Tracking individual team members’ projects, deadlines, and resources is no easy feat. Instead of juggling emails, calendar events, and sticky notes, simplify the process with an employee task tracking solution.

From manual methods to automated tools, this guide covers the best task trackers for remote, hybrid, and in-office teams—including tips for maximizing the value of whichever option you choose.

Manually keeping track of projects is a crucial but time-consuming task that can add work for team members and managers alike.

A task tracker is an intelligent version of a to-do list that can help manage tasks and assignments. Team members can use task trackers individually or together as a team.

These tools allow team members to list their essential projects, prioritize them, and mark them as done when the tasks are complete. Some examples of popular task trackers you’ve likely heard of are Asana, Oas36ty.com, and Trello.

These examples are excellent standalone trackers and are popular tools for a reason. However, task tracking is much more powerful and advantageous when part of task management software.

The best task trackers are integrated into a more comprehensive platform and provide a wealth of insight and opportunities to streamline processes. These platforms help companies produce more deliverables in less time.

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What are the best ways to track employees?

Tracking employee activity has no one-size-fits-all solution. The best option for your team depends on the nature of your business and the location and size of your workforce.

Physical trackers often work well for in-office teams since everyone can access them in person. However, for hybrid and remote teams, a cloud-based tool is a better choice.

The types of tasks you perform also impact the solution you choose. For one-off tasks, simpler can be better. For repetitive tasks, though, you need a tool capable of automatically labeling, categorizing, and duplicating everything.

The size of your team should also factor into your decision. You need a solution that can grow with you if you plan to scale your team or projects.

Manual ways to track employee tasks

Manual methods often work best for tracking one-time tasks or projects that don’t require automation. They also work well for jotting down items quickly, especially for in-office teams.

To-do lists

To-do lists can track everything your team needs to accomplish. They usually take one of two formats:

• Paper lists that you can jot down quickly
• Apps with interactive task lists

Since they’re quick and easy to use, to-do lists don’t really have a learning curve. However, they likely won’t save you much time.

To-do lists don’t allow for automation, even if you create them through an app. Also, they don’t support collaboration or sharing, making them better for individual task tracking.

Whiteboards

Whiteboards are physical or digital boards where your team can create lists of tasks. One advantage they have over to-do lists is that whiteboards are collaborative. Anyone on your team can add or check off an item.

That said, they, too, typically don’t allow for automation, especially when using physical whiteboards in an office setting. That makes whiteboards a less efficient solution and less ideal for complex projects with repetitive tasks.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are digital files that can track and organize tasks. One advantage they have over to-do lists and whiteboards is that spreadsheets support collaboration and labeling, making them a reasonable solution for teams to work together.

However, spreadsheets don’t have built-in task tracking templates. You must create your own or customize a public template, which often requires time and manual testing.

Automated ways to track employee tasks

Automated tools generally work best for larger teams and complex projects with repetitive tasks. Because most of these tools are cloud-based, they’re ideal for hybrid and remote teams of all sizes.

Time-tracking software

When you need to monitor employee time and tasks simultaneously, time tracking software can simplify the process. These tools have built-in time and activity trackers that record how your employees perform during the workday.

Time-tracking tools like Time Doctor, Harvest, and Toggl can do more than create daily logs. They have scheduling and attendance capabilities as well as insights to help you spot work trends and improve productivity.

Task management software

For projects with more complex structures, task management software is a good solution. These tools are ideal for organizing projects with interconnected tasks and setting up automated workflows.

Task management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira can track tasks. They also handle task dependencies, project timelines, individual assignments, employee due dates, and project milestones.

Project management software

Task management software can meet many businesses’ employee tracking needs. However, project management software is better when you need a more robust solution for projects involving detailed planning and team collaboration.

Tools like Microsoft Project and Smartsheet can visualize projects with Kanban boards and Gantt charts, create calendar views, summarize project progress, and automate repetitive processes. They’re best for deadline-dependent projects.

