Are you a driven and ambitious sales representative struggling to track time spent on prospecting, calls, and follow-ups? Read on to learn how Timesheets.com‘s powerful time-tracking software can help you increase productivity, close more deals, and skyrocket your sales success.
Key Takeaways
- Accurately track work hours spent on various sales activities for better insights.
- Measure your sales performance and identify improvement opportunities.
- Optimize your sales process by focusing on high-value activities.
- Increase productivity and close more deals with data-driven strategies.
- Empower your sales team with the tools they need to succeed.
Index:
- The Importance of Tracking Time for Sales Representatives
- Timesheets.com Helps You Track Sales Activities
- Measuring Your Sales Performance and Identifying Areas for Improvement
- Optimizing Your Sales Process for Maximum Productivity
- Empowering Your Sales Team with Time Tracking Insights
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
In the fast-paced world of sales, every minute counts. As a representative, you know that maximizing your time and efficiency is crucial to closing more deals and achieving your targets. But how can you effectively track the time you spend on various sales activities, measure your performance, and identify areas for improvement? Enter Timesheets.com – the best time tracking software for sales professionals like you.
Imagine having a powerful tool at your fingertips that tracks every minute you spend on prospecting, calls, follow-ups, and other key sales activities. With time-tracking apps like Timesheets.com, you can finally gain a clear, data-driven picture of where your time goes and how it translates into sales success. No more manual tracking or guesswork – just accurate, real-time insights that empower you to optimize your sales process and close more deals.
But the benefits of time tracking for sales go far beyond just measuring your own performance. While a free time tracking app has limited benefits, by equipping your entire sales team with Timesheets.com, you can foster a culture of accountability, productivity, and continuous improvement. With detailed reports, sales managers can identify top performers, pinpoint coaching opportunities, and make data-driven decisions to drive team success.
In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into the world of time tracking for sales and explore how Timesheets.com can revolutionize the way you work. From understanding the importance of tracking your sales activities to optimizing your sales process and empowering your team, we’ll cover everything you need to know to unleash your full sales potential.
The Importance of Tracking Time for Sales Representatives
Understanding the Role of Time Management in Sales Success
Time management is a critical skill that can make or break your success as a sales representative. In the highly competitive world of billable hours in sales, every minute counts, and how you allocate your time can significantly impact your ability to close deals and achieve your targets. By mastering the art of time management, you can unlock your full sales potential and gain a compelling edge over your competitors.
Prioritizing High-Value Activities
At its core, effective time and task management in sales is about prioritizing your activities and focusing your energy on the tasks that deliver the most value. It’s about striking the right balance between prospecting for new leads, nurturing existing relationships, and closing deals. When you have a clear understanding of how you spend your time, you can make informed decisions about where to invest your efforts for maximum impact.
Increasing Productivity and Efficiency
One of the key benefits of effective time management in sales is increased productivity. By tracking your time and analyzing your patterns, you can identify opportunities to streamline your workflow, eliminate distractions, and focus on high-value activities. This could mean automating repetitive tasks, delegating non-essential responsibilities, or simply being more intentional about how you structure your day. The result is a more efficient and effective sales process that allows you to accomplish more in less time.
Aligning Time Allocation with Sales Goals
Another critical aspect of time management in sales is the ability to prioritize your activities based on their potential impact. Not all sales tasks are created equal, and it’s essential to focus your time and energy on the activities that are most likely to drive results. This could mean prioritizing high-value prospects, investing more time in relationship-building, or focusing on closing deals that are already in the pipeline. By aligning your time allocation with your sales goals and priorities, you can ensure that every minute you spend is contributing to your success.
Maintaining Work-Life Balance and Avoiding Burnout
Finally, effective time management in sales is about maintaining a healthy work-life balance and avoiding burnout. Sales can be a high-pressure and demanding field, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of working long hours and neglecting self-care. However, by being strategic about how you manage your time and setting clear boundaries between work and personal life, you can maintain your energy, focus, and motivation over the long term. This not only benefits your sales performance but also your overall well-being and job satisfaction.
Time management is a vital skill that every sales representative must master to achieve success. By tracking your time, prioritizing your activities, and focusing on high-value tasks, you can maximize your productivity, close more deals, and ultimately reach your sales goals. And with the help of powerful tools like Timesheets.com, you can automate and streamline your time tracking process, giving you even more time to focus on what matters most – building relationships and driving sales success.
