The field of time tracking and employee monitoring is constantly moving forward. What seemed new and exciting five years ago might not be good enough for users today. That’s why we need improvements all the time.

One such improvement, dating from fairly recently, is automated time tracker.

As the name hints, this technology is created to be a bit more automatic and ultimately become a successor to the ‘traditional’ time tracking tools. But if those two went one on one right now, which one would win?

No point in building suspense because, in this case, new really is better and the answer is undoubtedly the automated time tracker.

Congratulations, automated time tracker! A well-deserved win!

Now that the obvious is out of the way, let’s dissect the fight and see why exactly we gave such an easy and quick win to this automatic version of time tracking tool.

Before we officially begin, though, let’s just recap what the main difference is between these two types of time tracking tools for projects. We’ve written in-depth about what automatic time tracking is and how it works but put simply, it tracks projects based on file names instead of by requiring employees to click the ‘start’ and ‘stop’ buttons as is the case with a regular project management tool with time tracking.

And now we’re ready to get on to the five reasons why automated time tracker is better than the regular one.

1. Easier Training Process

Alright, just to be clear, training employees to use a basic employee time tracking software is far from difficult. You just have to introduce them to the software, explain what it does and tell them when they should open it up and click the buttons to indicate which project they’re working on.

But the thing is - ‘training’ employees for using automatic time logging software is even easier. In the third step, all you have to ask them to do is make sure that they name all project files logically and consistently. Which they probably already do.

So, it’s a close call but automated time tracker wins the onboarding round.

2. It’s Fully Automatic

Automation comes in degrees. Regular time tracking program is automatic in some steps - it logs the time, detects the apps used, compiles attendance sheets, calculates overtime and billable hours - all of it automatically. There’s just this one tiny manual part where employees have to click those buttons to tell it which project the system should assign the time to.

But this one small thing is enough to get totally crushed by an automated solution, which, deserving of its name, is completely hands-free, employees don’t have to interact with it in any way and yet it will produce the same data.

Or rather, it’ll give you better data because, as the human factor is eliminated, so is the chance of human error.

3. Ultimate Accuracy of Data

No human input - no error. Simple as that. There are several things that can go wrong when you have to rely on your employees to manually mark project breakpoints. They might realize they didn’t start the PC time tracker an hour into the project. Or they might forget to click ‘stop’ when they go on to the next task. Or they might forget to use it altogether.

None of this can happen with automatic employee time keeping. That means that the data and reports you get are always going to be accurate and precise.

4. Client’s Trust

What follows from the accurate dataset is more credibility with your clients. You can present the reports to your clients much more confidently knowing that the results are immune to any degree or chance of forgetfulness, mistake or, worst case scenario, intentional manipulation.

All of the reports provided by automated employee time tracking system are 100% accurate and reliable, including billable hours, task tracking and all other factors that are important for client and project management. So really, this vote is from clients.

5. It’s Much Less Intrusive

And finally, a vote from employees themselves is also much more likely to go in favor of automatic time keeping software.

The thing with having to click the button is that it might be distracting. Employees have to interrupt their workflow and possibly even their creative inspiration in order to indicate which project they’re on.

But with an automatic solution, as we’ve said, they don’t have to do anything. They can focus on their work and jump from task to task as much as they want without worrying about employee time clock system.

Conclusion

Employee time clock software is a great tool. But if it was perfect, automated time tracker wouldn’t have to exist. And yet it does. We’ll have to wait and see whether it will completely take over the traditional solution but one thing is perfectly clear already - it’s definitely an improvement in many aspects.

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