The Complete Guide to

Managing your Team's

Time from A to Z
Enhance team time management by leveraging
the power of time tracking.
Timeular is the
easiest way to
track your
team's time
Track time without losing
focus. Understand where
your team's time goes and
increase productivity.
Since 2016, we've worked with 70k+ users and
companies like Google, Audi and Ricola to help
them manage their time effectively. We've
collected many stories and best practices on
Try Timeular for free
productivity and time management.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.
 Table of contents

Chapter 1
Why good time management is vital
for your team.......................................5

Chapter 2
Time tracking: What it is and how to
get started...........................................9

The Complete Chapter 3

Time management techniques: avoid
Guide to time wasters, prioritize, and get work
done...................................................34
Managing your Chapter 4

Team's Time The best tools to manage your team

efficiently...........................................49

from A to Z Conclusions......................................57
What you'll find in this guide: "At Timeular, we
believe that time
In this guide, we've condensed tracking is the
the best strategies to track, foundation of good time
optimize and organize your management. Because
team's time. Learn how to boost you can't optimize what
you don't measure."
your team's productivity by
leveraging the power of time The Timeular Team
management.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z 04

 Why good time
management is vital
for your team

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 1

Time Employees spend 51% of every workday on
low to no-value tasks. And the average

management worker wastes 2 hours per day, resulting in

a loss of productivity of $759 billion

affects
annually.

productivity,
Employees are also more productive and
effective with good time management, while
with poor time management, there's a
efficiency, and significant increase in stress, and time goes
wasted.
wellbeing
You wouldn't be here if you
didn't believe in the power of
time management. But do
you realize just how far its
impact reaches? Let's look at
some stats.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 1 - 06
The impact of time management

+66% more productive 72% of people have

employees greater life satisfaction
Time management helps teams to People using time management
prioritize and be more organized, which accomplish more. Hence they experience
improves productivity. greater fulfillment.
Source: Accelo Source: PsychologyToday

+20% increase in
effectiveness
People using time management
techniques are more likely to successfully
reach their goals.
Source: bwjournal.org

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 1 - 07

The reasons behind poor time management

Poor time management usually "Time management is

happens when employees have to more than just hitting
perform low to no-value tasks. deadlines. It's about
creating a system that
Also, according to Forbes, multitasking, blurred works for your team
responsibility, and micromanagement are some of and setting everyone
the biggest time wasters. The remedy to burned
daylight at work is to adopt proper team time
up for success."
management strategies supported by accurate time
The Timeular Team
tracking.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 1 - 08

 Time tracking:
What is it and how
to get started

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2

 What is time tracking

Time tracking is the process of

recording the time spent on
various tasks and activities.
Time tracking is vital for your
team because it provides
insight into what people
spend the most time on,
which can help improve
planning, productivity, and
Track time efficiency.

efficiently with In the following pages, we'll illustrate how

to convince your team to track time,

your team
which mistakes you should avoid, and a
real-life example of how to use time
tracking.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 10
Time tracking benefits your team
Improves planning Spots time-wasters
Time tracking enhances planning by clearly By monitoring the distractions' length, your
showing how your team spends time and how long team can identify and minimize time-wasting
a task will take. activities.

Enhances the team's focus Boosts productivity

Keeping track of time motivates staying focused By measuring how your team spends time, you
and productive by creating a sense of can help them prioritize what matters the most
accountability and measurable progress. and work more effectively.

Ensuring fair workloads

You can monitor workloads and facilitate the
distribution of tasks by tracking time. This will
ensure work-life balance.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 11

 "Time tracking helped our team drastically improve
productivity, handling more tasks in less time. With
that, we switched from an 8-hour to a 6-hour
workday."

Andriy Sambir, CEO at LinkUp Studio

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 12

How to
The concept of time tracking can appear
intimidating and privacy-invading to some

motivate your
people. After introducing time tracking,
employees may fear that management will
spy on them. Address those misconceptions
team to track and communicate the added value of time
tracking to your team. Ensure you don't
time intrude on their privacy.

The best way to convince your team to

We’ll show you how to track time is to help them to build the habit.
motivate your team to track To do that, we'll follow what expert James
Clear calls the four stages of habit.
time by following the four
stages of habit theorized by
productivity expert James
Clear.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 13

Make time tracking a team's habit
To make time tracking a team’s routine, approach it by following the four stages of habit by
James Clear: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward.

