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Time tracking is an essential part of running any business. It allows you to have visibility into how employees are spending their time, ensures proper compensation, and gives you the data needed for accurate billing and payroll. While manual time tracking using spreadsheets or paper timesheets can work for very small teams, it quickly becomes cumbersome and inaccurate as your business grows. This is where online time tracking software like eTimesheets comes in.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll cover everything you need to know about eTimesheets, including:

- What is eTimesheets and how it works
- Key features and benefits
- Pricing and plans
- How it compares to competitors
- Ideal businesses and use cases
- Pros and cons
- How to get started


What is eTimesheets?

eTimesheets is an online time tracking and management software designed for businesses of all sizes. It allows employees to track time worked on tasks, projects, and jobs, and managers to have visibility into how time is being spent. With eTimesheets, time tracking is moved fully online, eliminating the need for manual processes using paper timesheets or spreadsheet tracking.

The software has a dashboard that gives real-time insight into billable hours versus budget, utilization rates, and productivity. Built-in reporting and analytics help spot inefficiencies, forecast workloads, and ensure accurate client billing. The ability for employees to clock in and out is included to track hours automatically.

eTimesheets is designed to integrate seamlessly with popular accounting, payroll, billing, and ERP software. This allows the time data to flow automatically wherever it needs to go.

Some key features and benefits of eTimesheets include:

- Online web based access from anywhere
- Easy for employees to clock in and out or manually track time
- Project tracking with budgets and alerts
- Visual data and reporting for payroll, billing, forecasts etc.
- Approval workflows for manager review
- Integrations with accounting and payroll software
- Accessible from mobile devices
- Highly configurable to your business needs
- Scales easily from small to large teams


Compared to spreadsheet or paper-based tracking, eTimesheets provides much more visibility and control for managers, less manual work, and more accuracy. The ability to configure it to your processes and integrate with other software provides a lot of flexibility.

Pricing and Plans

eTimesheets is a paid software, but does offer a free 14 day trial to test it out risk-free.

Paid plans start at $5 per user per month billed annually. Volume discounts are available at 10, 15 and 25+ users.

The $5 per user per month plan includes:

- Time tracking with clock in/out
- Unlimited clients and projects
- Project budgets
- Visual reports and dashboards
- Mobile apps (iOS and Android)
- Support for unlimited users
- Integrations with popular software
- Access to all features


Higher priced enterprise plans are also available that add advanced features like:

- Advanced user permissions
- Advanced reporting and analytics
- Custom branding and white labeling
- API access
- Dedicated account manager


While you pay per user, there are no limits on the number of employees you can add to the system. So it can scale to any size business.

They also offer optional eTimesheets branded time clocks (starting at $99) that allow employees to clock in and out via badge swipe at a physical device if desired. But the mobile apps enable clock in/out as well.

Competitors and Alternatives

Some popular competitors and alternatives to eTimesheets in the online time tracking space include:

- TSheets - More focus on integration with Quickbooks. Mobile apps and GPS tracking. Starts at $5/user/month.

- TimeCamp - Freemium model with free plan for up to 5 users. More basic features. Mobile apps. $7/user/month paid plans.

- Harvest - Popular with agencies and professional services. Manual entry only. $12/user/month.

- Hubstaff - Time tracking with screenshots and activity monitoring. $7/user/month starter.

- Time Doctor - Tracks activity with screenshots and monitoring. $7/user/month starter.

- Paymo - Freemium model with free plan for up to 5 users. Focus on project collaboration and task management. $6.40/user/month paid plans.

- Clockify - Free for unlimited users with basic features. Manual entry only. $9.99/user/month Pro plans.

eTimesheets competes well on pricing, features, ease of use, flexibility, and scalability. The ability to clock in/out combined with robust reporting and configuration options help differentiate it.

Ideal Businesses and Use Cases

eTimesheets is designed to work for a variety of different types and sizes of businesses across many industries. Some examples of ideal use cases include:

- Professional services - Accounting, consulting, legal, IT/tech services etc where accurate time tracking is critical for billing. Easy to assign hours to different clients and projects.

- Field services - HVAC, plumbing, electrical etc where technicians need to track time at job sites. Integrates with scheduling and dispatch software many field service companies use.

- Agencies - Marketing, PR, design, development etc agencies that need to track billable time across many different clients.

- Government and non-profits - Accurately track time across grants, programs, and different funding sources.

- Healthcare - Home health aides, therapists, and other staff can easily track patient visit time and billing codes. Integrates with EMR software.

- Manufacturing and construction - Track time spent on different jobs, equipment, tasks. Allocate to different projects or departments.

- Call centers - Automatically track time spent on calls, accounts, and different queues or campaigns.

The extensive configuration options make it well suited to adapt to specific needs and workflows across virtually any industry. Whether you need simple time tracking or more advanced reporting on budgets and billing, eTimesheets can handle it.

