Does salesforce have a time tracking solution? Want to know how you can track time in Salesforce?
The Salesforce ecosystem is a collection of cloud-based productivity software tools that’ll help you automate many time-consuming and tedious aspects of your business. From products aimed at sales, marketing, analytics and more, Salesforce has a solution for virtually everything.
But how do you track the time your employees spend on any of those Salesforce solutions? Are there other time tracking features you can use in Salesforce? Can Salesforce track employee time outside of their specific work in the application? Are there industry specific Salesforce solutions with tracking capabilities?
Summit will cover what Salesforce is and why you should set up a system for Salesforce time tracking. We’ll show you how to track time in the app and also give you a breakdown of a few Salesforce products to use to track time.
Salesforce offers multiple cloud-based SaaS products that focus on sales, marketing, customer service, and commerce – used by companies in industries like:
- Banking and Finance
- Communications
- Consumer Goods
- Healthcare and Insurance
- Manufacturing
- Media
- Travel & Hospitality
Salesforce offers tools that can streamline your workflows.
And when you use a comprehensive software like Salesforce, it’s always a good idea to have a time tracking system in place.
Here are three key reasons why:
1. Get A Grasp On Project Progress And Improve Transparency
Have you ever realized that a task was taking longer than usual, but couldn’t accurately check how much time it actually took?
While opinions are useful, they don’t provide you with all the information you need. Andnobody wants to approach the C-suite with an opinion they cannot back up with facts, right?
By using a time tracking system in Salesforce, identify which tasks are being completed on time and which tasks are taking longer than expected. As everything is updated in real-time, you’ll get accurate data regarding the time your projects take. Salesforce allows you to build custom reports and dashboards that put all this time tracking information at your fingertips in graphical representations that are easy to understand and up to date.
Additionally, when you track time across all Salesforce apps, you won’t have to ask your employees how long they spent on each task. They won’t waste precious time counting minutes or turning timers on and off on their phones.
Using a time tracker will even help you be more transparent with clients. Time tracking in and with Salesforce is easy, useful, and intuitive.
Clients paying for services expect your business to execute tasks with perfect time management because they don’t want to waste their money.
When a client asks why a project took so long, you can always produce a report from your time tracking system to show them which tasks were the most time-consuming and whether the time drain originated from an issue on your side of the project or their side.
2. Analyze Profitability And Quote More Accurate Prices
Do you know how much income you lose when you don’t track project times in Salesforce? Some businesses set standard prices for their services irrespective of the actual time it takes to accomplish that specific task. But in a competitive market that isn’t necessarily your best policy. For example, you’d charge both Company A and Company B $500 for some consulting work. But while you could complete the work for Company A in under 5 hours, Company B’s task could take more than 10 hours to complete, including changes. That doesn’t sound like a fair price, right?
With a time tracking system in Salesforce, you’ll know exactly how much time you spend on a client’s project. This way, you can charge them for the actual work instead of setting a standard price that ignores the time and effort that goes into your task. Clients can then be rewarded – or penalized – for being the blocker on a project’s completion.
Once you have a time tracking system in place, you can also use it to identify which clients you do the most work for, helping you differentiate your more profitable clients from others. With this data in hand your Salesforce analytics allow you to do targeted account based marketing going after the highest profit potential deals.
3. Helps You Identify Issues With Productivity
When you use a time tracking system, it allows you to see how your employees are faring with their tasks in Salesforce.
With a time tracking system, you’ll have previous data to give you an idea of how long it typically takes to complete a task.
This way, you can always know if any employee is taking too long or having trouble with their tasks. You can then step in to help them or assign it to another team member capable of handling it. Armed with this data you can build employee training enhancements with Salesforce Experience Cloud or target custom trailheads from Salesforce.
Additionally, some time tracking tools offer distraction management features to help employees focus on their assigned tasks. This way, you can keep your teams productive and avoid any bottlenecks that affect your team’s attitude and performance.
How do you do all this in Salesforce?
You need an accurate system that will help you keep track of each projects’ progress and how productive your employees are while using Salesforce.
Here are two ways to easily track time in Salesforce:
A. Use An App From The Salesforce AppExchange
The Salesforce AppExchange is a web store that allows you to download tons of extensions for your Salesforce ecosystem.
The AppExchange features over 2.7 million applications that range from customizable project management tools to apps that connect Excel to Salesforce. You can also download various time tracking apps from the AppExchange. With a custom Salesforce integration fromSummit we will handle all the Salesforce AppExchange tools you need for a fully customized Salesforce org.
Here’s how you can install an automatic time tracker from the Salesforce AppExchange yourself:
- Log in to your Salesforce account and go to the Salesforce AppExchange.