1 Cue: Talk benefits.

Tell your team that, on the one hand, tracking
time can help them to work more effectively and
3 Response: Track with ease.
Pick a tool that is easy to use for the team. The
market has plenty of shiny software with zillions of
with fewer distractions. On the other hand, as a features. For something to become a habit, it must
manager, you'll have a clear view of imbalanced be easy initially. So, choose a software that makes
workloads and time-wasting activities, which will time tracking effortless, like Timeular. When time-
help you to adjust the team's tasks. tracking is easy, your team won't push back.

2 Craving: Depict the result.

Your team should not crave time tracking per se
but the benefits of it. Tell your team that tracking
4 Reward: Use great incentives.
If your team is reluctant to track time, provide
incentives. You know best what your people long
time will spot energy-draining activities, which for, so be creative. Think of a reward they’ll love and
can be eliminated and help them work more on offer it to members who accurately track their time.
what matters. Ultimately, this will lead to higher Some tips: offer verbal recognition, gifts, vouchers,
satisfaction, career advancement, and less stress or additional time off.
overall.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 14

 "By adopting the right approach, time tracking can
contribute to a safer work environment that
promotes mental health and increases productivity
alike."

Piotr Koprowski, Head of Growth at Timeular

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 15

Avoid these
These are the most common mistakes
when time tracking:

common Micromanagement
Poor communication
pitfalls when Tracking too many activities
Not setting goals
introducing
time tracking
Managers often make crucial
time tracking mistakes that
lead to decreased team
productivity and trust.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 16

Frequent mistakes in time tracking
Micromanagement Not setting goals
Wondering what your employees are doing all day long? You need to set goals to ensure your team estimates
You're dubious about how some team members work? Be whether there's an improvement. For example, a clear
aware that controlling your employees leads to a lack of objective that team members could set individually is
trust and results in a 50% decrease in employees' working at least 70% of the workweek on proactive work
productivity. and 30% on reactive.

Tracking too many tasks Poor onboarding

Tracking too many tasks will overwhelm your team. To Not introducing time tracking correctly in your team could
make it a habit, the right approach is to incorporate time compromise how accurately they will track time. If you
tracking step-by-step. don't share the why behind time tracking, your team
members might also think the worst, that you don't trust
them.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 17

 "I've found time tracking software helpful in
onboarding and coaching new employees. The tools
allowed me to see what tasks were taking the most
time. They were potentially more difficult for those
new employees to grasp, thus allowing me to
employ effective interventions and help that new
hire come up to speed that much faster."

Angela Robinson, Content Lead at Teambuilding

Time tracking hint

Forgetting to track is a common issue. Ensure
your team sets custom reminders or uses our
physical tracking dice. Chapter 2- 18
A real-life
For this use case, we’ll imagine that you are
aiming to increase profitability with your

example of
team. We'll follow the steps below:

Align on a time tracking objective

team time Establish shared guidelines
Download Timeular

tracking with Configure your Shared Space

Track time

Timeular Analyze the data

Set goals

In this section, you'll see a

real-life example of how you
could start tracking time with
your team in Timeular. We'll
guide you step-by-step
through the process.
 "Timeular has helped my workflow and given me
great data for how much time I spend on each type
of project. I love how simple it is to use, and the
novel idea to include a physical item that sits in
front of you, that you can design and name
however you want."

Heater M., Senior Graphic Designer

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 20

Step #1 Align on a time-tracking objective

Discuss with your team

members why you need to
track time together.
Sharing the why behind
time tracking will help your
team feel at ease while
tracking and reinforcing
trust.

Let's say that you're an agency

working on multiple projects and your
profits are decreasing. You need a
clear picture of how your team is
spending time and to be able to spot
unprofitable projects.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2- 21

Step #2 Establish shared guidelines

Create a shared document and Finally, anticipate and

troubleshoot potential obstacles:
agree on timeframes, tasks, what will happen if some
insights, and troubleshooting teammates don’t track time
properly? Or what to do if
strategies with the team. someone doubts how to label a
task? Write down the answers.
Decide when your team should track time;
for example, 9.00 - 18.00. Agree on which
activities they should and should not track.

