Microsoft is an essential tool for businesses that want to be efficient and grow. But there are other tools that you need to use together with it to increase productivity. For instance, when using Microsoft, you might need time-tracking tools to ensure your teams adhere to deadlines.
But you might wonder why time tracking tools are essential for Microsoft users. You can get various benefits from using these tools, primarily if you work with a large team. This post will explore some of these benefits to help you make informed decisions.
Time tracking in Microsoft can:
Every business wants to cut costs and increase profits. If you want to run a successful company, one thing you'll look into is your billing. You might be paying more than the services that people offer your business. The best way to ensure you're billing accurately is by tracking working time.
You can agree with your team to be paying for hours worked. This will make it easier to motivate teams to work as much as they can. That way, you keep them at work for longer and improve your business's productivity and revenue generation while ensuring accurate billing.
Integrating time tracking tools into your calendar will make this even more manageable. You can add expenses to calendar entries, including hotel costs and the materials your team uses. It will also be easier to export reports which include graphical reports in the form of charts and tables.
There are various valuable insights that you can get from using time-tracking in Microsoft. As an individual freelancer, you will increase efficiency by gathering essential insights from your work. For instance, you can identify times of the day when you are most productive.
The insights you get from time tracking tools will make it easy to plan yourself. Also, you can get customer insights using time-tracking tools. This is especially in MS Outlook, where you need to know which of your clients needs more of your time and give them the attention they need.
Using these insights to value your services will be a good idea. A client that needs more of your time will be willing to pay more than others. As stated in our first point, investing in time tracking software will make it easier to identify these clients and bill them correctly, not any lower or higher.
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It can be easy to manage projects when you have time tracking tools. If you are working on projects for the first time, you might make costly mistakes, especially when timing yourself. But it will be easier to time yourself and create a schedule if you have time tracking software.
Such a tool will make it easier to know which projects require more of your time. The next time you undertake similar projects, you'll make the right decisions while planning. Also, you will easily know which projects aren't worth your time so that you focus on more valuable ones.
Also, you can easily manage your cash flow if you have the right software tools. This is through adding expenses for all your projects in the software. Thus, besides timing your projects, you easily budget for them and ensure the cash allocated to the project doesn't go to waste.
One of the best features of time tracking tools is that they allow easy integration. You can use them together with other software such as accounting tools. You can export data from time tracking software into your accounting tool, depending on if the accounting tool allows integration.
This will reduce the work you must do at the end of your projects. You don't spend time tracking down expenses incurred in the project. Your team will have recorded them in the time tracking software. Your work will be easy after exporting this data into the accounting tool.
It is essential that your team feels happy and motivated to work. The best way to ensure this is by providing them with all the technology solutions to reduce their work. This can make their work easier by ensuring they finish it on time because most of it is automated by these tools.
Also, you can use the data from your time tracking software to plan meetings. You can easily tell when your whole team is available for a video meeting if they work remotely. Then you can use the data from the time tracking software to allocate time for future projects they'll handle.
Business owners have a wide range of decisions that they must make. But making such critical decisions requires some insights. This is one reason you might need to invest in time-tracking software. So what are some of the decisions that you can make using this software?
First, you can decide which client’s projects require more of your time. This goes hand in hand with how you price your services when working with each of them. For instance, you can decide who'll pay more for your services, depending on the scope of work in their project.
Second, it can help you make decisions that affect your team. If you want to allocate time for every project your team handles, it'll help to use time-tracking software. In addition, you also quickly know how your team is performing on every project you assign them.
Final Thoughts: Time Tracking Tools Are Essential for Businesses
Time tracking tools are among the most critical integrations you can use with Microsoft. You will need them to ensure efficiency in project planning and team collaboration. They are worth investing in for your business, especially if your team hasn't been meeting deadlines.
Not meeting important deadlines is a problem remote teams face. You can make collaboration more accessible by integrating time tracking tools into Microsoft Office, Dynamics, Azure, Power BI, etc. In the end, you'll be able to ensure time-consuming and complicated tasks are done in good time.
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