Greater than 900 million persons are utilizing Google Sheets every month, in line with Google’s personal estimates.
So, the chance of you having a Google Sheets open tab proper now’s fairly excessive, am I proper? However solely as a result of it has such an enormous consumer base, you shouldn’t conclude it’s efficient for all functions, together with time monitoring.
However you’re not right here to see me bashing over G-Sheets however to learn the way Google Sheets time monitoring works, so I’ll educate you all about it!
⏰ Key takeaways
For those who’re like me, it is advisable make selections like yesterday, so right here’s a breakdown of this text. You’ll seemingly learn these in 30 seconds 😉:
📈 Google Sheets time monitoring
- is free, customizable (to an extent), and built-in with different instruments, nevertheless it additionally requires handbook information entry, because it’s not automated. Finally, as soon as your crew and tasks evolve, you’ll outgrow what G-sheets can do for you.
- it is advisable create your individual formulation and graphs, however when you’re not spreadsheet savvy, I’ve shared dependable sources so you possibly can be taught, together with free templates.
🕒 When to improve to a time-tracking app:
- when you’re incessantly switching between a number of duties and tasks.
- your crew is rising past 2-3 folks, and also you’re already beginning to waste time creating experiences from spreadsheet information.
- you want insights into productiveness patterns and work habits.
✅ EARLY: the perfect various
An all-in-one resolution for all of your time-tracking wants: Monitor time routinely or with AI, seize billable hours with one click on, and generate automated experiences with extra time and time without work included.
Why observe time in Google Sheets?/ advantages
So, what’s the enchantment of monitoring time in a Google Sheet? Listed below are just a few key advantages:
⭐ It’s free and accessible: Most individuals have already got a Google account, so Sheets is obtainable at no additional value. It’s additionally simple to entry it throughout gadgets.
⭐ It has a well-recognized interface: Most of you already know use spreadsheets, so that you’re one step forward of the educational curve related to devoted software program.
⭐ It’s customizable: You’ve got full management to arrange customized formulation and formatting to trace time simply the way you need. The sky’s not the restrict, although. Within the G-Sheets time-tracking course of, you possibly can design your timesheet templates to match your particular workflow, consumer billing necessities, and reporting wants.
⭐ It integrates with different instruments: G-Sheets play properly with the remainder of the Google Workspace ecosystem, in addition to tons of different apps by way of add-ons and Zapier automation.
⭐ Cloud-based collaborations: Versus Excel time-tracking, with Google Sheets, the complete crew appears to obtain real-time updates from anybody, and you’ll entry time information from wherever.
⭐ Fundamental time monitoring: Use easy capabilities and charts to whole up hours, analyze weekly tendencies, examine estimated vs precise time, and extra.
Offered on giving Sheets a shot? Let’s transfer on to the steps of monitoring hours spent on work with Google Sheets.
The steps for Google Sheets time monitoring
Right here’s the final course of to trace time in Google Sheets:
1. Create and design a clean timesheet
You first must create your timesheet primarily based in your monitoring wants. Right here’s what your Google Sheets timesheet template ought to embody in its columns:
- Date – when work was carried out;
- Worker identify – determine who’s logging the hours;
- Begin time and end time – log when the duty was began and accomplished. It needs to be no less than a day by day log, as staff are inclined to overlook the exact hours labored;
- Common work hours – on this class staff needs to be allowed so as to add the variety of hours labored, like 8 hours per day.
- PTO – some days shall be off in your crew, so they should have the choice to sign that within the timesheet.
- Sick – in case anybody can’t observe work hours as they’re sick for a day or extra.
- Time beyond regulation hours – if working past regular hours, a column to point extra time is tremendous useful, as you wish to keep on prime of your crew’s well-being.
