Tag: time management

Best Employee Scheduling Applications

Creating employee shifts is one of the key tasks when you have an expanding business. Employers usually look for a solution beyond creating and managing a spreadsheet, something which can help them save time and streamline the process simultaneously. This is achievable with the help of Employee Scheduling Applications, which although cost more than traditional methods, prove way more efficient than the former.

Employee Scheduling Applications help you access your employee schedule 24/7 in real time with the use of cloud based applications. Moreover, send your employees notifications about their schedule and have the flexibility of making all the necessary changes, all with one application. Employee Scheduling Applications aren’t complicated to use, and can be adapted to use with ease, while eliminating the delay in schedule which the traditional methods cause. Also, such applications offer a general communication platform and simplify work hour records. Having said that, here we discuss 5 Employee Scheduling Applications, and help you decide the best choice for you.

actiPLANS

actiPLANS is an Employee Scheduling Application which streamlines the various tasks such as absence management, over-viewing available resources, and manages balance control. Users can simply send a leave request with a click, and the manager can accept or reject it immediately, automatically informing the employee. actiPLANS also offers integration with timesheets, insightful reporting, and a free version for small businesses, and much more.

Features Offered by actiPLANS

actiPLANS mobile application helps you with attendance tracking, informing about team presence, and leave requests in real-time.
actiPLANS integrates with its time management application called actiTIME which offers various time management features to manage your absence.
Add comments, calculate overtime, and approve timesheets along with insightful reports and accounting functionality with actiPLANS.
Get Leave time and Balance reports, and manage leave calendar with a detailed balance history to make informed decisions.
actiPLANS helps you in setting up accrual rules and allows you to manually tweak and change balance, and export it to pdf.

Pricing for actiPLANS

actiPLANS offers a custom pricing plan which depends on the number of users. The free version can be used by up to 3 users with some limited functionality, while the paid plans cost $1.5 per user per month for up to 40 users, $1.2 per user per month for up to 200 users. Beyond 200 users, actiPLANS offers fixed cost.

Connecteam

Connecteam is an employee application which helps users to communicate with, operate, and collaborate with non desk employees. With the help of different communication tools, directories, and chat groups get employee feedback, and simplify workflow. Moreover, automate various management tasks with a checklist, to enhance compliance and standardize operation procedures, and track employee work hours, all in one application.

Features Offered by Connecteam

Simplify team communication with Connecteam with newsletters, announcements, and updates, and also get feedback from your employees with live polls.
Track your employees’ work hours through mobile punch-in and punch-out, and manage timesheets and payrolls efficiently.
Create an employee schedule and deploy it quick, with all the information in one place. Also show real-time updates and notifications with remote schedule management.
Manage shift related tasks up till their completion with an organized communication to with specific messaging boards and in-app chats.
Delegate different tasks to employees seamlessly and get real-time updates on execution and completion.

Pricing for Connecteam

Free Plan	basic Plan	Advanced Plan	Expert Plan	Enterprise Plan
Is free of cost for up to 200 users	Costs $29 per month for up to 200 users	Costs $59 per month for up to 200 users	Costs $119 per month for up to 200 users	Custom plan for more than 200 users
Basic features for communication and management of team	Allows media file attachments and custom work contacts	Allows users to change conversation settings and user field display	Allows you to add in-app links to group descriptions	Unlimited schedules, categories, and dedicated in-shift tasks
Basic plan allows you to create checklists and forms and offers free templates	Automatically share and export entries in different formats such as pdf or excel	Allows you to set form fields and control image source	Allows users to set reminders and email triggers	Offers up to 100 trigger based summary reports for each form

Sling

Sling is a free employee scheduling and communication application. It allows you to manage employee shifts, time offs, availability and shift trade requests all in one place. Sling lets you handle any unexpected leave or trade requests, and ensures seamless teamwork by keeping everyone informed of the schedule. Moreover, Sling only charges for the employees who you it; and for those who deactivated after paying for the plan, you are given a prorated credit.

Features Offered by Sling

Sling allows you to track employee hours and manage timesheets for efficient employee payout management.
Employees can clock in and out with the help of their phones using their location and a dependable geofencing.
Manage shifts by adding tasks and align employees with their to-dos to ensure all the work is getting done on time.
Sling offers a number of integrations such as Square, ADP, and Shopify along with various others for efficient working.
You can also schedule tasks and shifts at multiple work locations and allow employees to clock in and out from different workplaces.