Identifying Key Sales Activities to Track
To effectively manage your time and optimize your sales process, it’s crucial to identify the key sales activities that deserve your attention and tracking. By focusing on these critical tasks, you can ensure that you’re allocating your time and energy where it matters most. Here are the essential sales activities to track:
- Prospecting and Lead Generation: Prospecting and lead generation involve researching potential customers and target accounts, identifying decision-makers and key stakeholders, crafting personalized outreach messages and campaigns, and attending networking events and trade shows. These activities lay the foundation for your sales pipeline and require a significant investment of time and effort.
- Sales Calls and Meetings: Sales calls and meetings are at the heart of the sales process. These activities include conducting discovery calls to understand prospects’ needs and pain points, delivering product demonstrations and presentations, engaging in negotiations and overcoming objections, and participating in face-to-face meetings and virtual conferences. Tracking your time spent on these critical interactions can help you assess your effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
- Email Outreach and Follow-ups: Email outreach and follow-ups are essential for nurturing leads and keeping prospects engaged. This involves crafting compelling email subject lines and body content, personalizing email messages for each prospect, scheduling and sending timely follow-up emails, and tracking email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates. By monitoring your email activity, you can refine your approach and increase your chances of converting prospects into customers.
- Proposal and Contract Preparation: Preparing proposals and contracts is a crucial step in closing deals. This involves gathering requirements and tailoring solutions to prospect needs, creating customized proposals and quotes, reviewing and finalizing contract terms and conditions, and collaborating with internal teams (e.g., legal, finance) for approvals. Tracking the time you spend on these activities can help you streamline your processes and improve your closing rate.
- Relationship Management and Customer Service: Building strong relationships with prospects and customers is essential for long-term sales success. This involves building rapport and trust, providing exceptional customer support and problem-solving, conducting regular check-ins and account reviews, and identifying opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. By tracking your time invested in relationship management and customer service, you can ensure that you’re delivering value and fostering loyal customers.
- Administrative Tasks and Data Entry: While administrative tasks and data entry may not be the most glamorous parts of sales, they are essential for staying organized and informed. This includes updating customer relationship management (CRM) systems, entering sales activity data and notes, generating reports for performance tracking, and participating in team meetings and training sessions. By tracking your time spent on these tasks, you can identify opportunities to streamline your processes and free up more time for high-value sales activities.
By tracking your time and effort across these key sales activities, you can gain valuable insights into how you’re spending your days and where you may need to make adjustments. With the help of a powerful time tracking tool like Timesheets.com, you can easily categorize and monitor your sales activities, ensuring that you’re always focusing on the tasks that drive results and propel your sales success forward.
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How Timesheets.com Helps You Track Sales Activities
Mobile App and Payroll Integration Features
In today’s fast-paced sales environment, you need a time tracking solution that can keep up with your on-the-go lifestyle. Sales representatives are often out of the office, meeting with clients, attending events, and working remotely. That’s where Timesheets.com‘s mobile app and payroll integration features come in, providing you with the flexibility and convenience you need to track your time and manage your sales activities from anywhere, at any time.
Timesheets.com offers a fully-featured mobile app, giving you the power to track your time and manage your sales activities right from your smartphone or tablet. With the mobile app, you can start and stop timers and view your time entries and reports on the go. The app is designed with a user-friendly interface and intuitive navigation, making it easy to use even when you’re on the move.
In addition to its mobile app, Timesheets.com offers seamless integration with a wide range of popular payroll platforms, including Quickbooks, Paychex, ADP, and more. These integrations allow you to track your expenses without having to switch between multiple tools or duplicate your data entry. This not only saves you time but also provides a more comprehensive view of your sales activities and performance, by linking your time data with your lead, opportunity, and account records.
Timesheets.com‘s mobile app and integration features provide sales representatives with the flexibility, convenience, and automation they need to effectively track their time and manage their sales activities in today’s fast-paced, on-the-go sales environment.
Real-Time Reporting for Instant Feedback
As a sales representative, having access to real-time data and insights is crucial for making informed decisions, optimizing your performance, and staying on track to meet your goals. Timesheets.com understands this need and provides a suite of real-time reporting features that give you instant feedback on your sales activities and performance.