- Whole hours – calculate the entire hours labored on the duty (this may be automated with a system within the timesheet);
Right here’s a preview of a Google spreadsheet with the column I discussed:
The columns I launched you to above are the premise, however you possibly can customise your template in some ways and add columns to trace completely different tasks, particular person duties, lunch breaks, and plenty of extra. These are another concepts:
- Class/kind of labor – classify the duty underneath classes as design, growth, or administration;
- Challenge identify/code – point out the particular undertaking or consumer the work is for;
- Billable vs. non-billable hours – distinguish between hours that may be billed to the consumer and never.
- Standing – point out the standing of the duty (e.g., In Progress, Accomplished).
💡 Professional tip: Don’t copy and paste somebody’s template until it’s matching your wants and workflow. Nonetheless, you possibly can customise your individual template with the above instance in thoughts to offer you a complete view of time utilization.
2. Add formulation and create graphs for experiences
After you have your fundamental timesheet arrange, it’s time to make it give you the results you want by including some formulation and visible experiences:
- Use formulation – routinely calculate the entire period of the time monitoring information primarily based on begin and finish occasions. This protects handbook information entry for one thing that might be performed merely with built-in formulation.
- Create separate sheets – pull information out of your most important timesheet to generate abstract tables and charts. This provides you high-level insights at a look, with out making an attempt to know plain numbers in a timesheet.
- Use graphs and pivot tables – with spot tendencies, examine estimated vs precise time spent, analyze time utilization throughout tasks, shoppers, or job sorts, and extra.
- Arrange a dashboard-style report sheet with auto-updating charts to all the time see the newest information.
💡 Professional tip: Don’t know create visuals in Google Sheets? This Google Information lesson may be precisely what you want!
3. Remind your crew to trace their time
With out consistency, you’re monitoring time for no cause, as you possibly can’t collect any productiveness tendencies or bill your shoppers precisely. However getting your entire crew to religiously log their hours in Google Sheets will be as difficult as getting gross sales and advertising and marketing groups to agree on a marketing campaign technique.
To make issues work, attempt the following pointers:
- Clearly talk expectations round time monitoring – what information to incorporate, how typically to log time, deadlines for filling out timesheets, and so forth.
- Ship timesheet reminders by way of electronic mail, Slack, or your crew’s most popular comms channels to immediate them to fill out their timesheets. Contemplate organising recurring calendar invitations, and why not ship timesheet memes?
- Lead by instance – if you’d like time monitoring to be a precedence in your crew, reveal that by diligently logging your individual hours and referencing your individual timesheet information.
4. Regulate your Google Sheets time monitoring course of
Even essentially the most well-designed weekly time-tracking template will seemingly want some tweaks when you begin utilizing it in observe. Evaluate usually what’s working and what might be higher to optimize your time-tracking expertise:
- Are sure columns all the time left clean? Perhaps they’re not as related as you thought, so contemplate eradicating them to streamline information entry.
- Are you getting questions from the crew about log sure eventualities? Replace your timesheet with clearer directions or further choices to seize these edge instances.
- Spending an excessive amount of time manually compiling experiences every week? Search for alternatives to additional automate issues with formulation and related sheets.
- Constantly working into the identical information entry errors? Add information validation guidelines to scale back errors.
- Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of knowledge? Mess around with filters and views to create targeted views of simply the knowledge you want in the mean time.
Free timesheet templates
Don’t wish to create your template? I get it. Actually, I wouldn’t create a template for myself both, as there are such a lot of free choices on the market. We created free G-Sheet templates for you with completely different functions, from a day by day timesheet template to undertaking timesheet templates.
Free weekly timesheet template
For those who’re not spreadsheet savvy, our crew made a free timesheet template for you that’s additionally customizable. So, be at liberty to experiment with it and reorganize the respective columns inside as you would like.
💡 Professional tip:I received’t get into particulars, however you’ll discover your weekly timesheet template on the hyperlink supplied, together with formulation and make use of this weekly timesheet template. It may be used as a biweekly timesheet template, too.