GPS location tracking

When managing hybrid or remote employees, their locations may not matter. Location tracking is critical, though, when working with employees who travel to job sites.

GPS tracking tools like Work yard and Buddy Punch monitor employees’ locations as they complete tasks. This software records when employees clock in and out and also monitors the tasks and jobs they complete.

Ticketing systems

Project management tools sometimes don’t offer adequate flexibility for support teams. Instead, ticketing systems tend to work better for generating and assigning tasks.

Ticketing systems like Zendesk and ServiceNow work with multiple channels, route tasks to appropriate employees, and support real-time collaboration. They also integrate with time tracking tools to provide a complete solution.

How employee task tracking benefits your business

How can task tracking help you reach key goals? The right solution can benefit your business in several ways.

Increased accountability

Holding employees accountable for their daily tasks isn’t easy, regardless of where they work. If your team struggles with taking responsibility or owning tasks, an employee tracking tool is a smart solution.

Task tracking tools offer real-time visibility into what employees are working on at any time during the day, which can boost accountability.

Improved productivity

Employee tracking tools typically record how long tasks take, when employees work on them, and which websites and apps they use. With this information, you can better understand how your team works.

You can use these insights to help them develop better workflows, adopt more useful tools, or break down and assign tasks more efficiently.

Better project management

Your business depends on your team completing tasks on time and on budget. The best task management tools can monitor both to ensure that your projects always meet deadlines and prevent them from becoming overly expensive.

Data-driven decision making

If you aren’t using tracking software, you may end up doing a lot of guesswork about your team, their tasks, and their time.

With the right tool, you can collect data and use analytics to understand what’s really happening as your team works. Then, you can use the data to drive better decisions about project assignments and resource management.

Tips for effective employee task tracking

Make task tracking work for your team by implementing tools and methods correctly. Use the following tips to roll out task tracking successfully.

Communicate your expectations

When first introducing task tracking tools, being transparent is vital. Explain your reasoning with employees and tell them what you hope to achieve. For example, your ultimate goal may be improving productivity.

Tell employees exactly what you intend to track and when so they know what to expect. Depending on which tool you choose, you may track time, tasks, websites, apps, and locations while employees are on the clock.

Track progress continuously

One of the biggest perks of task tracking software is it provides plenty of data you can use to optimize your business. However, only tracking tasks occasionally won’t give you enough data to analyze.

Instead, get your team on board and track their activity continuously. Some tools offer automatic tracking, which can improve the accuracy and scope of the data.

Closely monitor the results

Virtually every task tracking tool has dashboards where you can track results. Although these tools often let you view employee performance in real time, you get the most value from checking results at set intervals.

For example, you could produce weekly reports to review individual and team performance. Reviewing the reports for entire projects and comparing the results against each other may also be valuable.

Shift course as necessary

Task tracking software provides plenty of helpful data, but the data can’t transform your workflows automatically. It’s up to you to act on the insights. Make a plan for acting on the results and helping your team shift course.

For example, are your team’s productivity levels much higher in the morning than in the afternoon? Consider encouraging them to take an additional break in the afternoon to clear their minds and boost their efficiency.

Is your team spending too much time on specific tasks? Consider replacing the software used with an option better suited to your team. Then, continue reviewing the results to ensure the change had the desired effect.

What does a task tracker do?

To put it simply, task trackers help team members and managers keep track of what tasks are complete and what is still waiting.

They also enable better communication, prioritization, and collaboration across projects because team members know which tasks are outstanding and when the work needs to be completed.

Managers define tasks initially and prioritize them, but they may also add, assign, or track tasks as they move from team to team. Thanks to this administrative work, there is less time spent checking in and more time spent working on tasks.

Team members can track their time as they work on each assignment on the task list, which provides helpful information for determining future costs and benchmarking. It can also alert managers if a simple task takes longer than expected so that the manager can step in and help optimize the process.

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Benefits of using a task tracker

Task tracking and time tracking have many benefits for team members and managers. They streamline administrative tasks, improve productivity, and help prevent tasks from falling through the cracks.

