Summary
Growing businesses need time tracking software that can keep pace with expanding teams, projects and workflows. Features such as mobile time tracking, payroll integrations, scheduling, invoicing, reporting, automation, and scalable plans can reduce administrative work, improve accuracy, and provide valuable business insights.
Time Tracking Software for Growing Businesses: What Features Matter Most
Growth can make processes that once felt simple surprisingly complicated, and the time tracking system you have been using since you started your business with just a few employees may struggle to keep up. You may find yourself relying on spreadsheets, manually moving information between systems, or creating workarounds for things your software can’t do.
When you’re looking for time tracking software for a growing business, think about what will make work easier today and what you’ll need if you keep adding people, clients, and projects. Here are the features to watch for.
Easy Time Tracking for Employees
Start with the people who will use the software every day. Employees need a quick way to start and stop timers, clock in and out, complete timesheets, and assign their hours to the right work.
If entering time feels like a chore, people are more likely to put it off. By Friday afternoon, they may be trying to remember what they worked on Tuesday morning. A simple interface and easy web and mobile access make it easier to maintain accurate records of hours worked, which covered employers must keep under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
You also shouldn’t need extensive training to get people comfortable with the basics. As you hire more employees, an intuitive system can make onboarding much easier.
Mobile Time Tracking
Once employees start working beyond a traditional office, desktop-only time tracking becomes limiting. Your team may need to record hours from a jobsite, a client’s office, home, or somewhere on the road.
A good mobile app should make common tasks easy to handle from a phone. Employees should be able to enter and review their time wherever they’re working instead of trying to remember everything when they get back to a computer.
GPS Tracking and Geofencing
For construction companies, field service businesses, transportation companies, and other employers with mobile teams, location features can add useful context to time records.
For instance, GPS tracking gives you more visibility into where employees clock in and out, while geofencing can help you better manage where employees record work hours. These tools are especially useful when teams move between multiple job sites or client locations.
Flexible Timesheet Approval Workflows
Approving timesheets is simple when one manager oversees a small team. As you add departments, locations, and supervisors, you may need a more structured process.
Managers should be able to review employee time, make corrections, reject inaccurate entries, and approve completed timesheets before that information reaches payroll or billing. Look for software that accommodates how different teams and managers handle approvals, rather than forcing everyone into the same process.
Payroll and Accounting Integrations
The more employees you have, the less practical it becomes to move their hours into payroll or accounting software manually. Check whether a time tracking platform connects with the systems your business already uses, such as QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Gusto, Paychex, and other popular payroll and accounting platforms.
These connections can move approved time into the next stage of your workflow without requiring someone to enter the same information again. That saves administrative time and reduces opportunities for errors caused by duplicate data entry.
Employee Scheduling
Scheduling becomes more difficult as you add employees, shifts, departments, and locations. Managing schedules alongside employee time can give managers a clearer picture of what was planned and what actually happened.
Look for tools that let managers create and manage schedules and compare scheduled hours with actual hours worked. Those comparisons can also help you spot recurring staffing problems and make better decisions about future schedules.
Project and Job Tracking
Look for the ability to track time by client, project, job, task, or activity. That detail can show managers when a project uses more resources than expected, while there’s still time to adjust.
Past project data also gives you something concrete to work from when you prepare future estimates and budgets. If a certain type of job routinely requires more labor hours than expected, you can account for that the next time you price similar work.
Billable Time and Invoicing
Any business that charges clients for time knows that accurately recording billable work directly affects what you can invoice.
Employees should be able to distinguish between billable and non-billable work as they record it. You should also look at what happens to those hours once they’re approved. Can you move them into an invoice easily, or does someone have to enter the information all over again?
Don’t forget the smaller activities, either. Calls, emails, meetings, and quick client requests may only take a few minutes at a time, but those minutes add up across an entire team.
Reporting and Business Insights
You may need to track overtime, labor costs, project hours, utilization, or billable versus non-billable time. You can also compare the time you’re putting into different clients or projects and see which work contributes most to profitability.
Look for reports that make this information easy to find and understand. The time data you’re already collecting can become much more useful when managers can use it to answer real business questions.
Automation and AI Features
More employees mean more time entries to record, review, and approve. Automation can keep some of that routine work from landing on managers. Time-entry reminders, for example, can prompt employees to complete missing entries without a manager having to follow up individually.