Free month-to-month timesheet template
For those who’d fairly profit from a month-to-month overview, obtain your month-to-month timesheet template. Notice: If utilizing a month-to-month timesheet template, we extremely suggest including time entries each day. Worker time monitoring is susceptible to errors, and your crew might overlook the exact timings of the work carried out.
Free undertaking timesheet template
Alternatively, use this Challenge timesheet template when you’re involved in monitoring tasks.
💡 Professional tip: Want one other Google Sheets template? We’ve bought extra! Take a look at and obtain the template that works greatest for you from our listing:
Why is Google Sheets time monitoring ineffective?
If I portrayed Google Sheets particularly for time monitoring in a very good gentle, it is advisable know that after you get into the nitty-gritty, you’ll come across challenges.
Google Sheets isimpractical and inefficient for the scope of time monitoring. Lots of the companies we mentioned with at EARLY advised us that Google Sheets time monitoring is “clunky,” “tedious,” and “we’re all the time chasing crew members to fill them in.”
Listed below are a few of the drawbacks:
🚫 Substantial handbook interference: With Google Sheets, it’s a must to manually insert begin and finish occasions, undertaking particulars, and different metadata for every time entry. This course of is time-consuming, error-prone, and a significant productiveness killer.
🚫 Depends closely on formulation, which turns into a difficulty in the event that they’re unintentionally modified and tracked information disappears out of your experiences. There’s no automated timer, no clever categorization of actions, and no seamless integration along with your workflow.
🚫 Scalability points: Because the bigger the dataset will get, the tougher it’s for managers to make sense of the knowledge and maintain observe of it.
🚫 No immediate insights for fast decision-making, as Google Sheets doesn’t present a approach to observe time as you’re employed, and experiences take time to be generated. You’re all the time logging time after the very fact, which may result in inaccuracies and forgotten entries.
🚫 Siloed information: Time-tracking information in Google Sheets typically lives in isolation from the remainder of your workload administration instruments. There’s no simple approach to join that information to your undertaking administration software program, invoicing system, or productiveness apps.
🚫 Requires chasing groups to fill them out, as typically staff overlook to fill them in.
Google Sheets time monitoring alternate options: EARLY ✨
So if Google Sheets falls quick, what’s the choice? I’m positively biased, as EARLY is my go-to automated time tracker, however the factor about EARLY is that it solves the entire ache factors of G-sheets.
As EARLY is purpose-built for correct, easy time monitoring, it removes the ache of manually getting into information or producing experiences primarily based on giant datasets with intricate formulation. Right here’s what units it aside: EARLY is a one-stop resolution for all time-tracking wants. This time clock app generates detailed experiences and permits extra time, depart,and work hours monitoring, in addition to monitoring billable and non billable hours.
Right here’s what units it aside:
✨ Straightforward navigation: Coming with an intuitive calendar-like interface, EARLY makes it simple to start out, cease, and handle time-tracking duties with one click on.
✨ AI time monitoring: Create timesheets with out handbook enter, however solely with AI-generated time entry solutions primarily based in your calendar occasions and previous entries. One-click, and your time entry is saved.
✨ Computerized time monitoring: If G-sheets pressure its customers to trace time manually, EARLY routinely tracks all of your work within the background. This fashion, your timesheet shall be routinely stuffed along with your app and power utilization, visited web sites, and scheduled calendar occasions.
✨ Actual-time monitoring and accuracy: EARLY tracks what you’re engaged on in real-time throughout all of your gadgets, so that you don’t must guesstimate hours after the very fact or overlook to log time altogether.
✨ Automated experiences and insights: Quite than cobbling collectively experiences in Google Sheets, profit from visible experiences with actionable insights. Filter, drill down, and discover your time information with just some clicks in a customizable time reporting system.
✨ Trouble-free extra time monitoring: Your crew is working extra time, however you’re unsure in the event that they’re marking it off? You don’t must make one other column and system for that! You possibly can see their further time data within the timesheet – routinely logged! EARLY works as an extra time tracker, too, so it routinely calculates extra time and deficit hours for you.