Good tracking software can save money, improve the promptness of deliverables, and help companies retain key team members. They also improve team collaboration, which is a key to increased innovation and morale.

Recent research shows that the average worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes a day. However, using task tracking can improve the ability of team members to complete tasks and be more productive.

Benefits of Keeping Track of Tasks at the Workplace

We all know what disorganized tasks lead to: Stress, anxiety, and poor self-esteem, especially at work.

But meticulously tracking tasks does more than keep stress at bay! First off, you’ll notice a surge in productivity—your mind will be clearer, allowing you to identify and solve issues at work easily and chase growth milestones. Some other perks include:

1. Goal alignment: Task tracking within teams helps all members operate toward the same goals and build a sense of solidarity
2. Improved time management: Tracking tasks allows you to allocate your time wisely. You can prioritize what’s important based on factors like delivery date or urgency and ration your work hours accordingly
3. Accountability: When tasks are tracked, there’s no room for ambiguity. Everyone knows what’s expected of them, fostering a culture of responsibility
4. Progress visualization: It’s genuinely rewarding to see how far you’ve come. Task tracking allows you to visualize the progress made, boosting morale and motivation to keep striving as you hit your KPIs or personal growth metrics
5. Improved decision-making: Having the big picture on all tasks and their statuses makes it easier to make informed decisions.

How can I make task tracking more efficient?

At first, a to-do list might seem as simple as adding tasks to a list and checking them off as they’re completed. However, if it were that easy, there wouldn’t be tons of different tools and methods to help you actually complete your list. Before we get into why your to-do list often goes uncompleted, let’s look at some ways to make tracking tasks more efficient.

• Work in chunks: Break tasks down into easily digestible chunks that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. This will help you stay motivated and on track.
• Prioritize: Make sure you prioritize tasks to ensure that you focus on the most important ones first.
• Track progress: Set small goals for what you want to accomplish in a day or week and track your progress accordingly to see what still needs to be done.
• Automate reminders: Use automations to send yourself reminders via text, emails, or push notifications for when tasks are due.
• Streamline communication: Set up a communication system with your team to keep everyone informed and on tasks, priorities, and progress.
• Delegate: Don’t be shy about sending tasks to other team members who can do a better job in a shorter amount of time.
• Use the right tools: Leverage different tools digital to-do lists or task tracking software to help you stay organized.

How does Oas36ty work management help with tracking tasks?

If you want to get more tasks done as a team, there’s no better task tracking software than Oas36ty work management. That may seem like a bold statement, but we’ve helped so many teams become more productive that we’ve stopped being shy about it. Oas36ty work management is a total solution that encompasses task tracking and a lot more. As a task management solution, Oas36ty work management offers all the features you need for personal or team use.

Here’s a quick look at some of the features you’ll get with Oas36ty work management that will help your team stay efficient and productive:

• Easily create, prioritize, and assign tasks with a visual drag-and-drop interface Monitor task status with clear, color-coded boxes
• Implement WBS, Kanban, or other techniques with pre-made templates and custom views and timelines
• Expand every list item with as many subtasks as you need
• Break tasks down visually and edit deadlines on an interactive timeline
• Track time directly in the platform to see how long is spent on each task
• Visualize team progress and project status with report dashboards and graphs
• Collaborate directly on tasks with threaded comments, mentions, and file attachments
• Get reminders on task deadlines and cut down on manual work with custom automations
• Create smoother workflows with 70+ integrations and 200+ apps with the work tools you already use like Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Zapier, Google apps, and more
• Complete tasks on the go with native apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac desktop

Excel to-do lists vs. Oas36ty task management

Many people keep a running list of their tasks in an Excel spreadsheet or note-taking app. It’s extremely useful to map out all your deliverables, so this makes a great deal of sense. There are a lot of ready-made Microsoft's customizable list design templates out there to help you get started too.

