Employee time tracking for remote teams

Time tracking means recording the time spent on specific activities or projects. Done properly, it tells you something about employee productivity, project progress and how resources are allocated. Accurate hours show where there is room to improve, where to move people, and which work is profitable.

What a time tracking system needs#

Manual timesheets rarely produce accurate, timely information. They invite mistakes, take time to fill in, and carry too little detail about the project the hours belong to. Time tracking software does the same job with less friction.

The features that matter:

• Ease of use. If recording an hour is slow or awkward, people put it off and guess at the end of the week.
• Accuracy. Entries are stored as they were made, and reports show the detail behind every number.
• Reporting. Hours break down by project, task and client, so decisions rest on figures rather than impressions.
• Project management integration. When time tracking sits next to the project tools, progress and hours can be read together.

Why it matters more in a remote team#

Remote work is flexible and convenient for both the employee and the employer, but managing productivity across a distributed team brings its own problems. A manager in an office sees and talks to the team through the day. A remote team has no equivalent, so it leans on recorded data instead.

Recorded hours give everyone the same picture of what is expected and who is doing what. People can see their own contribution and what it adds up to for the team.

There is a legal side as well. An organisation with remote staff still has to comply with labour law wherever its people sit, and that includes an employee’s right to disconnect. Recording time and attendance properly is how you show that people got enough rest and were able to switch off. For what the rules look like in the EU specifically, see how to track time and stay compliant in the EU.

Time tracking with M‑Files#

CtrlTime records, manages and reports the time spent on projects inside M‑Files. Hours go on the M‑Files record the work belongs to: a customer, a project, a document. Each person’s entries group into a week, and the week goes to a manager or administrator for approval.

CtrlTime draws up the statements of hours that payroll and invoicing need, so salaries and client invoices come from the same entries instead of being typed in again.

Because CtrlTime works inside the vault, people record time in the M‑Files window they already have open, on the record the work belongs to. There is no second system to keep in step with M‑Files.

Want to see a week of hours go from the calendar to approval? Book a demo, or see what CtrlTime records and how a week is approved.

Where that leaves you#

Time tracking is not supervision. For a remote team it is the record of what was worked on, what a project cost, and whether people were able to stop. Record it close to the work, and invoicing, payroll and project follow-up all come off the same data.

If your people are spread across locations and the hours still get guessed at the end of the week, tell us how they log time today and we will show you what that week looks like recorded in M‑Files. We answer the same working day.