✨ Depart monitoring: Monitor and deal with all sorts of leaves with one click on on this depart monitoring system built-in into EARLY.
✨ Billable and non-billable hours monitoring: Not like Google Sheets, EARLY lets you categorize duties as both billable or non-billable with one click on and can routinely calculate the entire hours labored with out handbook interference.
When to stay with Google Sheets vs. when to improve
If it’s not clear to you when you ought to improve to a paid device similar to EARLY, I’ll make clear this to you in two easy methods: with some indicators about your online business context and a comparability desk between the 2.
Google Sheets works properly when:
- You’re simply beginning out with time-tracking, and you’ve got easy monitoring wants with few tasks.
- You’ve got price range constraints, so that you want a free device.
- You’ve got extremely specialised monitoring necessities that want customized formulation that G-sheets have.
- You observe time sometimes or primarily in large blocks.
Contemplate upgrading to EARLY when:
- You incessantly change between a number of duties and tasks, as handbook time entry results in forgotten or inaccurate entries.
- You might want to observe billable hours precisely for consumer billing.
- Your crew is rising past 2-3 folks, and also you’re already beginning to waste time creating experiences from spreadsheet information.
- You want insights into productiveness patterns and work habits, and also you wish to scale back admin overhead.
Right here’s the head-to-head comparability between the 2 instruments:
| Characteristic | Google Sheets | EARLY | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time monitoring technique | Handbook entry into spreadsheets | A number of strategies – automated time monitoring, AI time entry solutions, bodily tracker | EARLY |
| Accuracy | Error-prone handbook course of | Excessive accuracy by way of automation and AI | EARLY |
| Actual-time monitoring | Restricted or none | Steady real-time monitoring throughout all gadgets | EARLY |
| Reporting | Handbook setup utilizing pivot tables and charts | Computerized customizable experiences with AI-powered insights | EARLY |
| Billable hours | Handbook calculations and bill creation | Computerized monitoring and invoicing with billable charges | EARLY |
| Setup and upkeep | Excessive effort (handbook setup and maintenance) | Low effort (routinely captures information and syncs throughout gadgets) | EARLY |
| Automation | Restricted to fundamental formulation | In depth automation with time entries changed into automated timesheets and experiences generated with one click on | EARLY |
| Productiveness insights | Restricted until manually created | AI-powered dashboard with customized productiveness patterns | EARLY |
| Staff collaboration | Difficult for a number of customers | Constructed for crew collaboration with privateness controls | EARLY |
| Integrations | Restricted with out exterior add-ons | Over 3,000 integrations with well-liked instruments out of the field | EARLY |
| Studying curve | Steep for superior options | Intuitive interface with minimal coaching wanted | EARLY |
| Price | Free with a Google account | Begins at $6.85/month with 30-day free trial | Google Sheets |
To conclude
Google Sheets is an efficient place to begin for fundamental time monitoring you probably have very small groups or price range constraints, however as your online business scales, contemplate upgrading, as your wants will outgrow what G-sheets can do for you.
If you end up spending extra time managing your timesheet than really working, it’s a transparent signal that you simply’ve outgrown Google Sheets.
The time financial savings and productiveness positive aspects from utilizing EARLY typically outweigh the modest subscription value, particularly as your crew and undertaking load expands. Plus, with integrations to well-liked instruments you’re seemingly already utilizing, EARLY suits seamlessly into your current workflow.
If any of the ache factors within the “Contemplate upgrading to EARLY when” listing resonate with you, it’s price exploring how EARLY can revolutionize your time monitoring. With a 30-day free trial, you possibly can expertise the total energy of the platform risk-free. Chances are high, you’ll surprise the way you ever managed with a spreadsheet alone.
Sources
https://explodingtopics.com/weblog/google-workspace-stats
https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/en-gb/assets/trainings/google-sheets-visualizing-data
