Depending on how it’s presented, tracking the time your team spent on tasks can be perceived like an act of surveillance or a great enabler of productivity—so we’re here to make sure your team feels the latter 😉
How to introduce time tracking to your team
Very few people get excited about tracking their time (sidenote: I do, but I may be the exception to your proverbial rule). For most teams, going from a situation where they’re not used to log time or haven’t been tracking time consistently to one where time tracking is now a requirement can be a bit of a cultural shock.
<highlight>The difference between success and failure comes down to how the activity is both presented and implemented</highlight>—if you approach time tracking as a tool for empowerment (instead as one for control), you can help your team work smarter, price projects fairly, and keep sustainable workloads.
Based on several conversations we had with our customers and resource manager pros (including Eduardo in the screenshot above), here are three key bits of tactical advice for implementing time tracking.
1. Start with the WHY
Before diving into systems and processes and how-tos, address the elephant in the room: not everyone sees time tracking in the same way. Some team members might interpret it as a sign of surveillance; others might see it as a form of extreme micromanagement, especially when they’re required to track granularly and attribute the time to client campaigns; EU-based folks, given the EU Working Time Directive of 2023, might find it a helpful though cumbersome way to protect their work hours, health, and safety.
The key is being straightforward about why time tracking matters for your organization. When teams understand how time tracking helps them work better (not harder), adoption can become easier. Some benefits you may want to discuss include:
- Reporting on accurate time against estimates/retainers to understand where your money is going
- Identifying the amount of time spent on non-critical tasks
- Enabling more effective time management and resource allocation
- Managing resources accurately
- Keeping track of projects and productivity
- Estimating future projects based on previous data
📚 PS: this Reddit thread from over a decade ago covers a lot of excellent and occasionally scary examples of why time tracking is important:
2. Choose your approach to time tracking
The next step is communicating how to track time: by task, project, or person. Each serves different goals:
- Project-based tracking helps you monitor budget utilization and project profitability. This method is essential for agencies working with retainers or fixed project budgets, as it gives clear visibility into how much time is being spent against what was quoted.
- Task-based tracking helps identify time spent on revenue-generating work versus administrative tasks. This approach lets you categorize activities (like admin, meetings, client work, deep work) and use subcategories to separate revenue generators from ongoing tasks (eg. prospecting calls vs. general client calls).
- People-based tracking might reveal individual strengths, helping you assign work to both in-house and freelance staff who excel at specific tasks. With weekly timesheets, you can identify which tasks different team members are most efficient at, in turn optimizing workload distribution and making the right staffing decisions for future projects.
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Martin Mattli
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Head of Operations and Quality Management at Apps with love
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Apps with love is a digital agency that transformed its operations through smart time tracking using Float (hello 👋). For years, Head of Operations Martin Mattli relied on a giant spreadsheet to manage projects and schedule his teams, while each employee maintained their individual timesheets; inevitably, this led to inconsistencies, data gaps, and hours wasted on administrative tasks.
Their journey offers a practical blueprint for teams looking to up their time tracking game:
- Start with the problem: instead of mandating time tracking, begin by identifying pain points. For Apps with Love, it was the inefficiency of scattered timesheets and unreliable reporting.
- Choose an intuitive solution: find a tool or solution that reduces friction rather than adding to it. For Mattli, the key was finding software that would pre-fill timesheets from scheduled work, making logging time a one-click process.
After implementing proper time tracking, Apps with love saw a 35% increase in time reporting accuracy per employee—and discovered there were roughly 10,000 hours that had previously gone untracked (!) because of the manual entry and human error that come with dozens of people using separate Excel sheets for time tracking.
Read Apps with love’s full story here →
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3. Establish clear guidelines
Success lies in the details—just ask digital agency A—B, who achieved nearly 100% time tracking adoption across their team thanks to clear, consistent guidelines everyone could follow.