AI can also make the entry itself easier. eBillity’s AI Time Entry Assistant lets users describe their work using text or voice and turns that information into a formatted time entry using recognized clients, projects, and tasks. When you compare AI and automation features, focus on the tasks they eliminate or simplify. A useful feature should save employees or managers time during the workday.
Scalability and Flexible Plans
Think about what your company could look like a few years from now. You may have more employees, additional locations, different client types, or new workflows. Check how easily you can add users, teams, and functionality. You may not need every feature today, so having different plan options can give you room to add capabilities as your needs change.
Consider pricing from the same perspective. Look at what you’ll pay for the functionality you need now and how those costs could change as you add employees or require more advanced features.
Security, Permissions and Administrative Controls
More employees also mean more people accessing business, client, payroll, and workforce information. Not everyone needs access to everything. Look for permission settings that let you control what employees, managers, and administrators can see and change. You’ll also want to review how a provider protects business data and secures user accounts.
Customer Support and Onboarding
Switching software gets more complicated when you’re rolling it out across a growing team. Someone must configure the platform, connect other systems, and get employees comfortable using it.
Ask what kind of help you’ll receive during and after implementation. Look at onboarding assistance, training resources, customer support, and any account management options available with your plan.
Good support becomes especially valuable when your processes get more complicated. You want somewhere to turn when you’re setting up a new workflow or run into a problem you can’t solve on your own.
How to Choose the Right Time Tracking Software for Your Growing Business
Before you pick a new time tracking system, nail down exactly what is giving you trouble. Payroll may require too much manual work, or employees may regularly forget to record billable time. Whatever is creating roadblocks needs to go on the list.
Next, consider which processes are still manual and which systems your time tracking software needs to connect to. Think about what you need now and what you’ll likely need as the business grows.
Before settling on software, run a test to see how your team would use it. A free trial or product demonstration lets you enter time, approve a timesheet, run a report, or follow billable hours through to invoicing. That experience can tell you much more than a feature list.
Choosing a Time Tracker Plan as Your Business Grows
eBillity offers different Time Tracker plans based on how a business needs to use its time data. Here is a quick breakdown:
- Time Tracker Billing: Focuses on businesses that need to track time and expenses and turn that information into client invoices. Billing tools include invoicing, expense tracking, reporting, and online payments, along with employee time tracking features.
- Time Tracker Workforce: This system focuses on employee time, attendance, scheduling, payroll, and workforce management. Features such as timesheet approvals, employee scheduling, GPS and geofencing, job costing, mobile apps, and payroll and accounting integrations help businesses manage growing teams.
- Time Tracker Premium: Built for growing businesses that need more advanced billing, automation, reporting, and support. It includes online payments, automated invoice reminders, integrations, advanced reporting and business insights, and priority onboarding and setup assistance.
Find Time Tracking Software That Can Grow With You
The best time tracking software for your business doesn’t need every feature. It needs to make everyday time tracking easy while giving you the tools to handle payroll, billing, scheduling, projects, and reporting as those processes become more complex.
As you compare your options, pay attention to what happens after an employee records an hour. Ask yourself a few questions, like: Can that information move easily into payroll or an invoice? Can managers use it to understand labor costs or project performance? Can the system accommodate more employees and more complicated workflows without creating more manual work?
Explore one of our Time Tracker plans for free for 14-days to find the option that fits the way your business works today and where it’s headed next.
FAQs
What features should businesses look for in time tracking software?
Look for easy time entry, mobile access, timesheet approvals, scheduling, payroll and accounting integrations, project tracking, invoicing, reporting, automation and flexible user permissions.
Why is mobile time tracking important for growing businesses?
Mobile time tracking lets employees record hours from job sites, client locations, home, or while travelling, helping businesses keep more complete and accurate time records.
Can time tracking software integrate with payroll and accounting platforms?
Yes. Many time tracking solutions integrate with platforms such as QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Gusto and Paychex, reducing duplicate data entry and helping prevent errors.
How does time tracking software improve project profitability?
Tracking hours by client, project, job or task helps managers compare labour costs with budgets, identify overruns and create more accurate estimates for future work.
How can a business choose the right time tracking plan?
Start by identifying current challenges, required integrations and features the business may need as it grows. A free trial or product demonstration can help confirm whether the software fits existing workflows.