Do you already know the legal requirements for electronic working time recording? If so, you're probably looking for the best software solution for your needs right now. Options are a dime a dozen, but software licenses for each employee can quickly run into money - whether you're using specialized software like Personio or Clockodo or a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel. In many companies that use Microsoft's Office package anyway, Excel is used to record working hours, although this has some disadvantages. In this article, you will therefore learn which cost-effective alternative is available and how it compares to Excel.
What options you have for recording working time
Before the triumph of digitization, mechanical time clocks were commonplace, especially in larger industrial companies. You may still remember them from the past: When a paper card was inserted, these automatically stamped the times of coming and going. These have little in common with today's "time clocks": they usually refer to electronic check-in systems, which are often also used for identity and access control. However, these devices are very expensive to purchase and are only suitable for you if you maintain large sites (e.g., plants or office buildings) where many employees work in attendance.
At the latest since the Corona crisis, when many companies switched to a hybrid work model of office and home office days, digital systems for recording working hours have taken hold. Few companies still have working hours recorded on printed timesheets. In the worst case, the lists then have to be transferred manually to a digital system, which is very time-consuming and, of course, outdated given today's possibilities. With the right software, you not only save time, but also minimize the administrative effort of manually entering and analyzing data.
The countless software solutions you can use for time tracking differ in their range of functions, price and user-friendliness. Particularly often, companies that use Microsoft's Office package anyway opt for digital templates for recording working hours in Excel. Here, each employee receives a copy of the Excel template, which they fill in with their working hours and submit at the end of the month.
In the following, we will explore the question of what advantages the collaborative database software SeaTable offers in comparison to the recording of working hours in Excel. Are you in a hurry? Then try our free working time tracking template right now.
1. advantage: save costs
Expensive special software for HR is one thing, but Microsoft Office licenses for all employees can also be expensive. If you haven't already purchased Excel as part of an Office package, you should think twice before buying it. There are cheaper or even free alternatives, especially for staff scheduling and time recording with Excel. One of them is the collaborative database software SeaTable.
SeaTable, in its free subscription, offers all the basic functions of a conventional spreadsheet, but can do much more: it lets you link records in different tables, making SeaTable a relational database. With over 20 column types covering all common data formats, you can capture any type of information, create checkboxes, buttons and selection columns, as well as store images and files, which is not possible with Excel.
Another aspect that you should not ignore: Using SeaTable is comparatively child's play. In contrast, getting started with Excel seems simple, but the program is complex. In order to create an Excel template with which you can map a functioning process for recording working hours in your company, you need a lot of time and know-how. And if you're not familiar with Excel, you'll need to shell out money to hire an expert.
2nd advantage: user-friendly data acquisition
When it comes to recording working hours in Excel, there is only one interface: a table. Apart from the fact that black, white and gray timesheets are not exactly a feast for the eyes, they also make data entry prone to errors. It can quickly happen that your employees mistype or slip when entering data in the row or column. You can hardly influence the process of filling out the time sheet in Excel.
In SeaTable, you can make data collection intuitive and user-friendly by having your employees enter their working hours into web forms, just like an online survey. In doing so, you can provide the input fields with specific instructions to guide the fillers safely through the process. At the end of the day, your employees simply enter the start of work, breaks, and end of work - and optionally, which topics they worked on.
For each submitted web form, SeaTable adds a new entry to your spreadsheet that only you and, if applicable, other managers can see and edit. So that you always have an eye on the compliance of the working hours, SeaTable calculates in two formula columns the number of hours worked as well as the overtime or undertime in relation to the regular daily working hours. By marking the rows in color, you can see directly whether the hourly balance of a day is in the minus (red) or in the plus (green).
3. advantage: multiple possibilities for visualization of the data
At first glance, the working time table of SeaTable looks similar to the working time recording in Excel spreadsheets. However, the possibilities for visualizing and preparing the data go far beyond this: easy-to-use filters, sorting and grouping bring order to the data and graphical plugins such as calendars, kanban boards or statistics visualize the data with just a few clicks.