When setting up your guidelines, include specifics about:
- When to track time: be explicit about whether tracking applies to all tasks or specific projects only. This eliminates confusion and helps your team maintain and reconcile accurate project data.
- How to round time logs: modern time tracking allows for really granular logging down to the minute—which is handy if your agency bills in 6-minute increments (1/10 of an hour). Establish whether 3 hours 46 minutes rounds up to 4 hours or stays at 3:45. This level of detail might seem excessive or even paranoid, but... the minutes quickly add up.
- Which tags to use: create a standardized system for tagging time entries. This makes filtering and reporting much easier—whether you’re looking at specific projects, tasks, or teams. A—B’s success came partly from having a clear, consistent tagging system that everyone understood and used.
- Documentation and support: keep a shared FAQ document that answers common time-tracking questions. This reduces friction and helps new team members get up to speed quickly. When A—B implemented this approach, it significantly reduced confusion and increased adoption rates.
The key is making these guidelines clear and accessible while explaining the reasoning behind them. As A—B discovered, when team members understand both the why and the how of time tracking, they’re much more likely to embrace the system rather than resist it.
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Justin West
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Former Program Manager at A—B
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“In general, there’s an appetite for anything that can make the team’s life easier in any organization. So everybody was excited when it came to the capacity tracking [because] everyone appreciates a more consolidated project timeline view.”
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4 time tracking methods for your team (with their pros and cons)
You and your team have several options available, from traditional manual methods to modern automated solutions.
1. Manual time logs
How they work: team members write down their time entries on paper or in a basic document, typically at the end of the day or week.
Pros:
- No technology required
- Simple to implement
- Little-to-no learning curve
Cons:
- It’s 2025! Plenty of software solutions exist that simplify this workflow 😉
- Prone to human error
- Time-consuming to compile and analyze
- Easy to forget or lose entries
- If you’re the unlucky soul in charge of reconciling entries, you have to understand every person’s handwriting
2. Spreadsheets
How they work: teams track time in individual or shared spreadsheets, often with formulas for calculating totals and basic reporting.
Pros:
- More structured than paper logs
- Basic calculation capabilities
- Shareable across team
Cons:
- Manual data entry is still required (and therefore a high probability of human error)
- Limited reporting capabilities
- No real-time visibility into tracking
- As you saw in the Apps with love case, managing multiple spreadsheets creates a ton of administrative burden
💡 If this is your method of choice, take a look at these free timesheet templates for Google Sheets and Excel.
3. Time tracking apps
How they work: dedicated time tracking tools (including desktop and mobile apps) start and stop timers for different tasks, with automatic time calculation.
Pros:
- Real-time tracking
- More accurate than end-of-day estimates*
- Reduces manual entry
- Easy integrations with other tools eg. financial planning or project management tools
Cons:
- *Requires discipline to start/stop timers
- Can be disruptive to workflows
- May feel like surveillance to some team members
4. Integrated project & resource management software
How it works: time tracking is built into the project or resource management platform, often with pre-filled timesheets based on scheduled work.
Pros:
- Links time directly to projects and tasks
- Automated timesheet creation
- Built-in advanced functionality for reporting and analysis
- Can save a lot of admin time
Cons:
- Higher cost than standalone or manual solutions
- May include features teams don’t currently need
- Requires initial setup (and, depending on complexity, a learning curve)
Why we recommend using software to track your team’s time
You’re reading a guide about tracking time written by me, a person who works at a company that offers time tracking software. <highlight>Of course, I am going to be biased and suggest that Float is a great solution. So let me add a bit of nuance first. </highlight>
Manual time tracking isn’t inherently bad. I have no experience using a pen-and-paper system, but I have filled in many a spreadsheet in my time, and even created a few for my previous team. For small teams with simple projects, manual time tracking might work just fine.
