What’s the Difference Between a Project Management Tool and Time Tracking Software?
Management and time, as a reference, can complement one another at times. Managing anything is guided by the deadline in professional work.
The first question that comes to mind whenever there is some work doesn’t start from What? or Why?, it starts with How long?
Project management tools and time tracking software are used side-by-side in modern-day office work and help bring stability in carrying out project work efficiently.
Project Management And Time Tracking
Every country’s government has an executive and a judiciary. Though both are part of the nation’s governing system, the executive body coordinates implementation of the plans and policies, and the judiciary guarantees that order is maintained during the execution of every nation’s development program.
Project management and time tracking are similarly accurate in remote work environments. Project management is a declaration and distribution of workloads and tasks, and time tracking is governance for the employees. They help coordinate a perfect work environment for remote workers and satisfy all the project work parties.
Although there may be similar features in project management tools and time tracking software, they are dedicated to some specific purposes.
They can be distinguished by identifying their purposes.
Project Management Tool
Planning
The first step in starting any work is planning. Project management tools help you greatly with this work. You can identify your assets, see workloads, plan and implement tasks and organize all the employees’ duties in a project.
There are many graphically representing elements in the tools that make it easy to make an analysis. We can understand as well as express our ideas to the coworkers if the discussing environment is visual. And project management tools have an abundance of visualizing tools.
Collaboration
Remote working teams in a project find it hard to collaborate and discuss when everyone is not easy to reach. Project management tools have an environment where all the team members can share a window and contribute from their side.
You can share notes, pictures, illustrations, presentations and append others’ documents in the common work area of project management tools. These features help to establish good communication between the participants in a project and keep their teamwork energized.
Report Preparation
When you have information on all the data about the project, it is very easy to prepare a summary or report about the project. Project management tools have the capacity to collect all the metadata during the period of a project and illustrate them through different diagrams and illustrations.
You can prepare reports on expenses, sales, project workloads, employees’ participation, and payments with the push of a button. We have all the customization features in the tools. According to our need, we can add and remove descriptions in our report with the help of many plugins available.
Cost Estimation
Money and time can be hard to handle when we have to provide it to many hands. Especially managers have a hard time if there is no such platform to keep records of all the expenses. There would be many leaks, and projects may halt in a deficiency if there were no tools for help.
Luckily, project management tools provide an environment to analyze, store and prepare reports on the expenses of a project. If the database on all the information is centralized in the manager’s dashboard, they can make smart decisions regarding future investments.
With the power to easily estimate project costs, the tools can pave the way for unexpected profits.
Preparing Bills
After the work is complete, it is hectic for the employer to distribute payment to all the associates. There may be confusion about each worker’s wages as employers may not know them personally on larger projects. The attendance may also be difficult to conduct.
All such problems are resolved with the use of project management tools. They help to prepare bills for every detail expense of the company with a standard layout. The tasks of preparing thousands of bills can be done within seconds automatically by these tools. The chance of error is very low because the computer application does every calculation, and if found any, we will have all data secured in the database, which you can review at any time.
Some functionalities are co handled by project management tools and time tracking software, like billing and payment invoices.
Time Tracking Software
Monitoring
Employee monitoring is a challenge for the employer when all of the coworkers are working remotely. Trust is the main issue. The understanding between the employer and employees has to be maintained without making them feel like being under surveillance by the supervisor.
Time tracking software provides a transparent interface that provides information about all the activities of employees during work time. It is embedded in the employees’ work machine and compels them to be dutiful daily working hours.
The software is not enforced but used with the consent of the employees. This way, the supervisor can manage workloads and know about everyone’s efficiency and the hardship they face in remote work management.
Attendance
Automatic attendance recording helps implement discipline in the line of work. Some of the employees may not value time when working as remote employees, and they may try to be smart in ignoring routine rather than showing smartness in their work.
Time tracking software takes screenshots of the work machine of the employees repeatedly throughout the work time. Both parties can view these screenshots. Transparency with the data taken from workers’ computers is the foundation for preserving the trust between the supervisor and workers. Only authorized personnel can view the data with optimum data security enabled.
Invoices and Payments
Calculation of work time is crucial while paying wages or salaries. There may be a dispute in payment if the workers get less pay than they deserve or ask for more than they have worked for. Salaries are negotiated beforehand, so there is no arguing about that. But, for the freelancers, every second is a dime in the rulebook.
Time tracking software saves clients from the ambiguity of whether their employees are truthful or not. There is a record of every task performed by the employee in detail; the work time, the lunchtime, every idle and ideal moment. Based on all these time stamps, the software helps to generate payment invoices automatically. With various online payment systems embedded with the software, in moments, you can complete hundreds of payments within seconds.
The transaction is safe and trusted with the help of time tracking software.
Notifications
Repeated alert messages can be bothersome if we are working with a certain level of focus. But most of the time, these notifications help to keep our pace of work as an employee.
We want to succeed and maintain our efficiency in the work. The probability of slacking off our usual potential is high when working as remote employees, and this problem is minimized with the use of time tracking software.
If we are idle for a moment, browsing a particular webpage for a longer time, or have taken longer lunch breaks, the software notifies us.
It guides us or says inspires us to perform better every day, every moment.
Analytics
We have understood what kind of data the time tracking software harnesses from the employee. But it is not just to view or to keep records. Different AI is embedded in the software to generate a competitive report on every employee based on their working habits.
These reports are essential to plan for the company and the employees. Based on their success in task completion and work ethics, elite teams can be formed. The workforce lineup can be very scientific with these analytical reports.
The company can benefit by knowing the success rate of project completion, rewarding the better employees, and purging the immoral from the job.
Conclusion
Working from a remote location is easy as well as difficult at the same time. Depending on the moments of our experience, we feel relaxed and overwhelmed simultaneously.
Many tools like timeTracko, Trello, Asana, Slack, ClickUp, are available on the Internet. Some of them even have functionality for both project management and time tracking. Therefore, it may be a little confusing to understand the need for both types of applications.
The best results come to those who know the best of both worlds. It is said something like that and is absolutely true. We must try to benefit our work life with the technological feat that we gained for the first time.
We are in a time of high technology, and it has happened for the first time. We can understand the similarities, needs, and services and distinguish differences with our own experience.
Most of the tools are free of use initially, so let’s use them and try to find out ourselves.
Build up a perspective.