Pricing for Sling

Free Plan	Premium Plan	Business Plan
Offers all the basic features free of cost	Costs $2 per user per month and offers all basic features and more	Costs $4 per user per month and offers all features of premium plan and more
Offers shift secheduling, templates, alarms, and offers	All features in the free plan and timesheets, history and approval	Offers all features in premium plan along with reports, PTO tracking and Salary Support
Allows for time off requests and news sharing	Allows for auto clock outs, geofencing, and shift trades and swaps	Lets the employer handle sick leaves and late arrivals
Allows for the handling of umlimited employees, managers, and locations	Lets employers manage overtime tracking, holiday pay, and budgeting	Allows you to impose conversation restrictions and dedicated account management

Shiftboard

Shiftboard is an employee scheduling application tailored to your specific needs for both, employee set rotation as well as regular scheduling. It offers ScheduleFlex and SchedulePro scheduling applications, for customer specific needs. Shiftboard has proven a valuable tool in different industries ranging from manufacturing to healthcare to public safety, and has over 245 million in shifts scheduled to date.

Features Offered by Shiftboard

ScheduleFlex, the scheduling application, built for organizations with constantly changing shifts and schedules helps you manage work chaos.
SchedulePro, the scheduling application built for regulated industries to help maintain compliance with standards and laws.
Shiftboard schedules workforce in accordance with your strategic business goals, hence optimizing task management.
Shiftboard offers configurable solutions which can be tailored to your business needs, hence offering you adaptability for your unique needs.
It also allows API integrations as well as automated flat file integrations, and other common integrations such as CRMs and payroll applications.

Homebase

Homebase is a free employee scheduling software for small businesses to help employers keep track of time and manage teams. Homebase offers users a suite of features which helps in scheduling and tracking time with real-time schedule sharing, hiring new employees and onboarding, along with team communication with real-time updates and notifications.

Features Offered by Homebase

With flexible tools for team communication, Homebase helps businesses to adapt to new ways of take outs and deliveries.
Create work schedules, instantly share it with your team and forecast your labor cost to create more efficient work schedules.
Track hours on any device, know about your employees’ exact working hours, and record employees clocking in and out.
Track total working hours and calculate labor costs, and with the help of timesheets, make payrolls easy.
Keep your team updated with the schedule and check availability of your employees along with viewing who has seen the schedule.

Pricing for Homebase

Essentials plan	Plus plan	All-in-one plan
Costs $14 per location and offers the essential features for better team work	Costs $35 per location and offers budget management and operations	Costs $70 per location and offers the complete team management toolkit
Offers health screening with remote and field work management	Helps manage budget and labor cost control	Helps with onboarding and e-signatures with document storage
Offers all features in free plan with producitivity,communication, and performance management	Offers all features in essential plan with time off polocies	Offers all features in plus plan with API access

December 9, 2020

10 Important Skills to Master as a Consultant

A Consultant is an expert in a particular field whose job is to give professional advice to his client. If you are or plan to become a Consultant, this is a must-read post for you. Consulting Business is a challenging yet interesting field. It comprises problem solvers who are here to take up issues head-on. Consultants also evaluate the existing state of one’s business when needed.

Currently, there are over 10,000 Consultancy Firms in India. Among which, 6,000 firms are located in the 4 main metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Consulting is not an evergreen relationship with the client but a short-term project meant to achieve specific results. An example would be a business entity approaching a financial consultant for tax planning. This is known as a Consulting Engagement.

While consulting comes in various forms and flavours, a successful consultant generally excels in certain aspects and qualities, irrespective of his or her area of work. This post discusses 10 qualities a consultant, whether experienced or just starting out, needs to work on to have a successful career trajectory moving upwards.

Time Management
Flexibility With Work
Communication Skills
Commercial Awareness
Analytical Skills
Organising
Team Player
Social Skills
Creative Thinking
Self-Care

Time Management

Time management is essential in the Consulting Business. One can think of it in two different ways: short-term and long-term. Short-term time management involves daily and weekly tasks and action items. Consultants may work on several projects at a time; they need to pay appropriate attention to all of them.