HOWEVER, as you grow and projects become more complex, the limitations of manual tracking become apparent:
- Accuracy: when teams are asked to remember and log their time days or weeks later, the data becomes unreliable. The agency I mentioned above that had to write off nearly $100,000 because of incomplete timesheets? That can be a devastating hit that affects raises, bonuses, and even business viability—and can be so easily remedied with an automated solution.
- Administrative overhead: you and your team should be focusing on revenue-generating tasks, not wrestling with reconciling time tracking data from individual sheets.
- Visibility: without proper tracking, scope creep becomes oh-so-easy. A few ‘quick fixes’ here, some ‘small changes’ there, plus the infamous ‘quick request’ and suddenly out-of-scope work quietly becomes expected deliverables, which eats into profitability.
This is why we advocate for dedicated time tracking software—particularly solutions that integrate with your broader business toolkit. For example, Float offers pre-filled timesheets based on scheduled work, detailed reports, and easy data import from existing spreadsheets.
Here is another example:
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Charlie Hartley
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Founder and CEO, SHOW + TELL
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A full-service agency of around 20 people, Show + Tell struggled with resource planning and accurately keeping track of billable hours. When a non-executive Director requested a breakdown of the billable vs. non-billable time for each staff member, Founder and CEO Hartley was “shocked by the gaps and lack of accuracy in our own data.”
Head of Projects Alek Thomas understood the importance of tracking every task and responsibility to manage capacity effectively and avoid missing deliverables. Since the Float implementation, every task—whether it’s a full project, a development sprint, or a minor one-hour task—goes into Float.
“We needed one solution that offered flexible resource scheduling, a simple process for employees to track their time, and powerful reporting on our project data. For us, Float ticks all the boxes.”
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📚 Read more → you can find more information about your options in this list of time tracking software that, yes, includes Float, plus some other commonly used tools like Toggl, Harvest, and Clockify. Especially recommended if you work in agency or professional service teams.
[fs-toc-omit]Make time tracking work for (not against) your team
The goal of time tracking isn’t to police every minute: it’s to give you and your team the tools and insights you need to work effectively while keeping your operations profitable.
When you combine clear guidelines, the right approach, and software that is less work and more insights, you can turn what could be a morale-killer into a genuine enabler of success ✨✨
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Time tracking that is less work and more insights
Time tracking doesn’t have to be so hard. Float’s time tracking features take the pain out of timesheets by automating the manual parts while still giving you accurate actuals.
<cta-button>Check it out</cta-button>
</cta-box>Depending on how it’s presented, the ask to track the time your team spends on tasks can be perceived as an act of surveillance or a great enabler of productivity—so let’s make sure your team experiences the latter 😉
We couldn’t have written this piece without our customers:
FAQs
Some FAQs about how to track time spent on tasks
The most effective approach depends on your team’s size and needs, but integrated and dedicated time tracking software solutions typically offer the best balance of accuracy and ease of use. Manual methods like spreadsheets might work for small teams, but automated solutions help eliminate human error, reduce administrative overhead, and offer real-time visibility into project progress.
The key is choosing a method that combines:
- Clear guidelines for when and how to track time
- Easy-to-use tools that reduce friction
- Integration with your existing workflow
- Automated features like pre-filled timesheets
- Robust reporting capabilities
Successful time tracking adoption comes down to a few elements:
- Clearly explain the why behind the ask of tracking time and tasks (eg. preventing overwork and ensuring fair project pricing)
- Make it easy to do with user-friendly tools and functionality that reduce friction rather than adding to it (eg. pre-filled timesheets)
- Give clear guidelines for consistency, with straightforward documentation your team can access and revisit when needed
The key is positioning time tracking as an enabler of productivity and profitability rather than a surveillance tool
The most effective techniques combine the right tools with consistent habits. Track:
- By project to monitor budget utilization
- By task to identify time spent on revenue-generating work
- By person to optimize workload distribution.
To get thebest results, use automated software like Float that pre-fills timesheets and integrates with your existing workflow rather than relying on manual methods.
