Time tracking software is essential for engineers, whether your firm bills by the hour or charges a flat rate. Not only will it streamline some of your daily tasks, but it will also help you improve project estimations and profitability. With automatic time tracking software for engineers, you work more efficiently, delegate tasks to team members who aren’t being fully utilized, and reduce manual input around invoicing and billing workflows.
Benefits of Time Tracking Software for Engineers
Time tracking software for engineers captures every second you spend on a project and uses that data to create timesheets and generate activity reports. To bill clients accurately and compensate your employees accordingly, you need a detailed log of all working hours spent on a project.
As all engineers know, staying on top of your projects is critical to achieving an optimal result. Time tracking helps you keep tabs on your firm’s resources so you can meet every milestone and budget, and in the future, better estimate your job costing and resource allocation.
A digital time tracker allows your team to focus more on engineering work and less on administrative tasks like creating invoices, tracking overtime, and following up on missed payments.
Read on to learn more about time tracking solutions and to pinpoint the best time tracking software features for engineering firms.
What it does
Increases accuracy
A time tracking app records the exact time your engineering firm completes work for a project, phrase, and client. You’re too busy to collect this information manually, and human error will inevitably cause you or one of your team members to misreport a detail related to project time or expenses. Instead, automate this process using a tool that sets you up with extensive reporting dashboards related to project progress and employee utilization.
Enhances productivity
A digital time tracker helps you surface unproductive patterns for each team member, so you gain insight into bloated processes that overrun, the time of day you’re less productive, and low-value tasks that eat up too much time (e.g., responding to emails or attending meetings).
Time tracking software for engineers helps companies save time on those low-value tasks by automatically completing them for you. Instead of manually tracking their time, filling out timesheets, and emailing expense reports, your employees can work on their engineering tasks and work more efficiently.
Improves project estimates
Digital time tracking helps you identify operational inefficiencies, the actual cost of each project, bloated workflows, and other unproductive behaviors. You’ll also gain an understanding of your engineering firm’s capacity, including each employee’s workload and if you’ve been under- or overstaffing projects. Profitability forecasting will help you uncover if you need to cut project costs or take on more clients to get your firm to its profitability goal.
Provides performance data
Time tracking software for engineers gives you a detailed view at how your company is performing and reveals if you tend to go off track at any particular project phase, such as concept designing, post-feedback adjustments, or the construction phase.
A time tracking app provides you with detailed reports that allow you to understand how much it costs your firm to provide services to clients, your exact billable hours, and whether a project is actually profitable.
You’ll also gain access to data such as:
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Total time spent on a project
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Non-billable vs. billable hours
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How much to bill clients each month
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Profit margins
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Which team member(s) worked on project tasks
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Utilization rates
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Completed tasks vs. outstanding tasks
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How much of the allocated budget has been used
Why do I Need Time Tracking if I use Flat-Rate Services?
Time tracking still offers you enormous benefits if you charge clients a flat rate per project instead of an hourly rate. It helps you analyze your firm’s job costing so you are confident in the true value of your services and price them accordingly. Optimizing your job costing ensures that your prices are fair and you’ve set up your firm for steady cash flow and long-term profitability.
Time tracking software gives your firm's managers a better idea of how employees spend their time and how long it takes them to complete specific tasks. This data highlights if they need additional training, where they’re most efficient, and if their time is well-spent.
Check in with team members to make sure they’re prioritizing the highest value tasks for each project, reaching their full potential, and doing work they enjoy. With time tracking, you can study each employee’s workload and optimize their productivity.
What to Look for When Choosing Time Tracking Software for Engineers
The best time tracking software for engineers includes features that make it simpler for you to record work hours, assign tasks, monitor progress, and meet deadlines.
Staying on top of project details and resource allocation keeps your projects moving forward.
General features
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Automatic time tracking
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Smart timesheets
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Client support
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Project forecasting
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Shared team calendar
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File sharing and document storage
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Insightful reporting
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Notifications and alerts
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Web and mobile apps
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Cloud-based
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Legal compliance
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Free demo or trial
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Customer support and technical assistance
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Integrations (e.g., QuickBooks)
Financial features
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Salaries
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Automated invoicing
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Automatic time tracking
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Overtime calculator
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Time off and overhead capture
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Expense tracking
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Online payments
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Calculation of billable hours, time utilization, total costs, and more
Process management features
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360-degree view of projects
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The exact process your engineers use
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How much time is spent planning?
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How much time is spent fine-tuning?
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How much time actually designing?
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Milestone and budget tracking
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Project collaboration tools
Time Tracking Software for Engineers with BQE
BQE CORE helps your engineering firm gain awareness of how it spends its time and precisely allocates its resources across clients’ projects and tasks. Accurately record your project time from anywhere using CORE’s mobile app for iOS and Android with 100% DCAA-compliant time tracking.
Organized dashboards and detailed reporting measure your firm’s productivity and profitability at the project level and set you up to estimate your resources on future projects more accurately.
Leave behind manual timesheet entry and invoice creation by letting CORE’s time tracking, billing, and project management tooling automate and streamline your processes — leaving you to focus on more interesting engineering work.
Beyond time tracking, CORE includes tools for project management, budget, expenses, payroll, and more. Say goodbye to manually filling out timesheets, expense reports, and vendor bills. CORE automatically collects all the necessary data, securely stores it, and generates accurate reports when you need them. Try CORE today for free!
BQE CORE Time Tracking FAQs
Does BQE CORE offer timers?
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Yes, BQE CORE includes stopwatch timers so you can easily record your time once you start, and only simply click to stop during breaks or at the end of the day. CORE also allows your team to switch from one timer to another, run multiple timers at once, edit a timer, and view total hours for a day.
What sort of notifications does BQE CORE send?
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With BQE CORE, you’re able to select the notifications you want to receive so you only ever receive what is most important to you. Looking to stay on top of your team’s activity with real-time visibility? With CORE you can receive notifications when certain actions are approved, such as invoices, client bills, time-off requests, and purchase orders.