Mastering time management will save you from the pitfalls of unexpected and unprecedented occurrences. Get your planner ready as time stops for none!

Flexibility With Work

Being flexible is another ingredient towards becoming a better Consultant. Client Expectations and Requirements can change anytime, and unexpected issues may come up in the project. As a consultant, you need to be flexible and be always ready for any situation. With the kind of travel involved in the consulting business, don’t fret if you have to catch a flight all of a sudden.

Communication Skills

Communication Skills form a person’s first impression. Whether that’s written or verbal. Email writing, presentation skills, documentation abilities, and even talking on the phone are directly dependent on one’s communication skills. Communication skills will decide how well you fit into the team. As a Consultant, the better you communicate with your client, the easier the task becomes.

Commercial Awareness

You need to have a basic understanding of how businesses work because certain points and frameworks apply to all companies regardless of the industry. Your Commercial Awareness will continue to deepen with time. Some points to work on are basic finance, economics, and management topics.

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Analytical Skills

Good Analytical skills give you an edge over others in the consulting business. Analytical capabilities include both qualitative and quantitative aspects. You will be looking at data, whether it’s general trends of the client’s industry or actual specific requirements. Quick calculations, pattern identification, logical deductions, etc. are some of the topics that rely on analytical skills. On the qualitative side, you will look at interview responses, customer surveys, and employee responses.

Whether you are looking at numbers or words, you need to be able to interpret the data. Hence, build up your cognitive skills to take analytics and logical reasoning by their horns.

Organising

A good consultant is consistent in terms of efficiency and planning. And these come under organising one’s place and work-related items. To find a way which works for you when it comes to organising your emails, documents, calendar, and having everything in place.

Team Player

To be a consultant, you need to be a team player. Consulting business is not an individual’s game; working as a team is prioritized and stressed upon. It’s important to make sure that the client’s needs are met and looked after. And this has to be done while being mindful of your team’s needs. Keep your team members in mind, work in sync, and don’t aim for individual glory.

Social Skills

The consulting business is a client-facing job. And building relationships with your clients decide overall success as a consultant. While intelligence, analytical skills, and logical skills are highly valued, the Emotional Quotient (EQ) is equally important. The ability to empathize with others and build an intimate connection with clients will fast-track your journey to becoming a good consultant.

Creative Thinking

When you are doing the same job or activity repeatedly for an extended period, it becomes easy to stop thinking outside the box. If you want to provide value to your clients, you need to be creative and come up with innovative solutions. Ask yourself, “How can I do this better, or how can I make this better?” Creative thinking will definitely get you noticed!

Self-Care

In any business, some days can be harder. People don’t think of self-care as a skill, but it is one. You can work efficiently only if your health levels don’t drain. Self-care might look different for different people but at the core, it’s all the same. Take necessary breaks, give it a rest when your productivity is down, and don’t take it hard on yourself.

For some, it means going on vacation to unplug completely and ensuring they communicate and set certain boundaries with their team during the break. Identify what fits in your self-care routine.

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Conclusion

Consulting is an interesting yet challenging role. As a consultant, you have to keep an eye on various problems and their solutions. Good control over skills like Time Management, Flexibility, Communication skills, Commercial Awareness, Analytical skills, Organising, Teamwork, Social Skills, Creative thinking and Self-care comes very handy in this job.

FAQs

Who is a Consultant?

A Consultant is an expert in a particular field whose job is to give professional advice to his client.

How many Consultancy firms are there in India?

Currently, there are over 10,000 Consultancy Firms in India. Among which, 6,000 firms are located in the 4 main metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Why should a pay focus on Time Management as a Consultant?

Consultants may work on several projects at a time; they need to pay appropriate attention to all of them. Mastering time management will save you from the pitfalls of unexpected and unprecedented occurrences.

Why should you be Flexible as a Consultant?

Client Expectations and Requirements can change anytime, and unexpected issues may come up in the project. As a consultant, you need to be flexible and be always ready for any situation.

July 6, 2020
Top Time Tracking Softwares for SaaS
Time tracking software tracks the total time spent by employees on tasks and projects. This software captures employee time, hourly wages, and client billing rates and uses this information to automate invoicing and payroll management functions. This software is used by employees and employers in many industries and helps small- and mid-sized business owners stay organized and up-to-date in managing their employees’ time. Time tracking software increases productivity in employees because it allows for accountability, helps to discover which activities or events cause time wasting, and keeps all time data in one location.

