15 Time-Tracking Tips for an Efficient Consulting Team

Accurate time tracking in engineering and consulting firms leads to better business profitability and decision-making. Yet, many businesses struggle with this. In this article, we'll explore the benefits of effective time tracking and share tips to streamline the process for both teams and organizations. 

We’ll also introduce you to Aldoa, our powerful financial and project management platform designed specifically for consulting firms, that can help you achieve these goals.

How Inefficient and Inaccurate Time Entry Impacts Your Firm

Let's talk about the real consequences of poor time-tracking practices.

Employees at engineering and consulting firms often track their hours at the end of long weeks in the office or field, relying on estimates for tasks and projects. These hours are usually entered into spreadsheets or emailed to managers. 

Many workers find time tracking to be a tedious and time-consuming task, and inefficient processes only worsen their mindset toward it. This can lead to underbilling as billable hours are overlooked, creating unnecessary risks for the business's profitability and client relationships.

For project managers, the lack of real-time, accessible employee time tracking can be frustrating. Without accurate, up-to-date information on how long similar tasks have taken in the past, it becomes difficult to estimate the time needed for current projects or tasks, posing a significant challenge to effective project and resource management.

Without an efficient time-tracking system that doesn’t rely on employees’ estimations and memory, these problems will persist. 

By automating time tracking and gaining detailed insights into time spent on each task, and within each project phase, businesses can enhance profitability and improve hour forecasting for current and future projects.

15 Actionable Tips for Better Time Tracking

These tips will help your organization improve time tracking across projects. By implementing them, you'll enhance transparency, accountability, budgeting, planning, and overall project profitability. Here are 15 tips to get you started:

Project Management Focused

1. Implement an accessible time tracking system: Choose a solution that has a simple and accessible time tracking system. It will help engineers and consultants to add hours quickly and accurately.
2. Set clear project phases and deadlines: Define phases at the start of the project and have clear tasks linked to phases to estimate hours and resources more effectively. 
3. Create detailed project budgets: Calculate costs before the project begins to define your budgets, including labor, materials, and other expenses. Having a budget helps project managers to define how much time employees can spend. 
4. Assign tasks and track progress: Assign clearly defined tasks with deadlines to track employees’ progress in real time using your time-tracking system. By linking the time to the task, you can better understand the project’s progress.
5. Review project budgets and timelines regularly: Perform regular reviews to identify potential issues early and make necessary adjustments to keep your project on track. Alert stakeholders to any problems that arise, and keep employees informed about what’s going on.
6. Implement Agile project management: Use Agile methodologies to help make your project easier. Agile methods enable you to break projects into smaller, more manageable tasks and promote flexibility and adaptability.
7. Use real-time project dashboards: Implement dashboards to visualize project progress, resource allocation, and potential bottlenecks to ensure proactive decision-making.
8. Establish a change management process: Formalize a process to evaluate and approve changes to project scope, timelines, and budgets. You can do this with regular meetings, or with automatic notifications. 
9. Implement a project post-mortem process: Conduct a thorough review to identify lessons learned and areas for improvement after each project. You can apply these learnings to future projects to improve budgeting, time tracking, estimating, and more.
   
   

   Financial Management Focused

10. Track all expenses associated with projects: Use a consolidated system to track both employee and contractor hours and expenses to capture all project-related spending in a centralized location. 
11. Integrate time-tracking with invoicing software: Connect your time-tracking system with your invoicing system to streamline billing and save administrative time. 
12. Generate invoices promptly: Send invoices to clients as soon as phases are completed to avoid any payment delays. 
13. Analyze project profitability: Use data from hours and expenses to assess the profitability of each project. Having automated dashboards and reports can save you time and increase your understanding of how projects are going. 
14. Use automated expense tracking: Utilize software or apps to automatically capture and categorize project-related expenses. By linking T&M expenses to each task, you improve your project visibility. 
15. Conduct regular financial reviews: Review financial reports regularly to track performance against budget and identify areas for improvement.

How Professional Firms Can Simplify Time Entry for More Efficiency

Simplifying your time tracking improves the accuracy of the data that your engineers and consultants provide. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Choose Time-Tracking Software Built for Consultants:

Choose a time-tracking software that is made for engineers and consultants, that links time to tasks and budgets to be more efficient. You’ll have a solution that fits your needs, rather than having to adjust to a generalized system.

If you want to be even more effective, opting for an all-in-one tool that includes time tracking and billing software for engineers and consultants is a good idea. In that case, you consolidate your data making it convenient and accessible.

With Aldoa, you can centralize all aspects of your projects, improving transparency and visibility. 

2. Simplify Time Entry:

Look for software that pre-populate timesheets with recurring tasks or project phases. This will help you save time and minimize errors. 

Creating timesheet templates for common project types, will make time entry faster and more consistent. Also, choosing a solution with a user-friendly interface, minimizes the learning curve for employees and promotes adoption.

3. Promote a Positive Time-Tracking Culture:

Provide full training for your employees on your new software, its benefits, and why time tracking is important will improve understanding and respect. If leadership shows support for time tracking by doing part of the training, employees will be clear that tracking time is important. 

Clear expectations for employees' time tracking, including frequency, granularity, and required details, should also be defined. Additionally, employees who consistently track their time accurately could be recognized or rewarded.

If employees encounter any challenges with tracking their time, they should be addressed quickly, with support provided. Likewise, if managers identify issues with timesheets, they should proactively address them with employees.

4. Leverage Automation and Analytics:

Choose a time-tracking software that generates automated reports on hours used, resource allocation, and financial performance to see how your project is progressing.

Having real-time dashboards helps to visualize key metrics and provides data to optimize resource allocation and improve your decision-making.

Aldoa is The Best Time-Tracking Software for Consultants –See It in Action!

Ready to ditch the time-tracking headaches and unleash your firm's full potential? Aldoa is the all-in-one solution you've been waiting for.

With Aldoa, you get a powerful yet easy-to-use solution that provides you with task management, time-tracking, budgeting invoicing, and more in one place. Aldoa was made for engineers and consultants to simplify their complex processes and routines. 

Schedule a demo with us to discuss your current workflows and how Aldoa can simplify them.