Why You Should Integrate Time and Attendance with Payroll and HR

When businesses try to measure success, they’re oftentimes thinking in terms of profitability and efficiency. An organization that runs smoothly is an organization where the time and resources allocated towards the work matches what was actually expended.

The ROI of a business can largely be defined by how much time and effort is spent on operations and tasks, compared to how much time and effort was projected — especially in a project-based work environment.

This isn’t breaking news. Most organizations and their employees understand how important tracking time is, not only for the purposes of measuring ROI, but also because accurate time tracking means less headaches further on in a project when it comes to invoicing, allocating resources for the next project, and so on.

So while it might seem at first like a glib oversimplification of problems, having the right time tracking tool in place can actually help businesses gain a better understanding of their ROI and increase operational efficiency in the future.

There are plenty of time tracking solutions available, some free, but which ones will streamline your operations and keep ROI at the forefront?

The secret is time tracking tools that integrate with your payroll and HR software. Here’s why.

Integrated Time Tracking Can Reduce Input Errors

When you consider all the hours tracked by workers, every workday, it becomes clear just how many opportunities there are for inputting errors. And not just when it comes to hours tracking, either.

Standalone time tracking tools — or most free time tracking tools, for that matter — often compound the possibility for input errors for HR admins, as they often have to spend manual effort to take workers’ hours and input those into payroll software or project management software.

Rarely will siloed time tracking tools help these teams overcome the two-pronged issue of manual time tracking errors that waste HR’s time. This is one primary reason for why businesses should consider syncing their time and attendance tools with their payroll and HR tools.

By contrast, a time tracking solution that integrates into your payroll and HR software will reduce the amount of manual work involved. How? The tool where time is tracked connects seamlessly with the tool that pays your people.

With less HR effort needed to transfer tracked hours to payroll and HR tools, you remove one less step from the overall hourly payment process, and in doing so, reduce the time spent fixing inputting errors.

Why Free Time Tracking Tools Don’t Always Work Out

It’s not uncommon for small businesses to try to find a free time tracker to do all the heavy lifting.

But free tools tend to be less accurate or reliable, and might not do a great job at preventing input errors from workers. They might even create errors when your bookkeeper or HR admin needs to manually move time & attendance tracker data into the rest of your HR tools and billing software.

By using free time tracking tools, those initial costs that businesses save ultimately translate to compounded time and resources spent on dealing with errors, which renders the benefits of free time tracking tools almost negligible.

Integration Strengthens Compliance Efforts

Many HR leaders will agree that some of the biggest challenges for their organizations are employer-related requirements, such as complying with overtime laws and correctly filing payroll taxes.

If you have hourly workers, these compliance efforts hinge on having accurate timekeeping at the bare minimum.

But beyond accurate timekeeping, a time tracking tool like Justworks Time Tracking, for instance, allows admins to create and customize overtime rules, reminders, and alerts. Paired with an integrated payroll tool that handles withholding, reporting, and remitting your payroll taxes, you’ve created a work system that makes accuracy and employer-related compliance simpler.

Integration Improves Resource Allocation

Businesses that need accurate project hours to inform their ROI and future resource allocation will benefit from time tracking tools that talk with the rest of their work systems.

For financial planning purposes, there’s the added benefit of having a time tracking tool that works well for project tracking and syncs with your existing financial tools. Integrated time tracking, in this sense, gives you snapshots of both your project’s operational efficiency and your cash flow out, as it concerns payroll.

With the health of projects, invoicing, and resource decision-making all dependent on having a reliable measure of workers’ time, time tracking arguably remains one of the most important functions to measuring a business’ ROI. So it pays to connect that function to the rest of your business back-office processes.

Connect Your Time Tracking, Payroll, and HRIS

Justworks Time Tracking keeps the modern, distributed workforce in sync and help business owners stay compliant when it comes to tracking employee time.

Justworks Time Tracking gives you the ability to connect to leading payroll and HRIS platforms, including Justworks, so you’re able to have a single source of truth for tracked hours, payroll, and employer-related taxes.

Learn how Justworks Time Tracking can sync with your payroll to improve your organization’s time tracking and payroll reporting.