Benefits of Time-Tracking Software

Here are some of the prominent benefits of time-tracking software:

Effective Tracking for Freelancers and Remote Workers

As businesses increasingly move toward mobile workforces, this trend poses multiple time-tracking challenges. It is frustrating to track attendance and time worked for each freelancer or remote employee separately. Time tracking software records attendance and time worked for employees and collects it on a dashboard for managers. Some time-tracking tool also offers automated screen capture, which enables users to monitor the total time spent on non-work activities by remote workers and freelancers.

Efficient Payroll Management

Payroll calculation is a time-consuming process. Payroll managers need to coordinate with employees and their managers to collect a series of information such as timesheets, hourly wages, leave records, and overtime pay to calculate employee compensation. Time tracking tool captures in and out-time for employees and provides users with reports on total hours worked and leave taken. The software also incorporates other payroll calculation factors such as differential wages and employee incentives.

Mobile Access

Due to an increasing trend of remote workforces, mobile access has become a necessity in today’s software market. A time-tracking mobile application allows remote workers to record their schedules, submit time-off requests, and view changes to their schedules on the go. Some products also offer GPS tracking, which enables managers to track the time spent by their field staff at a client location.

Compliance Requirements

Today’s businesses are subject to a number of payroll and wage-related compliances. They mandate strict standards regarding minimum wages and overtime pay and imposes severe penalties on business that do not comply. A time-tracking tool that tracks these compliances alerts managers when employee hours go beyond the recommended levels and ensures that overtime pay is incorporated into the employee payroll. Time tracking tool also provides standard reports related to these compliances.

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Typical Features of Time-Tracking Software
1. Billable and non-billable hours: Track billable and non-billable hours related to a project.
2. Online time tracking: Capture employee and task times using online applications that can be accessed and synced through a browser, mobile app, or desktop application.
3. Automatic time capture: Record in and out-time of employees and calculate the number of hours worked. Users can also capture time using biometrics and other electronic time-capture methods.
4. Employee database: Store staff contact information and project statuses.
5. Overtime calculation: Record and manage overtime hours for employees.
Top SaaS Products for Tracking Time and Activity

Here is our list of top SaaS products that can effectively help you track the time and activities of your employees.

Celoxis

Celoxis

Celoxis’ project management software integrates seamlessly with over 400 popular business applications and it’s easy to use and powerful API makes it easy to integrate with any custom or in-house software that you use. With Celoxis, you can identify project requests that boost business value, build project plans that adapt to the real-world and visually monitor progress to fix problems before they start. You can also optimally allocate resources based on skills and availability and make pro-active hiring decisions based on future capacity and demand.

Some of the features of Celoxis are:
- Get automatic cost and revenue estimates from your project plans.
- Monitor profits in real-time.
- Stop billing leaks by invoicing your clients without delay.
- Share files, apprise progress and exchange ideas with your team and your clients.
- With fully customizable client portal, clients can do a whole lot more.
- Customize prebuilt workflow apps to track issues, bugs, risks, change requests and approvals, or create your own unique app from scratch.
- You will never go back to spreadsheets again. Slice, dice and visualize data your way.
- Create and share dashboards that save time and accelerate decision making.
- Schedule reports directly to your CEO’s inbox.
Celoxis pricing

Pricing: Celoxis has 2 pricing options – Cloud (US $25 per user/month) and On-premise (US $450 per user).

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Trackabi

Trackabi is a perfect web-based tool for time tracking and leave management for freelancers, small and medium-sized companies.

Trackabi

With trackabi, you can report time worked manually or use a timer and configure your timesheet with custom fields. You can also generate reports from timesheet, export them into PDF or Excel, print, or share with your clients via a link.

Some of the features of trackabi are:
- Prepare a vacation schedule. Approve or reject leave requests from employees.
- Maintain a directory of current and former employees with their contact details.
- Apply flexible access permissions via roles assigned to users.
- Group employees into teams to assign to projects and manage access roles on the team level.
- Invite your clients to join and gain access to time reports for their projects.
- Get an extract of what is happening in your company every day, week, or month.
- Import data from the most popular time trackers, project management, and source control systems.
Trackabi pricing

Pricing: Trackabi has 3 pricing options – Starter which costs $0 for 5 users, Business which costs $16/month for every 5 users, and Business Plus which costs $20/month for every 5 users. It also provides a 30 days free trial.