But software like Excel isn’t designed to help you keep track of tasks at work. As a result, it can take a lot of manual effort to keep them updated with notes, status, and potential delays—creating a new task in and of itself. Due to the high level of manual error, this can also be an extremely unreliable method for managing your deadlines.

In contrast, purpose-built task tracking apps like Oas36ty do the heavy lifting for you. Aside from automatically prioritizing your task list, helping you plan work against your capacity, and highlighting any risks to your deadlines, they provide a highly visual and tactile approach to task management. This makes it extremely easy to adjust plans and keep track of task progress.

How to keep track of tasks at work

1. Build your to-do list in Timely

Timely lets you easily create tasks for everything you want to work on—with an estimation of time required and deadline. You can do this in two ways, depending on how you like to plan: as a simple list or a timeline. Timely will then prioritize all of your tasks, so you know what to work on first.

2. Drop tasks into your schedule

Once you’ve added your tasks, it’s time to plan time against them. Just drag and drop a task from your to-do list to add it to your schedule. This lets you see how much time you have left outside of your tasks each day for other requests—helping your team see how much capacity you have, as well as helping you stick to a healthy daily schedule.

3. Log time to tasks with drag and drop

To update the status of a task, simply drag the work activities Timely has automatically captured in the background for you to your task. These activities remain 100% private to you—only see the time of the activity will appear against your task. It’s the easiest and most accurate way to ensure all the work you put into a task stays accountable.

4. Track the progress of all tasks

Planning and logging time to a task will update its progress bar. This helps you and your team visually follow the status of a piece of work without the need for stand-ups and status meetings. Your progress bar will show yellow wherever you’ve put in more time you’re your original estimate for the work. Timely will also flag whenever a task is falling behind schedule, allowing you to adapt your plans and shift priorities.

FAQ’s

What does track of tasks mean?

A task tracker is an intelligent version of a to-do list that can help manage tasks and assignments. Team members can use task trackers individually or together as a team. These tools allow team members to list their essential projects, prioritize them, and mark them as done when the tasks are complete.

Why is it important to track tasks?

Simply put, risk monitoring allows companies to know the types of risks that affect their operations and bottom line, as well as which strategies best mitigate them. More specifically, risk monitoring in an organization: minimizes risk by identifying it and ensuring there are defenses sufficient to prevent it.

How do I track my daily work?

To keep track of daily tasks efficiently, one can use a task management tool, create a to-do list, prioritize tasks, break down large tasks, use time-blocking, and review tasks regularly. These methods help to keep track of daily tasks and improve productivity.

How does work tracking work?

A time tracking app can track employees' hours by running a timer in the background while employees complete their work. It's a great way to make it easy for your employees to track their hours worked without ending the week racking their brains while they fill out a timesheet.

What is the role of a task tracker?

A task tracker is a tool that helps individuals and teams organize, prioritize, and track the progress of tasks and projects. It plays a significant role in workflow optimization by providing a centralized platform for task management.

How do I track my work performance?

One approach is to keep a notebook or diary in which you take notes all day about assignments received, goals set, guidelines provided, intermediate and final deadlines established, as well as tasks to complete and concrete actions taken. Include tools such as checklists to guide you in the performance of your work.

How to record daily tasks at work?

And the easiest is by using pen and paper. You simply create a table with columns and column headers. The time record can comprise everything that you find useful. But the most common items include project, task, date, start and stop time, job description, total hours spent, and additional notes.

Why do we track performance?

Performance metrics can help you assess which parts of your company are performing their best and those that may need improvement. Tracking performance is essential for measuring employee performance, project management efficacy and financial forecasting, among other tasks.

Why is tracking useful?

It helps you measure progress. Tracking your goals allows you to see how far you've come and how close you are to reaching your goal. This can be a great motivator to keep going. Measuring your progress is important because it allows you to see how far you've come and how close you are to reaching your goal.

What is track of progress?

Progress Tracking is an essential component of the modern business world. It is defined as the process of monitoring and measuring progress towards a set of predetermined outcomes or objectives. It is used to measure the progress of a project, program or initiative over a given period of time.