When your team goes into the field, it looks like the start of another productive day. But do you really know where their time goes?
Countless businesses in the United States are affected by hidden time drains that hurt productivity, and create unnecessary costs for your organization.
In this guide, we’ll explore how poor monitoring could be affecting your business, and the best ways you can improve visibility across your teams for efficient, cost-effective management.
Managing remote teams always comes with some limited visibility, which means time and money can slip away from your business without you ever noticing.
Let’s take a look at five hidden time drains that could be affecting your company.
If your workers are given the ability to clock in remotely, without being able to verify their clock-in location, you could be paying for time on the clock before their work actually begins. For instance, a field technician might clock in from their home before they head to their first appointment, which could add 20-30 minutes of non-productive time to their final timesheet.
Driving between job sites is a daily occurrence for field teams. However, extended stops and long detours aren’t. Without access to reliable mileage records and daily driving routes, it’s hard to distinguish business travel from personal downtime. One common example of this time drain would be when home health caregivers take detours or make personal stops en route to patients.
A 5-10 minute break to stop and get coffee may not seem like a big deal to delivery drivers. But for your business, making an extra pit stop can be costly. The same can be said for extended downtime. It wouldn’t make sense to have your employees clock in and wait around for customers to show up. Unproductivity is one of the most silent thieves of business profits.
Relying on a vehicle’s odometer readings for mileage tracking is a mistake waiting to happen. Handwritten mileage logs are particularly prone to error compared to more modern mileage tracking solutions. It’s also not uncommon for drivers to round up their daily mileage or even include personal travel in mileage claims.
If one of your workers contests pay, or a client questions billable hours you’ve invoiced for, having proof to back up your version of events is essential. If you run a landscaping company, for example, you could face a client claiming that their crew only worked 3 hours on-site, instead of the 6 that you’ve billed. With paper trails that lack reliable GPS data or timestamps, corrections can quickly become expensive.
Limited visibility is a major administrative challenge, especially for field teams in the construction or sales industry. But with the right tools, you’ll be able to verify how your teams are spending their time and avoid micromanagement.
Modern time and mileage tracking solutions like Timeero make it easy to verify how and where your teams are spending their time, eliminating the hidden time drains that affect your business.
When your employees open the Timeero mobile app and start the timeclock, the app automatically asks to capture their starting GPS location. Timeero continues to track their location throughout the duration of their shift, and drops GPS breadcrumbs every 150 ft. traveled. With GPS-verified time entries, you stop time theft in its tracks.
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With Timeero’s Route Replay you can see the exact driving routes your employees have taken during the day. GPS breadcrumbs are dropped every 150 ft. for up to date location accuracy. If your employees have made any unauthorized stops or taken the roundabout way to get to their destination, Timeero gives you the data you need to confidently address unwanted driving habits.
With the ability to draw circular and polygon geofences around specific work zones, you can restrict the ability your employees have to clock in before they reach their job site. If your workers forget to clock out either accidentally or intentionally, you can enable the system to automatically clock out employees once they leave the geofenced area. This means you can stop worrying about whether or not an employee was on site since you have documented proof.
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If your employees make multiple stops during the day, Timeero’s Segmented Tracking allows you to see how long your workers spent at each location, as well as the drive time and mileage traveled between stops. With a stop-by-stop breakdown of an employee’s day you can have better control over job costing and allocate more time to high-priority projects and clients.
With Timeero, field teams gain real-time visibility into the daily whereabouts of their employees with the app’s advanced GPS tracking technology.
Not only does Timeero allow teams to see where the bulk of their employees’ time is being spent, but they are also able to improve payroll costs and increase legal compliance.
Below are several benefits field teams experience when they use Timeero for time and mileage tracking.
Timeero’s GPS time and mileage tracking ensures you’ll only be paying employees for the hours worked and miles traveled. Integrating Timeero with your company’s payroll provider can also increase the accuracy of reimbursements and bolster productivity.
Using outdated manual tracking methods is inefficient for several reasons. One being the amount of time it takes to verify the accuracy of timecards against documented project notes. With Timeero you can eliminate the back and forth every week with GPS-verified timesheets.
Federal law requires you to keep accurate records of your employees’ work hours and wages. With Timeero’s digital, GPS-verified records, it is much easier to defend yourself during an audit or litigation case.
Having high-accuracy, digital records will not only keep you legally protected, but also improve trust between your workers and management. Employees will be able to see their pay is reflecting their actual work, and you’ll be confident that you’re not overpaying.
If you operate a company that is contracted for specific work (e.i., cleaning companies, dog walking, etc.) more than likely your clients will want an accurate breakdown of the tasks you completed before they pay their invoice. With Timeero’s Route Replay and the ability to create custom fields, you have all the detail you need to show where your clients’ money is going.
Timeero gives managers better visibility into your teams’ whereabouts, reducing the need for constant calls and check-ins. Instead of having to rush around verifying details, employee time and mileage is summarized in neatly organized reports so you can focus on planning and efficiency rather than micromanaging workers.
You can’t track what you don’t see. Manual tracking methods do a great job of hiding unauthorized stops and extended breaks that end up costing your business in the long run.
With Timeero’s GPS time and mileage tracking, you can improve visibility across your workforce to reduce payroll errors, minimize time theft and keep your business compliant.
Need to know how your employees are spending their time? Timeero can help. Sign up for your free 14-day trial today.
Without a way to actually see where your employees are at and what they have completed during the day, it’s hard to know where their time is really going. GPS time and mileage tracking software like Timeero gives you real-time visibility into your teams’ daily activities.
Teams lose time during the work day by taking the scenic route to get to their assigned destination. They can also lose valuable time by taking extended breaks and making unauthorized stops.
If you don’t know where your employees’ time is going you risk overpaying for work that was never performed. Poor recordkeeping can also leave you unprepared for an audit or private dispute, leaving you liable for fines and back pay.
Paper timecards don’t tell the full story. Having a GPS time and mileage tracking solution like Timeero will help you keep track of where and how your employees are spending their time. With GPS time and mileage tracking technology, you can pinpoint exactly which activities are harming your teams’ productivity.
Jessica Packard is a B2B SaaS content strategist lead who helps companies turn SEO and content into real growth. With a mix of creativity and data-driven thinking, she builds strategies that drive traffic, generate leads, and make content a core part of the business.
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