For instance, they will track client work,

meetings, and email but will not include
personal breaks, interruptions or internal
admin tasks. Convey when you all will look
at the insights and what you’ll pay attention
to (billable tracking, productivity trends, or
length of tasks).
Step #3 Download Timeular

(1) Download Timeular at timeular.com/download. (2) Install and start the

software. (3) Log in with your email and the password or if you don't have
one: create a new account by following the "Sign Up" button.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 23

Step #4 Configure your Timeular folder

(4) Click on "Add folder" and create a folder for every project you have. If
your projects have similar names, add a client prefix to the folder title so
it’s easier to find. (5) For every folder, tick the ''Track billable time in this
folder". Read more about billable tracking here. (6) Select the appropriate
currency.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 24
Step #5 Add activities to your folder

(7) Add activities to each project. For example, add coding, design, writing,
meetings, etc. (8) Configure the hourly rate of each activity.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 25

Step #6 Start inviting contributors

(9) Start adding contributors to the folder by entering their emails.

(10) Set roles as contributor or supervisor. Read more about Timeular roles
here.
(11) For now, skip the tag configuration as it will add too much complexity at
this stage. You're all set to track time with your team!
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 26
Step #7 Track time for two weeks

(12) Once you’ve collected enough data with your team (roughly two weeks
of tracking), it's time to analyse the time entries. Forgetting to track is a
common issue. Ensure your team sets custom reminders or uses our
physical tracking cube.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 27

Step #8 Analyze team's billable tracking data

(13) Head over to the tab ''Insights'' in Timeular. (14) Use custom filters to
segment the data per activity, contributor, or project. (15) Look at the
billable hour insights in Timeular and find differences between what you bill.

Timeular tutorial
Learn how to use insights and understand your time. Chapter 2 - 28
Step #9 Analyze your team's activities

(16) Assuming you're filtering activities, you may have realised that your
team worked more hours than planned on the website redesign, but you
should have billed the client more realistically.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 29

Step #10 Look at time entries per contributor

(17) Spot differences between workloads and types of activities. You may
discover that some of your top performers are too busy in meetings instead
of focusing on the projects that matter the most.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 2 - 30

Take action based on time tracking
Time tracking alone won't change anything. You need to take
action based on the insights! To help you with the profitability
analysis, answer the following questions by looking at the data.

Are the hours spent on each client

aligned with the customers'
agreement?

Which clients are more profitable?

Which clients are more demanding

but less profitable?

How many billable vs. non-billable

hours are we generating as a team?

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z

 "We've saved a lot of time with Timeular. Monthly
time reviews that were previously taking up half a
day every month now take 15 minutes. It's an
immense time-saving!"

Simon Echle, Managing Director at avocado

Time tracking hint

Track just a few activities with the team at the beginning—
for example, reactive and proactive work. Also, call for
volunteers in each department and estimate task duration
to reach a specific goal. From there, build a business case. Chapter 2 - 32
 Time management
techniques: avoid time
wasters, prioritize, and get
work done.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3

 Deal with time wasters

In this section, we'll see the

costs of time wasters and how
to deal with them. Poor time
management and unclear
responsibilities lead a team to
waste time on zero-impact
tasks without contributing to
Track and the team's objectives.

eliminate time Examples of time wasters and tedious

tasks are the following:
wasters Meetings without a clear purpose;
Some useless emails and calls;

intelligently Redundant tasks;

IT inefficiencies;
Manual data entry.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3 - 35
Time-wasting
Time wasting can also have financial costs
for organizations. Teams not working

activities are
efficiently may require additional resources
or support to complete their work, leading to
increased costs. In addition, missed
costly deadlines or delayed projects can lead to
lost revenue and missed opportunities. On
the following page, we'll see how to spot
Time wasting at work can have and eliminate time-wasting activities.
significant costs for both
individuals and organizations. From
missed deadlines and decreased
productivity to increased stress
and burnout, the impact of time
wasting can be far-reaching.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z

Four strategies to eliminate time wasting activities

1 Quantify
Use time tracking to quantify how
3 Streamline processes
Eliminate unnecessary steps or tasks
many hours your team is working on to reduce the time and effort
low to zero-impact tasks. required to complete tasks.

2 Automate
Use automation tools or software to
4 Delegate
People can delegate tasks to other
automate repetitive or tedious tasks, members or external resources to
freeing up time for more critical reduce the workload and free up
tasks. time.

Calculate the cost time wasted

Analyze the loss in profitability due to time-
wasters using this template. You need time-
tracking data available! Chapter 2 - 37
 "With time tracking, we can better predict, down to
the minute, how long tasks should take, therefore
making better-informed decisions and determining
a sustainable cost structure. On average, about 20
hours are saved each month by auditing time per
task."

