In an IT services company, every hour counts. Client satisfaction and profitability hinge on a simple factor: task planning. Timesheets are still perceived as an administrative burden. This measurement tool is a strategic lever for improving project performance.
The Timesheet: an Underestimated Profitability Indicator
Many companies consider the timesheet a mere formality, or even a waste of time. This is a costly mistake. In reality, the timesheet is the key tool for calculating the activity rate excluding leave (TACE), which indicates the percentage of billable days compared to the total number of working days excluding leave.
In the IT services sector, a TACE between 75% and 85% is considered a profitability indicator. The higher this rate, the more the company maximizes its billable days and generates revenue. Conversely, a low rate reveals idle periods or underutilization of employees, directly impacting profitability. Why is this monitoring crucial? Because it helps identify discrepancies between planned time and actual time invested.
What Makes a Good Timesheet?
A good timesheet is not limited to counting hours; it must accurately and clearly reflect operational reality. To be effective, it must include essential fields such as the date, employee name, relevant project or client, type of task performed, and the number of hours invested, whether billable or not.
The ability to add comments or contextual annotations is also an asset, as it helps justify certain discrepancies or signal specific needs. Finally, ease of use remains a key parameter: a timesheet that is too complex discourages regular entry and leads to incomplete data, while an intuitive and mobile-accessible tool promotes regularity and reliability of information.
Benefits Shared by All
In agencies and consulting firms, a well-designed timesheet is not a constraint, but an organizational aid. It allows them to better visualize consultants’ workload, value their activities, and have concrete elements to justify their performance. For managers, it is a valuable source of information for anticipating needs, distributing workload evenly, and detecting at-risk projects before they become unmanageable. Ultimately, a better organized team is also a more engaged and loyal team, and this translates into profitability.
Direct Benefits on your Profitability
The silent scourge of productivity is a lack of task planning and poor distribution of work time. A real-time overview of occupancy rates allows for intelligent task redistribution.
Burnout prevention is not just a matter of well-being: it’s pure profitability. A happy employee is a productive employee. According to an Exaegis study, 47% of HR Directors consider the T&A (Time and Activity Management) tool a key lever for reducing absenteeism as it increases operational stability.
Human ROI is concretely measured by reduced absenteeism, improved productivity, and decreased turnover.
Budgeting to Increase Profitability with a Timesheet
No more estimates and approximations that make you lose bids or accept unprofitable projects. Precise calculation of labor costs per project becomes automatic. Detailed allocation across multiple projects is done effortlessly.
Result: controlled margins and restful sleep. Optimizing management time frees up managers to undertake higher value-added tasks.
Anticipate Delays before They Happen
Your real-time dashboard becomes an early warning system. Automatic alerts on budget/actual discrepancies transform you into a proactive pilot rather than a reactive firefighter.
The savings are numerous: avoided late penalties, optimized resources, preserved client relationships. Time management software allows for better control over the use of overtime and temporary staff.
Improved adherence to deadlines becomes your professional signature. Thanks to the time measurement tools integrated into an ERP like Furious, the company increases its productivity and profitability.
By managing our projects better, we save time to be more efficient. On the back-office side, Furious allows us to manage payroll almost instantly and integrate supplier invoices directly into project accounting, which helps us track their profitability in real-time.
Criteria for Choosing your Software Wisely
Technical Criteria (Non-Negotiable)
- Reliability: Your data is golden; protect it with secure hosting and automatic backups.
- Security: Mandatory GDPR compliance, data encryption, controlled access.
- Performance: Response time under 3 seconds, otherwise your teams are guaranteed to abandon it.
- Backup: Plan B always ready, guaranteed data recovery.
Functional Criteria (Differentiating)
- Industry Coverage: Adapted to YOUR specific industry, not a generic tool.
- Flexibility: Configurable according to your internal processes, not the other way around.
- Customer Support: Verifiable responsiveness and expertise – test before signing.
- Training: Change management support included in the offer.
Economic Criteria (Decisive)
Hidden Costs You Must Track:
- License Cost (the most obvious)
- Team Training (often forgotten in budgets)
- Data Migration (unpleasant surprise)
- Maintenance and Updates (recurring)
- Technical Support (varies by provider)
Key question to ask: “What ROI in how much time?” The return on investment must be measurable according to objective criteria adapted to your context.
Choosing the Right Time Management Tool
The Furious ERP stands out with its advanced time management features, offering businesses complete control over their projects and resources. Thanks to integrated tools for hour tracking, task planning, and automated reporting, it allows for real-time visualization of resource utilization and quick identification of discrepancies between planned and actual time spent.
This increased visibility promotes optimal team allocation, reduces productivity losses, and strengthens project profitability. By centralizing all time data in a single system, Furious also simplifies compliance and administrative monitoring, while facilitating strategic decision-making based on reliable and up-to-date data.
What I like most about Furious is that we quickly gained project management time and peace of mind. After just one week, we had more visibility. I estimate it saved me about 30% of time on all project manager roles, and it also relieves the team, which now has great visibility on what is being done.
Hidden Benefits that Make a Difference
Transparency regarding time objectives is a way to increase natural team engagement. Self-regulation becomes the norm: the best management is self-management.
Your employees become proactive. This collaborative anticipation is worth all the management tools in the world.
Automatic identification of bottlenecks allows for process optimization based on real data, not impressions. The standardization of best practices happens naturally.
A Performance Lever not to be Overlooked
The timesheet is not just an administrative tracking tool. When used well, it becomes a strategic lever to improve productivity, strengthen client relationships, and increase profitability. For IT service companies, its adoption is essential in a context where every hour counts.
You might be Asking Yourself these Questions?
01 What is Automatic Transaction Categorization?
This is an AI-based feature that automatically categorizes your expenses according to their nature, for simplified and more reliable financial tracking.
02 how Does Furious AI Work to Categorize Transactions?
With each import or bank synchronization, the AI analyzes the label, amount, and context to suggest a relevant category and tags. You validate, adjust if necessary, and the tool learns from your choices.
03 What are the Benefits of Automatic Categorization for Financial Teams?
Less manual entry, better accounting consistency, reduced human errors, and significant time savings on recurring tasks.
04 Can You Maintain Control over the Categories Suggested by the AI?
Yes, you remain in control of the suggestions: each classification can be accepted, modified, or refined. Automation supports, not replaces.
05 Does the AI Improve its Suggestions over Time?
Absolutely. The more you use the feature, the more the AI learns from your corrections and offers categorizations tailored to your habits.
06 who is this Feature for?
For financial managers, executives, or anyone looking to automate accounting processing, optimize cash flow, and focus on analysis rather than data entry.
