6 Checks to Simplify and Save on Work Time Administration

Work time administration can silently eat into productivity and profits. Small and medium-sized businesses spend precious hours each month on manual checks, record-keeping and compliance tasks that can easily be avoided. Use our checklist and discover where you can save time!

The risk of inefficient administration is very real: on average, 7 per cent of all working hours in Europe are dedicated to non-core activities like compliance and reporting. This equates to roughly 32 hours per business, per month. Across the continent, this adds up to billions of hours and tens of billions in labour costs annually.

Those are big numbers. How does inefficient work time administration affect your organisation? Use the checklist below to assess your current processes and take practical steps to address these inefficiencies.

Checklist

1. Analyse Your Current Time Burdens

• Map all administrative work time tasks

List where time is being spent: collecting timesheets, correcting errors, managing absences, reporting and compliance checks. In most companies, these processes involve multiple teams and people, so make sure to include everyone.

• Quantify time spent monthly

Once you know who is spending time on work administration and what tasks, you can make an estimate of hours spent per week for each person and task. Don’t worry if it’s hard to get exact numbers; even rough estimates can highlight the biggest time drains.

2. Standardise How Time Is Recorded

• Create clear, shared recording rules

Everyone should understand what counts as working time, breaks, overtime and absences. Check if it’s part of the onboarding procedure for new employees and whether all line managers are aware of the rules. Clear rules mean fewer questions and corrections, saving you valuable time.

• Use consistent formats

Whether digital or paper, standard templates reduce errors and confusion. Moving to a cloud-based solution such as TimeMoto is a very effective way to enforce standardisation, as all work time is tracked online in a standardized format – and in the case of TimeMoto, downloadable – templates.

3. Reduce Manual Data Entry

• Avoid multiple entries of the same data

Manual duplication is a widespread phenomenon. To illustrate this, 73% of Irish SMEs report frequently entering the same employee data multiple times. On average they spend nine hours per week on manual HR tasks such updating employee records, tracking attendance, and managing leave. Ask yourself: does this happen in my organization? And if so, where?

• Consolidate data sources

Manual duplication is often a sign that the same data is being replicated across multiple systems without automatic synchronization. Ensure that a single source of truth is used across payroll, planning and reporting.

4. Empower Employees With Clear Processes

• Give employees responsibility for their own records

Self-service for logging hours and managing absences reduces queries and corrections. This is yet another reason to consider a cloud-based solution over a paper-based system or a spreadsheet in Excel. Employees have access to their records and log their hours, which both empowers them and frees up valuable HR time.

• Provide simple guides

Short instructions on how to log time correctly can cut follow-ups. Guides should be standard in the onboarding procedure of new employees and everyone should be aware of where to find them.

5. Prepare for Compliance Requirements

• Understand EU time tracking obligations

Across the EU, employers must maintain objective, reliable records of hours worked, rest breaks and attendance. Several countries, for example Spain and Germany, are working on their own versions. TimeMoto Cloud is designed with the latest requirements in mind. Make sure your time tracking system complies with your local legislation.

• Build systems that support verifiable records

Whether digital or structured manual logs, records should be easy to produce for inspections or audits. In many cases, downloadable documents (for example, PDF) will be required. Yet again, check your local requirements.

6. Introduce Time-Saving Tools and Automation

• Identify repetitive tasks that can be automated

Alerts on early and late clock-outs are good first targets. In TimeMoto Cloud, it’s possible to set triggered notifications for several scenarios, including early and late clock-ins and clock-outs, accumulation of overtime and employees who haven’t clocked in within X minutes of their shift starting. You can set them as live notifications or as daily, weekly, or monthly summaries.

• Set up workflow triggers

Automatic prompts can reduce delays. For example, remind employees to submit their absence requests before a deadline arrives, and to check their timesheets before the payroll process starts.

Conclusion

Minimising administrative time on work time processes isn’t just an efficiency win. It improves compliance, supports employee trust and clarity, and helps managers focus on strategic priorities rather than paperwork.

Studies show SMEs across Europe are feeling regulatory and administrative burdens keenly, with many seeing bureaucracy as a risk to competitiveness. By applying this checklist step by step, you can recover hours and focus on growth.

Find Out More

If your work time administration is becoming harder to manage, introducing more structure and visibility can make a real difference. TimeMoto Cloud help you centralise time tracking, absences and approvals in one clear system. Try it free at www.timemoto.com/free-trial.