TSheets

TSheets is an employee time tracking and scheduling solution that saves business owners time and money. Get rid of that old punch clock or spreadsheet and simplify payroll, invoicing, and job costing. Whether they’re in the office or on the road, your employees can track time from any location—using a smartphone, tablet, desktop or laptop—in real time.

TSheets

Plus, TSheets is the only time tracking system embedded inside QuickBooks. You can review and approve employee time cards to run payroll, do job costing, or create invoices—without ever leaving QuickBooks!

Some of the features of TSheets are:
- Accurate time for client invoicing and painless payroll
- Track billable time against customers, projects or jobs, classes, and service items.
- GPS time tracking and timesheet compliance
- Managers can assign workers to jobs or shifts to keep the workforce in sync
- Time tracking and scheduling work in perfect harmony
- Mobile time tracking with GPS and geofencing
- Real-time project tracking
- Customer support that lives up to the hype
TSheets pricing

Pricing: There are two plans available – Premium ($8/user/month + $20 base fee/month) and Elite ($10/user/month + $40 base fee/month).

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ProofHub

ProofHub

ProofHub helps you to plan and collaborate while having a seamless user experience that keeps everyone in the loop and focuses on the necessary with little to no learning curve. It can Integrate with the apps you already use. You can access Freshbooks, Google Calendar, iCal, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Outlook, bringing them all together within ProofHub.

Some of the features of ProofHub are:
- Create discussion topics and bring all your team and client discussions at one place eliminating long email threads.
- Prioritize tasks with clear deadlines and set tasks to recur to never miss the ones that need to be done regularly.
- Plan and visualize how pieces of your project fit together in a timeline view.
- Define custom roles and stay in ultimate control of who gets access to what according to your organizational workflow.
- You can get answers to where’s the team’s time going and what are the billable hours of projects
- In ProofHub, you can choose who manages which project. A project manager will receive all the important notifications for the missed deadlines and overdue tasks and stay accountable.
- Stay updated with all the activities happening in ProofHub through real-time in-app, desktop, email, and mobile notifications.
Proofhub pricing

Pricing: ProofHub provides you two different options – Ultimate control which is charged $89/month billed annually ($99/m billed monthly) and Essential which is charged $45/month billed annually ($50/m billed monthly). It also provides you with a 14-day free trial.

Zoho People

Zoho People

Zoho people is a 360-degree HR solution. It takes care of your HR processes while you take care of your employees. From onboarding and attendance management to time tracking and appraisals, it has all the features. One of the best things about Zoho People is its flexibility. It is not used just by HR department but also can be used by Delivery Leaders, Office Management, Training Department and Finance Departments

Some features of Zoho People are:
- Streamline both your data collection and secure storage with our employee database management system.
- Set up your organization and maintain all your employee records in one central location.
- Zoho People provides all the tools you need to help your HR staff and employees stay efficient, up-to-date, and productive, even on the go.
- Set your organization’s hours, track your employee attendance, and make your payday stress-free.
- Add clients, break down your projects into smaller tasks, and record hours in a timesheet.
- Invoicing projects is a breeze because Zoho People is fully integrated with Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice, and Quickbooks.
- Zoho People’s LMS is an intuitive platform to easily create and manage your organization’s training programs. Create courses, track employee progress, and help your team master new skills.
Zoho People pricing

Pricing: Zoho People gives you four different pricing options – Essential HR (₹42 /user/month billed annually), Professional (₹83 /user/month billed annually), Premium (₹125 /user/month billed annually), and Enterprise (₹167 /user/month billed annually). It also provides a feature of 15-day free trial.

Conclusion

Ideally, time-tracking software can tweak discrepancies in workflows to fix what is and isn’t working to increase profits and automate companies’ payroll and billing operations. Many time tracking software solutions work with other softwares like workforce management software, as well as payroll software and talent management suites. Time tracking software can be integrated either directly into time clock hardware or deployed in the cloud. Above is a list of tools that can be treated as a reference. You can choose a tool which suits your needs. How are you tracking the time of your employees? Please let us know in the comments section below.
March 21, 2020