Why Your Small Business Needs a Time Tracking App

A report by the Pew Research Center found that 68% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in 2011. Another 45% of Americans own tablet computers. Smartphones have also become more affordable over recent years, which has allowed minimum wage workers and older Americans to possess this type of mobile technology.

If you own a small business such as a janitorial, landscaping, or construction company, it’s very likely that your employees already own a smartphone, so there’s no need to buy expensive equipment to keep track of your employees’ hours. They can use their own device by downloading a time tracking app and clocking in.

Here are some of the benefits you’ll get from using a time attendance app:

Help keep your employees accountable

One of the many challenges that small business owners face is knowing whether their remote employees have shown up at the correct job site when they clock in. Often a business owner might need to physically be there or hire a supervisor to check in on their remote employees.

A time attendance app can solve this practical problem by capturing the GPS of their employee’s location with minimal privacy infringement. Employees would be able to clock in with their own iPhone or Android device, and the time tracking app would record their GPS location. This way the business owner could easily verify that the employee is exactly where he or she should be working that day.

Ability to work from anywhere

One of the benefits of the rise of smartphone ownership is enabling small business owners to run their companies from anywhere. They’re no longer tied to the office or any particular job location in order to monitor progress.

If you need to leave the office to pick up your kids from soccer camp or meet a customer at a coffee shop, you could view your employees’ time sheets via the app while you’re waiting in line. You’d could even quickly email them to your payroll personnel to process payments. Technology allows business owners to run their business from wherever they like and gives them the flexibility to balance life with work.

Protect your business

Actions filed by employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act have increased nearly 450% since 2000. These lawsuits include things like denied overtime pay and working during unpaid breaks. Courts are also imposing a higher level of scrutiny now to determine which workers are exempt or nonexempt from overtime pay.

As a business owner, it’s important to protect your company from lawsuits while at the same time taking care of your employees. Logging records of the hours they’ve worked is one of the best ways to keep your business safe. Say you had an employee that claimed he worked 50 hours per week for your company over the past 2 years. One of your strongest defenses to that claim would be an accurate record of all of his time card punches during that time.

A timesheet software can help you keep records of when employees clock in and clock out each day and protect your business from these sorts of claims.

Choosing a Time Tracking App

Finding the best time attendance app on the market can be time-consuming, but having an idea of what your business needs will help make your search more efficient. When evaluating your options, be sure to look at the app’s pricing as well as its features. You may not need all the fancy tools that an app is advertising and instead decide to go with a simpler, more affordable solution. You might also find that your employees own a smartphone (iPhone or Android) but that they’re not tech-savvy, so the time it takes to get them on board and familiarized with the system might be a factor in deciding which app to use.

All of these considerations should play a role in choosing a time tracking app, but your decision should start with clear goals concerning what your business needs.

Raya Khashab is the Ceo and co-founder of ezClocker. She is passionate about customers and building products that change the way people run their business.