- Search for Time Tracker and click on an app of your choice.
- Click on Get It Now and select the environment type you want to install it in. You can choose to install it in Production or Sandbox (Test).
- Enter any required information like your contact information. Then, check the checkbox at the bottom and click on Install.
- You can then decide to install the app:
- For admins only.
- For all users.
- For specific users.
Once the installation is complete, you can use the app extension to track time in Salesforce.
Most time trackers offer different features for:
- Tracking the time your employees spend on work.
- Invoicing clients based on billable hours.
- Managing payments of your employees based on their work hours.
However, since these applications are designed only for Salesforce, you won’t necessarily be able to use it with any other software you use at work.
Additionally, while they’ll allow you to track time in Salesforce, you won’t know if your employees were actually productive or just wasting work time running the timer.
B. Use An Integration From A Comprehensive Time Tracking Software
If you want a more comprehensive time tracking solution than what’s offered on the AppExchange, you can integrate Salesforce with a dedicated time tracking system.
As these time tracking tools are designed to integrate with Salesforce, they offer tons of additional standalone features that can help you understand how your employees work and analyze how productive they are. To integrate a time tracking solution for Salesforce that also communicates with other applications you can look for available integrations with connectivity tools like Zapier or custom integrations from a Salesforce partner likeSummit.
So, you now know how to set up time tracking in Salesforce. Salesforce time tracking integration gives you visibility into what is going on with your teams and your business. In fact, you can utilize trackers for more than just time. Salesforce tracking software solutions can calculate the distance field reps travel, can track an employee’s location for safety and security reasons, track expenses and reimbursements, and for tracking appointments.
With Salesforce time tracking, you can see hours scheduled, completed and remaining for each task, with hours broken down into billable, non-billable and overtime.
But how do you put it to use in your unique organization? When you download a time tracker from the AppExchange or integrate a separate time tracking app, you can use it with most Salesforce products. Let’s take a look at five such Salesforce products you can track time in:
Sales Cloud
Salesforce’s Sales Cloud is a cloud-based product that focuses on sales automation, sales forecasting and sales management. It helps sales, marketing and finance teams manage business strategies and track performance — helping exceed customers’ expectations.
Once you use time tracking within Salesforce, you can monitor how long your sales processes take and where you can save time.
Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a product designed to help customer service teams deliver better solutions to their customers. Using time tracking on Service Cloud can help you identify how much time your team spends on sales tasks like answering incoming queries and providing customers with solutions.
The Track Time Lightning Component is a great addition to case management in Service Cloud. Every time an agent opens the Case View page for a specific Case, the timer automatically tracks time spent viewing the Case. If the agent closes the view page or navigates away to a different page, the component automatically updates a Time Detail log.
Marketing Cloud
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps you understand your customers and produce more meaningful and engaging content. The Marketing Cloud app features an easy-to-use interface and is broken down into several “studios” like “email studio,” “audience studio,” “data studio” and more. You can use Marketing Cloud to engage in B2C or B2B marketing and analyze trends with its AI-enabled features to cater to customers better.
Time tracking with Marketing Cloud helps you get an idea of how much time your team spent on devising plans and reaching out to prospective customers.
Commerce Cloud
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is aimed at firms selling products to other businesses and consumers. This platform syncs up customer data in real-time so your agents can serve them better. It also keeps track of your customers’ preferred communication channels, so you can engage them wherever they want.
Using a time tracking system with Commerce Cloud can help you keep track of how much time your employees spend dealing with customers.
Analytics Cloud (formerly known as Tableau CRM, now commonly called Salesforce Einstein)
What’s the most important tool you need to run your business smoothly? The answer is data, and Salesforce and Summit LLC understand the importance of it. Salesforce Einstein is a complete data analysis solution that helps you bring together your organization’s business information. You can then visualize all your complex data in Salesforce — which will help you easily understand the data in front of you.
Using a time tracker with Salesforce Einstein will help you gain an idea of how much time you can save by centralizing all your data in Salesforce. You’ll also know how much time it takes to generate valuable insights to develop your business strategies.
Salesforce is a massive collection of productivity apps and for some businesses, it might be all they need in their digital toolkit.
However, when your employees are on Salesforce the entire day, you need to monitor their activity — to ensure that all that time is spent productively. Take a look at the Salesforce time tracking options and see which one works for you.
In Conculsion
With time tracking tools for Salesforce, you’ll be able to easily manage your employees’ productivity and payroll, as well as bill your clients accurately for any project.
Summit builds custom solutions as well as integrates time tracking solutions from the Salesforce AppExchange. Salesforce offers a powerful suite of reporting and analytics tools that work together to help you understand and act on your data, as well as distribute insights to business users.
