How To Get an Outlook Time Tracking Plugin – The BEST Way
In today’s competitive business environment, everyone is rushing in an attempt to save time and make better use of it simultaneously. After all, it is not easy, but as time has passed, we have been able to find some solutions to this problem to stop ourselves from wasting time and be more efficient, effective and productive with its use. Time has always been an integral aspect of productivity and performance in corporations, which is why it is so essential to keep track of it. But how do you keep track of your time while at work? The easiest way is to go for a time tracking plugin!
Time tracking is almost essential for every single person who is currently employed; in the corporate world, we are all connected through a single monitor in which there is a cluster of software, applications, emails, and the internet with all of its entirety – it sometimes can get a tad bit distracting to work while having so many things at hand to explore on your computer system.
This is where a time tracking plugin can help. You don’t need to clutter up your computer with even more programs to manage. You’ll leverage what you already have. More about that below.
Time Tracking – A Summary
It is imperative to keep track of your time because if you do not, then the last-minute cramming of all the work-related assignments will certainly not be as beneficial or useful. Another reason why time reporting is essential is that it helps you keep a check of the projects going on around the workplace for which ‘time’ is the basis of many things: there are many part-time workers employed whose time can be tracked by the business, there are also many employees who get paid by the hour, and time tracking will quickly help with overtime calculations too. Also, for regular full-time employees they will also need to know how they spent their time and in which areas. Hence, time tracking for a business can end up being quite rewarding.
Not only this, but there are many reasons why someone prone to procrastination should be keeping track of their time because inefficiency would stain the outcome if appropriate time has not been given to time-bound tasks and projects.
If you are an employer, you know that every single client hates missing deadlines. It ends up giving a very unprofessional image of your business and does not end up well for either parties involved. Suppose your employees are finding it difficult to meet deadlines. In that case, you might benefit from creating new milestones, based on your history working with similar projects. This data can easily be gathered with the right Outlook time-tracking plugin. Looking at your history and setting aside enough hours so that your staff will know exactly how much effort they have to put in. Time tracking will help you and your team understand how there may be time constraints on some projects, so they may need to work harder. In addition, these time entries will also be a great help when reporting and billing clients in turn.
What are Some Time Management Strategies?
- You can practice a strategy of ‘Priority Management’ – you will be able to assign a priority to your daily action list to get the crucial tasks done first.
- You can practice a strategy of ‘Email Protocol’ – there should be proper formatting and a unique email protocol on precisely how to write and when to write emails.
- You can practice a strategy of ‘Planning Ahead’ – you can take some time out to prepare for the entire day, week or month, or create an ‘itinerary’ of a sort.
What can be an Ideal Outlook Solution?
The solution we have for you is quite simple – almost everyone has Microsoft Outlook installed on their laptops or desktops, so everyone should be familiar with it too. An Outlook time-tracking plugin will help you achieve all the benefits of efficient time-tracking; it will be an absolute breeze to use together with all the supportive features and user-friendly interface so the entire process would not be as complicated as you might at first think.
One of the best things about timesheet software is that you can either use it as it is, or have specific plugins that would cater to your specialized requirements in terms of your particular corporation. You can get a better insight into your business, ongoing tasks, or your employees’/teams’ performance, monitor and log the hours that have been worked, time spent on tasks, estimation of deadlines, time off, billable hours, and much more!
What are the Benefits of Using Outlook Time Tracking?
Microsoft Outlook is almost everywhere – if you run a business, there is a high chance you are already aware of Outlook’s features and use them so. But let us talk about some salient benefits of Outlook in short, when using an add-in for reporting time.
- No steep-learning curve: your employees would already know how to go about it.
- You also will not be interrupting your workforce’s routine if you opt for a time-tracking plugin: incorporating and using it in your daily routine is just like simple addition and not complex at all!
Why Does Your Business Need an Outlook Time Tracking Plugin?
To Create an Efficient Workflow
Keep this in mind: time wasted is money wasted! If you are spending your entire day sitting in the chair while calculating the number of hours your employees have worked full-time, part-time, and even over-time while manually trying to prepare paper invoices, you are in fact wasting a lot of time that can be saved through an Outlook Time Tracking Plugin.
Keep a Check on Employee Productivity
Let us clear this out first that Outlook Time Tracking Plugins are not there for employers to spy on their employees because that would be completely inappropriate and unethical. With a timesheet, you would be able to see exactly how your employees are performing by keeping an eye on how many projects they have completed and what would be the next update.
Provide Feedback or Constructive Criticism to Employees
Suppose there is a situation where you find that some of your employees are struggling. In that case, you may decide that they need help and provide them with additional training and workshops to help them out. This is why keeping a check on your employees is essential and made more accessible through a time tracking plugin. You can assign milestones and provide incentives, but this should never be used to demotivate and criticize employees who have genuine reasons for their shortcomings.
Practice Proper Division of Labor and Specialization through Prioritizing
If you have an important client that you cannot disappoint at any cost, it is essential to assign their work to someone in the organization who is not already piled up with pending tasks. You can even divide tasks that take a long time into separate groups to ensure that the outcome will be much better since every employee will focus on the tasks they can do best.
Forecasting Will Be To-The-Point and Simple
Are you looking to provide your new clients with an accurate estimate of your pricing? Having only a rough estimate with you is not a good idea. You need to make sure that you impress the client, and for that to happen, your calculations need to be the most accurate representation of your previous projects. These projects can easily be found with your timesheet solution, where you can see how much time it took and how much you charged your clients previously – this will help you provide your new client with accurate details in your proposals, so there are no issues later on.
Ethics and Work Load
You already keep a check on your employees, and if there are any of them who have shown constant downfall in terms of their work ethics, you may need to talk with them about it and find a proper solution. Not only that, but if you expect more workload in future and see that your current employees are all occupied, there might be a need to hire more people.
The Bottom Line
An Outlook time tracking plugin can be nothing but a blessing, since you might already have challenges keeping track of your workforce’s activities and performance on a day-to-day basis. Managing your time efficiently is bound to yield results that can perhaps change the way your corporation works!
However, you should know that an Outlook time tracking plugin is not used to spy on your employees’ every move – you should only use it to gauge the bigger picture and reap organization-wide results. You should use this tool to empower your employees and help them plan their deadlines and tasks rather than exerting extra force on them if they lack in their work.
With the proper add-ons for Outlook, you can actually figure out a number of ways to fix your corporation’s failings and shortcomings through the help of simple and easy techniques that you don’t even need to spend hours to learn!
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