Time is your firm’s most valuable asset. That’s doubly true when there’s not as much of it to go around. In spite of the fact that accountants put in 50-60 hour workweeks during tax season, many people are only capable of 4-5 hours of deep, focused work each day.

While it’s tempting to add to your team’s already full day this time of year, that strategy can backfire. Instead, pay close attention to where your team’s time is going, and you might be able to increase the value of the hours they spend rather than adding hours to their workday.

Here’s how ProCharted can help you monitor your team’s time, keep it on target, and ensure it makes sense for your project budget.

Keep projects on target with integrated data

Picture this scenario: a few team members are 6 hours deep into a project, but you don’t know how far along that project is. You only realize that the project is taking way longer than it should when the billable hours start to exceed the project estimate.

By the time you start investigating the issue and delegating tasks to other team members, the extra hours they spend getting the project back on track are already starting to cut into your firm’s profits.

With ProCharted, you have an instant overview of how much time is tracked on each project and what the status of that project is. The tracked time on all work items shows up on your homepage, right next to detailed status updates so you can spot projects behind schedule before they eat into your budget.

Simplify and centralize time tracking for better accuracy

When teams fill out timesheets at the end of the day, it’s likely that there will be some pretty rough estimates; Quickbooks reports that 80% of timesheets end up having to be corrected. That’s because traditional timesheets introduce a lot of potential for human error, relying on project numbers and rough estimates at the end of the day.

Time tracking apps are a step up, but it’s a little too easy to leave them running in the background when the team gets focused on their tasks. That means some project time could end up billed to overhead, or worse, billed to the wrong client.

With ProCharted, time tracking is integrated with every work item and attached to client management info. Rather than trying to remember a project number, your team can just press play on their current work item to start tracking time for far more accurate billing. 

If they make a mistake, they can edit that time on their own with a few clicks as they’re working instead of going back to fix it hours (or days) later.

Delegate more strategically with overdue tasks in context

Do you know how many clients each of your team members works with on a daily basis? What tasks are they working on right now? If you don’t, it can feel impossible to know exactly how to delegate tasks day-to-day.

McKinsey finds that it’s tough for most companies to get delegation right – but delegating decisions to the right team member can help create leaders in your firm. When you understand exactly what your team is doing at any given moment, you can help identify the decision-makers that will drive projects to completion when there’s a tight deadline.

ProCharted makes that simple. Your dashboard gives you an overview of exactly what your team is working on, with a clear overview of all pending work and tasks. When you need to make a quick decision, you can drill down to what each team member is working on.

Instead of relying on daily standups to understand where projects are at, this can help you get instant feedback on where team members are making progress and where they’re stuck.

Make your team’s hours more strategic

Finally, consider this: 20% of the best creative ideas happen when people are doing something other than work. If your team is working on a complex advisory project, it’s essential for them to have enough downtime for those “aha” moments that elevate their work from good to excellent.

Simpler, more intuitive software can free up the admin time your team spends logging hours, navigating between client and project info, and communicating with their colleagues. Centralized project and client information can also help your team make the connections necessary for more strategic decision-making.

ProCharted is a simple, all-in-one solution that keeps workflows, time tracking, documents, billing and more all in one place. The upshot? Your team can see their time not just in terms of its benefit for a single project, but in the context of everyone’s work across your entire firm. 

Ready to get started making each hour count? Try ProCharted free for 30 days today.