Justin Mitchell, COO at Simform, ex-CEO of Yac

Chapter 2 - 38
 Two methods to prioritize
your team's work

Based on the insights

collected with time-tracking,
your team should know how
Prioritize your they use time at work. Now it's
time to prioritize the tasks.
teams' work
Prioritization methods are great systems

with these to get work done effectively, reducing the

risk of feeling overwhelmed and

effective
disorganized. We've selected two of the
most famous prioritization methods for
this section: The Eisenhower Matrix and

methods the R.I.C.E. scoring.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3- 39

Prioritize using
In the following pages, you'll learn when and
how to apply those two powerful

the Eisenhower
prioritization methods. Time tracking will be
a precious ally in prioritizing your team's
tasks: By having a realistic estimation of
and R.I.C.E how long activities will take, your team will
plan and estimate efforts better.
methods
The Eisenhower Matrix is a time
management system that helps
prioritize tasks based on urgency
and importance. The R.I.C.E.
scoring, instead, is a prioritization
technique used in product
development to determine which
features or projects should be
tackled first.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z
The Eisenhower Matrix

When to use this method How to create the matrix

Teams need the Eisenhower Matrix to move Open a collaboration platform like Miro or
forward with long-term goals, which are Mural, and create the quadrant as in the
often overlooked because they are not so image on the following page. Fit your daily
demanding. To use this method it's crucial tasks into each corresponding quadrant.
to understand the difference between
The "Do" quadrant contains tasks that contribute to
essential and urgent tasks.
long-term goals and have to be done now by the team.
The "Schedule" quadrant it's about essential tasks
Important activities may not need your prompt which are not urgent but need to be planned.
attention but contribute to long-term goals. The "Delegate" area is about activities that your team
Urgent activities require immediate intervention and currently performs but don't contribute to long-term
can't be delayed. goals. Also, those tasks don't need your team's specific
skillset.
The "Delete" quadrant will contain all the activities that
didn't fall in the previous three areas.

Chapter 3- 41
 The Eisenhower Matrix

Important Urgent Not urgent

Do: Schedule:
Tasks with deadlines or Tasks with unclear
immediate consequences. deadlines, contribute to
long-term goals.
Not importa nt

Delegate: Delete:
Tasks that must get done Distraction and unnecessary
but do not require your tasks.
specific skillset.

Time tracking hint

By looking at time tracking data, the team can accurately estimate the duration of tasks
in the ‘'Do First'' quadrant and plan the activities in the ‘'Schedule'' one. Insights will also
reveal the magnitude of the tasks in the "Delegate" and "Delete" quadrants. Chapter 3- 42
The R.I.C.E. scoring

When to use this method How to create the scoring

To apply the R.I.C.E. method, you need a
When resources are low, and you need to spreadsheet. You can use the original
decide on the most impactful task, it's time R.I.C.E. template from Intercom.
to use R.I.C.E.
Reach is an estimate of how many people/events will be
The R.I.C.E. acronym stands for reach, impact, confidence, impacted by the activity.
and effort. This scoring method was developed at Intercom
to facilitate decision-making. Impact is the contribution of the activity to the end goal.
Assign 3 for massive impact, 2 for high, 1 for medium, 0.5
for low, and 0.25 for minimal.

Confidence is how confident you are about the impact.

Assign 100 for high confidence, 80 for medium, and 50 for
low.

Effort is the product between the estimated time and the

workforce (N people) needed to complete the task. The
higher the effort, the higher the number we assign to it.
Learn more about Effort here.

Fill the spreadsheet with your task list and assign the
scores to each. The R.I.C.E. score is calculated as
R.I.C.E.= (Reach * Impact * Confidence) / Effort
At this point, order the R.I.C.E. score column in ascending
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z order. Here’s your priority list!
How time tracking enhances
prioritization?
Teams who track their time are more "My time spent on
aware of their tasks’ duration and are revenue-generating
more likely to give accurate estimates. projects has increased
by ~10% each week,
For example, teams can accurately plan essential and time in meetings
but non-urgent tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix. declined by about 1-2
Finally, time-tracking helps also to asses the effort
needed in each task (like in the RICE method).
meetings per week."
Time tracking is also beneficial for the R.I.C.E.
Angela Morisette, VP of
method when estimating Effort scores. As research
Business Operations at
proved, our time estimates are often distorted by our
Scratchpay
emotions. Therefore, time tracking can provide an
objective and accurate estimation of the length of a
task.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3- 44

 Two great time management
techniques

The following techniques will

be game-changers for your
team's efficiency: Time-
boxing and Task batching.
Use two
These two techniques allow your team to

powerful time work in a more structured way and block

the right time to stay focused without

management
distractions. At this point, you should have
built a solid time awareness with time
tracking, defeated time wasters, and

techniques prioritized and planned your team’s work.