SeaTable even lets you build custom user interfaces and apps for specific groups of people. For example, in the timesheet template, we've created a management app for you that lets you keep track of your employees' overtime, vacation, and sick time on your dashboard, and easily approve or reject submitted requests.
4. advantage: all data in one place - secure in the cloud
If you use Excel to record working time, your employees probably keep their own spreadsheets in different storage locations, making it difficult for you and HR to regularly merge the data and keep track of it: At the end of the month at the latest, you will be overwhelmed each time by a mass of digital timesheets. Often, you are then sent the tables by e-mail or have to copy them back and forth at great expense. In addition, it is quite tedious and error-prone to manually transfer data from Excel into digital accounting systems. This all costs a lot of time and is totally inefficient.
Yet it could be so simple if your employees themselves ensured that their working times flowed correctly and orderly into a central database. And that's exactly what the SeaTable Cloud is for: Here you can collect all the data in just one place and control exactly who can see and edit which data via views, shares and permissions. Your data is securely stored on German servers and is always available online. In the cloud, your data remains secure even if your hardware is stolen or an employee's notebook is broken or lost.
Never again lose data, merge it manually and transfer it to other systems: with SeaTable you can minimize your workload and speed up the process compared to recording working hours in Excel. Since SeaTable combines all your employees' working hours in one central location, you have a broad data base with which you can create valuable analyses and statistics.
5. advantage: simply provide data for external parties
Especially if you employ people on an hourly basis, you also need to hand over the working time data to the accounting department so that it can prepare statements and pay wages on time. In large companies, accounting is an internal department, but smaller companies often outsource these tasks. The transfer of working time data then often takes place via e-mail or file sharing. Previously, HR managers laboriously copy together Excel spreadsheets, which they have to create and fill with data for each month individually. After some time, this results in a lot of local Excel files.
With SeaTable you save these steps: Simply build an app (see above) or share the required data with accounting via an external link. In doing so, you can choose for yourself whether to grant read access to the complete base or to create and share only a specific view for accounting. However, sharing individual views is reserved for SeaTable's paid subscriptions.
This way, the accounting department can access the working time data without any detours, and there is no longer any need to transfer, open and view individual Excel files for the creation of statements. A single glance at your SeaTable Base is enough to know about the working hours of all employees!
6. advantage: automations that make your life easier
Even with the points mentioned so far, time tracking in Excel scores poorly, but only the last advantage puts the crown on SeaTable. With an Enterprise subscription, SeaTable can automatically perform certain actions based on preset rules, such as sending notifications, editing entries, or adding shortcuts, thus relieving users of recurring work steps.
With the help of automations, you could, for example, have SeaTable notify you when an employee's entered working hours have exceeded the legally defined upper limits or the prescribed breaks and rest periods have not been observed. Through an automation trigger, this happens fully automatically as soon as the entered values are no longer within the specified rule values, for example, above the maximum working time of 10 hours per day.
By the way, employers are obliged to record the working hours of their employees to detect exactly this; and you should do the same to avoid legal consequences. During inspections, you could face hefty fines and further action from the supervisory authority if you, as an employer, fail to ensure compliance with legal working time regulations. Read more about the legal requirements for recording working hours here.
Record working hours with SeaTable for free
Of course, there are already special software solutions such as Personio or Clockodo that specifically offer the recording of working hours. However, the use of these programs can be quite expensive in total, as they are only suitable for a few use cases.
Tracking working hours with Excel is a common solution in companies that use Microsoft's Office package anyway, but it's not a good idea for the reasons mentioned above. Excel comes nowhere near the possibilities that a solution like SeaTable gives you.
As a collaborative database software, SeaTable is a cost-effective, powerful and flexible alternative to Excel and other programs. With SeaTable, you can not only manage the time tracking of your employees, but also optimize processes in many other areas of your company, from human resources to marketing and sales to fleet management.
It's best to try out our working time tracking template today! You can register for free right now and test the practical features yourself. In all likelihood, you'll love SeaTable and use it for many more use cases.