Pros and Cons

Some of the key pros of eTimesheets include:

- Works for a wide variety of business sizes and industries
- Easy for employees to clock in and out or track time
- Managers have real-time visibility into team utilization
- Flexible configuration of projects, tasks, and reporting
- Scales easily from 5 to 500+ users
- Affordable pricing, even for very large teams
- Seamless integrations with payroll, billing, ERP, etc
- Accessible from any device via web or mobile
- Free trial lets you test it out at no risk


Some potential downsides to consider:

- Can take some time to fully configure on the front end
- Occasional slowness during periods of peak usage
- iOS app could use some improvement
- Some more advanced features only on Enterprise plan
- No offline access or desktop apps


While the setup and learning curve may require some patience, once configured it is very intuitive for employees to use. The overall flexibility and breadth of features make it suitable for most use cases.

Getting Started with eTimesheets

If you think eTimesheets might be a good fit, here are some tips for getting started:

1. Sign up for a free 14 day trial account to test it out. You can add your whole team during the trial period.

2. Spend some time configuring the main settings like users, clients, projects, tasks, and approval workflows. Think through how you want reporting to be structured.

3. Have employees use the mobile apps or web clock in/out for a day or two to get familiar with basic time tracking.

4. Try generating a few key reports and connect to any other software you use via integrations. Make sure time data flows properly.

5. Before the trial is up, decide if you want to pay for a full subscription. Contact their sales team if you need help deciding on the right plan.

6. Once subscribed, finish configuring any advanced settings and permissions for your administrators, managers and employees.

7. Schedule some regular training sessions and send internal communications to your team on how time tracking works and where to get help.

8. Consider setting up the optional time clock hardware in your office if you want employees to clock in/out via badge swipe.

Be prepared to tweak some initial configurations and workflows over the first few weeks as you fully roll it out. Their customer support can help with any setup questions.

Within a month or so, you should have eTimesheets providing excellent visibility into your team's time, seamless integrations with billing and payroll, and much less time spent on manual tracking. The reporting and dashboards will become invaluable in spotting bottlenecks, properly billing clients, meeting deadlines, and paying your employees accurately.

Conclusion

Moving time tracking to a modern online software like eTimesheets can transform how your business works. The ability to easily track time to the proper projects, get real-time data visibility, automate flows to billing and payroll systems, access it from anywhere, and configure it to your needs makes it a very powerful tool.

While the feature set is quite deep, it's designed to be intuitive for managers and employees to use on a daily basis. The free trial makes it easy to test out the software at no risk.

For most businesses, the potential time and money savings from eliminating manual processes and spreadsheet tracking typically outweighs the relatively affordable subscription costs. The scaling from small teams to large enterprises is seamless as well.

If you have any questions about finding the right plan, configuring the software, or integrating it with your existing systems, their customer support team is very responsive and helpful based on most user reviews.

While no software is perfect, eTimesheets hits the sweet spot for many businesses in terms of features, flexibility, ease of use and affordability. And the ability to accurately track employee time use and allocate it to the right projects, clients, and tasks provides invaluable data.

If you're looking to modernize time tracking for your business and move beyond spreadsheets and paper, eTimesheets is definitely worth a close look. The free trial makes it easy to kick the tires. Within just a few weeks, you may find it hard to imagine how you ever managed without an online system like this.

Additional Tips for Getting the Most from eTimesheets

Once you have eTimesheets up and running, here are some additional tips to help you get the most value from the software:

- Take advantage of reporting - The built-in reports are very customizable and provide real-time visibility into time usage, budgets, productivity and more. Set up reports that are most useful for your business and review them regularly.

- Automate integrations - The seamless integrations with payroll, billing, ERP and other systems can save tons of time. Set these up early to automate data flows and prevent manual entry.

- Use statuses for oversight - Configure status values like "Pending Approval", "Approved", "Billed" etc. to track time entries through workflows.

- Assign time to custom fields - Use custom fields to track time against internal codes, cost centers, GL accounts or other custom categories.

- Build project templates - Save frequently used project settings into templates that can quickly be reused. Great for repetitive clients or job types.

- Enable notifications - Get email or in-app notifications when hours are submitted, approved, exported, etc. to stay on top of time tracking workflows.

- Restrict time entry - Set date ranges or other rules to prevent time being entered outside of expected parameters.

- Control employee access - Use user permissions to restrict access to certain projects, reports or settings. Limit to just their time entries.

- Go mobile - The mobile apps make time entry fast and convenient for employees on the go. This improves compliance.

- Audit edits - The audit log shows any changes made to time entries, providing oversight and accountability.

- Track time to invoices - Use custom fields to associate time entries with invoice numbers for easier client billing.

- Set overtime warnings - Get alerts if an employee exceeds weekly overtime thresholds to prevent unwanted OT pay.

- Integrate schedules - Bring in schedules from scheduling apps so expected hours populate in advance.

Getting training and reading support documentation will uncover many more tips and best practices. eTimesheets is feature-rich software so leveraging its full capabilities takes some learning and experience. Starting with the basics and adding advanced features over time is recommended. With the right configuration and training, eTimesheets can be a transformative tool for your business.