A well-known proverb says that time and tide wait for none, and most business organizations and especially those organizations which are just starting out, realize the importance of the above saying. There are some characteristic features that distinguish a small business. These organizations typically have a closely knit group that has an intimate working relationship. They also run on limited budgets and try to maximize output by increasing the workforce’s efficiency.
New companies have realized the necessity of good organization and delivering high-quality output, and that too within a deadline. There is software available in the market for helping with portfolio organization, time tracking, etc.
Whenever a business organization makes a purchase, they consider a number of factors like cost, the return on the investment (ROI), and the ease of using the software. People can check this site if they want to know about a project portfolio management software that promises ease of usage at an affordable rate.
Why Is Time Management So Crucial For Small Businesses
It Helps In Accurate Invoicing
Most small organizations do not have large contracts. They take up single projects at a time; hence, the payment happens as and when the service/goods are delivered. Thus, these companies must spend a significant amount of effort keeping track of all the work they do. In many cases, the billing happens on an hourly or monthly basis. Hence keeping track of hours spent doing a particular job is essential for them.
Having An Eye On The Worker’s Performance
In many business organizations, people are paid hourly or weekly. Hence, a quick metric to get an idea about an employee’s performance is to see the hours a particular employee has put into getting the work of the Company done.
Having An Eye On The Organization’s Overall Productivity
This software helps keep a record of the productivity of individual employees and the entire organization as well. If a team regularly misses deadlines or if a particular venture is running behind schedule, then the manager can initiate amendments. It also helps people make appropriate delegations of work at the right moment. If a particular manager cannot handle the entire load, then his task gets delegated to increase the overall efficiency.
Some Time-Based Software That Can Greatly Help Businesses In 2024
Scoro
This tool is comprehensive and easy to use. It has several useful features, like transferring invoices to clients once a task is completed. It also has features like recurring invoice sending.
Often clients or business partners need a gentle reminder to make payments, or the very nature of the work might be such that the same invoice needs to be sent periodically. In such situations, a recurrent bill-sending feature that sends the bills to a particular email address saves a lot of effort and helps keep track of pending payments.
It also allows collaboration teams and their timelines to give an idea of sales performance. The price is $26 per month.
ActiveCollab
The most significant advantage of this software is that it allows real-time tracking of projects. It enables multiple users, and each one can keep track of their own timelines. In fact, it also has a commenting section. Hence, if an employer is falling behind his targets in a given month, the manager can share his feedback via the comment option. There is also an option of having shared calendars. Thus, this tool facilitates collaboration in a company.
This tool costs $25 per month for five users. Since there is an option for a group subscription, it comes down to $5 per user, which is reasonable for small businesses.
Harvest
The most significant advantage of this software is that it has a simple interface that most people will find easy to navigate. It also gives real-time reports about impending deadlines and timelines of different projects.
It costs $12 per month but charges $10 for each additional user. However, this tool has excellent reviews, and the simple-to-use interface makes it quite popular.
Replicon
This software offers multiple features like timesheets, and it allows numerous billing rates for different users. Apart from time allocation, this tool also serves as a budget allocation and expense planning tool. Thus, it is a comprehensive tool that does much more than just proper time tracking. Therefore, paying for one software serves multiple purposes. Moreover, hourly or weekly productivity analytics are easy metrics to visualize the team’s actual performance.
This tool is priced at $20 for one user per month. The cost is slightly on the higher side, but since this tool can serve as an effective project organization tool, the organization need not invest in multiple tools.
Nutcache
It has features for expense allocation, project handling, and also projectwise invoicing. It is easy to use and allows sharing of feedback, and promotes collaboration in the workplace. It has a free version that allows up to twenty users. Though the free version has fewer features, it is a great deal for small organizations with fewer employees. They also have a paid version at $6 per user per month. The paid version is also quite affordable and can be adopted by small businesses.
Teamwork
The most significant selling point of this software is that it allows seamless integration of most of the existing billing tools like Xero. Thus, it is excellent from the point of view of integrating multiple tools into one platform. Apart from this, they give periodic invoices and provide reports on the time management of an organization. It costs $24 per month and can be tried by emerging businesses.
Conclusion
Before investing in this software, it is a good idea to try out the free trial versions for a period of 14 to 30 days. Also, reading online reviews from current users gives a realistic picture of the actual utility of a product. Companies should go for those tools that can be smoothly integrated with all types of operating systems, be it an Android or a Mac.