how to manage team workload, it starts with investing in a time tracking system. Such a tool provides proof of work, displaying each team member’s performance. An employee monitoring app that offers optional screenshots, web and app usage, and keyboard and mouse activity tracking helps you understand how people spend their work hours.

The app can take random screenshots at specific intervals throughout the day. The optional screenshots let you check in on the project progress of each worker without interrupting them for a status update.

This level of visibility is valuable when managing a big team since it can help you quickly identify overworked employees. What’s more, screen capture features promote transparency, especially when working with clients who want regular updates.

Time Tracking Helps You Identify if Your Agency Is Understaffed

When teams have a lot going on and don’t have sufficient resources, it can be hard to meet deadlines. A time tracking application can bring to light projects that are dragging behind, enabling you to take appropriate actions like hiring supplementary staff.

You can use the data gathered in the past to identify which tasks take the longest to complete. These are the projects you spend the most money on. You can then opt to outsource such tasks to save money and resources, as well as free up your team’s workload.

Time Tracking Simplifies Performance and Productivity Tracking

The right time tracking software can help increase your agency’s productivity. An automated tracker reduces time wastage by allowing users to skip manual time entry and instead focus on getting work done.

Users only need to start, pause, or stop the timer as needed. The tool automatically collects all the data on user activity, while recording every second spent working. As a manager, you’ll find the data invaluable in identifying weaknesses and strengths in your work strategies, so you can fix them before they blow out of proportion.

Agency Time Tracking Streamlines Accurate Billing and Invoicing

Accounting is an essential component of any business model, including marketing agencies. Your primary mission is to make profits that will sustain and grow your business. On the other hand, you want to track billable hours (and non-billable hours) to reduce costs and resource wastage.

A time tracking tool ensures accurately recorded work hours and minimizes errors in accounting. It then automatically converts the tracked billable time into billable amounts. Moreover, time tracking tools simplify the process of creating custom invoicing, which you can then send out via email, further streamlining the process.

Additionally, you can export the payment information for accounting, and compare the expenditures to determine profitable projects that you can keep pursuing. Time tracking is also beneficial to your client, who will enjoy zero-time loss, thanks to the accurate recording of billable hours.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately, agency time tracking gives you valuable insights that enable you to fully understand your business profitability. Tracking your team’s productivity allows you to determine better strategies to grow your marketing agency. You’ll be able to identify high ROI tasks and projects, so you can assign them to specialized teams.

Additionally, you’ll know how time is spent on projects and where you should put your money. In the end, time tracking paints a bigger picture that can help you plan for your agency’s future.