Now it’s time to get work done efficiently.
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3- 39
Learn how to use
Time tracking is a helpful tool for improving
both time boxing and task batching

timeboxing and
techniques. Tracking time can help teams
identify how long specific tasks take, adjust
their time boxes, and plan batched
task batching activities accordingly.

With Timeboxing, a specific

amount of time is allocated to
complete a task or activity. It
involves breaking down a task into
smaller, manageable parts and
allocating a fixed amount of time to
complete each part. With Task
batching, similar tasks or activities
are grouped and completed during
a designated time period.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 3- 46

Time-boxing

What is it and how to apply it Time-boxing tips for teams

Bill Gates and Elon Musk are big proponents Encourage your team to block time in
of time-boxing. This technique divides your the agenda for focus hours;
day into chunks, each dedicated to a Team members should plan space for
specific activity. Here's how to apply it. breaks in between tasks;
Everyone should have empty spaces in
Take a paper or a digital notebook, and list tasks you their calendar where others can book
must complete in one day;
meetings.
Estimate how much time you’ll need for each;
Create events in your calendar dedicated to such
tasks.
Focus on such activities for the dedicated timeframe.

The time-boxing technique does wonders for focus.

Time tracking hint

Tracking time enhances your team’s
awareness of how they spend their time.
Therefore, they’ll be more precise when
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z planning their time-boxes.
Task batching

What is it, and how to apply it Time batching tips for teams

This strategy is an ideal remedy when your Here are some tips to make task-batching
team experiences lots of context-switching even more effective as a team:
activities. With task batching, you have to
Batch meetings all together between one or two
group similar activities and get them done in weekdays
a specific time frame. Encourage team members to work in co-focus
sessions on the same tasks
Reserve low-impact tasks at the end of the day or
Task batching helps teams focus on similar tasks at the
when people’s energy is lower
time and prevents the adverse effects of multitasking.

Some tips:
List daily tasks on a piece of paper or digital support
Categorize tasks per type (emails, meetings, writing,
brainstorming, etc.)
Use time-boxing to plan the batches into the calendar
Work according to your task-batching plan

Time tracking hint

Use task batching with the Pomodoro
technique. In Timeular, the team can set up
custom reminders. After 30 minutes of focus,
they will get a notification to take a break. Chapter 3- 48
 The best tools to manage
your team efficiently

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 4

Timeular
Timeular is the ultimate
solution for time-tracking.
Get hyper-accurate insights, track
billable time precisely and spot
productivity trends. Keep your team's
flow intact and prevent imbalanced
workloads.

Track time with your team.

Easy to build a habit with the physical tracker.
Stop chasing timesheets: In Timeular's insights
section, you can directly see your team's data.
Export time entries effortlessly.
Keep team's workflow flow intact.
Maximize profits by billing clients accurately.
Try Timeular for free

14-day free trial. No credit card required.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 4- 50

Four tools to manage your team

Notion Calendly
Calendly helps you to
Notion is your centralized
schedule appointments
hub for storing all the
and meetings easily. It
essential documentation
automatically checks for
and tasks for freelancers
conflicts in your
and outsourcing
calendar, and you can
companies.
set up reminders to keep
Stop running behind tons
appointments on track.
of sheets and folders.

Loom
Loom helps your team
Slack
record videos without Slack helps teams
prior knowledge of streamline
editing. Share tutorials communication and
and videos with collaboration with tools
prospects, team for instant messaging,
members, and customers file sharing, voice calls,
in just a few clicks. and much more.

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Chapter 4- 51

 Conclusions

The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z Conclusions - 52

 Key learnings

If there’s one thing you should take home

after reading this guide, it's that good
time management starts with accurate

Proper team
time tracking. Let's recap what you've
learned in this guide:
Set time tracking as the cornerstone

time for your team's time management.

Identify time-wasting activities.
Prioritize your team's assignments.
management Stay focused using the time-boxing
and task-batching techniques

starts with time Invest in time management and

collaborative tools.

tracking
The Complete Guide to Managing your Team's Time from A to Z
Discover how
Timeular can
help your team
save countless
hours.
Book a discovery call with
us and make the best of
Timeular for your team!

Book in a call