Comprehensive Dashboards
Timesheets.com offers dashboards that provide at-a-glance insights into your time data. Choose to display the information that matters most to you, zeroing in on a client or worker as needed. The information on these dashboards gives you visibility into your sales activities and enables you to make data-driven decisions on the fly.
Detailed Real-Time Reporting
In addition to dashboards, with Timesheets.com you can create detailed reports that provide a granular view of your sales activities so you can drill down into your time data and identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. In comparing your performance to that of your peers, Timesheets’ reporting features provide the insights you need to optimize your sales process and boost your productivity. Real-time reporting keeps you current on your data.
Timesheets.com‘s real-time reporting features provide sales representatives with the instant feedback and insights they need to optimize their performance, make data-driven decisions, and achieve their goals.
Measuring Your Sales Performance and Identifying Areas for Improvement
Analyzing Time Allocation Across Sales Activities
To maximize your sales performance and achieve your goals, it’s essential to understand how you’re allocating your time across different sales activities. By analyzing your time allocation, you can identify areas where you may be spending too much or too little time and make data-driven decisions to optimize your sales process and boost your productivity.
Timesheets.com provides powerful tools for analyzing your time allocation across sales activities, giving you the insights you need to make informed decisions and drive better results.
Identifying Time Sinks and Bottlenecks
Timesheets.com‘s reporting features can help you identify time sinks and bottlenecks in your sales process. You might discover that you’re spending a disproportionate amount of time on administrative tasks, such as data entry or email management, leaving less time for high-value activities like client meetings or proposal development. Or you might notice that you’re getting stuck at a particular stage of the sales cycle, such as lead qualification, suggesting a need for better tools, training, or processes to move deals forward more efficiently.
Comparing Time Allocation to Sales Results
Comparing your time allocation to your actual sales results provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sales activities. You could find that deals where you’ve invested more time in client meetings and proposal development tend to have higher close rates and revenue values than those where you’ve spent less time on these activities. This insight can help you prioritize your time and focus on the activities that are most likely to drive positive outcomes.
Analyzing Trends Over Time
In order to keep growing your business, keep analyzing data trends over time. Identify patterns or changes that may be impacting your sales performance. You might notice that your time spent on prospecting has gradually decreased over time, leading to a shrinking pipeline and fewer closed deals. Armed with this insight, you can take corrective action and re-allocate your time to rebuild your pipeline and get your sales back on track.
Calculating Your Sales Productivity Metrics
Measuring your sales productivity is essential for understanding your performance, setting goals, and identifying areas for improvement. By tracking key sales productivity metrics, you can gain valuable insights into how efficiently and effectively you’re using your time and resources to generate revenue and drive business growth. Careful analysis of time data will help you determine the following metrics:
- Sales Activities per Rep: One key metric for measuring sales productivity is the number of sales activities performed by each sales representative. By comparing the number of activities to the resulting sales outcomes, you can identify which reps are most productive and which may need additional training or support.
- Time Spent Selling vs. Non-Selling Activities: Another important metric is the ratio of time spent on selling activities (such as client meetings, proposals, and closing deals) versus non-selling activities (such as administrative tasks, travel, and training).
- Lead Response Time: In today’s fast-paced sales environment, responding quickly to leads and inquiries is critical for success. Monitoring this metric means you can ensure that you’re meeting customer expectations for timely follow-up and identify any bottlenecks or delays in your lead response process.
- Sales Cycle Length: The length of your sales cycle is another key metric for measuring productivity and efficiency. By comparing your sales cycle length to industry benchmarks and your own historical data, you can identify opportunities to streamline your process and close deals faster.
- Conversion Rates: Conversion rates measure the percentage of leads or opportunities that successfully move from one stage of the sales cycle to the next, ultimately resulting in closed deals. Monitor your conversion rates and test different strategies for improving them so you can optimize your sales process and drive more successful outcomes.
- Revenue per Rep: Ultimately, the most important metric for measuring sales productivity is revenue generated per sales representative. By comparing revenue per rep to other productivity metrics like activities completed and time spent selling, you can identify your most effective reps and strategies for success.
Calculating your sales productivity metrics is essential for understanding your performance, identifying areas for improvement, and optimizing your sales process for better results.
Identifying Inefficiencies and Bottlenecks in Your Sales Process
Even the most experienced sales professionals can fall victim to inefficiencies and bottlenecks that slow down their sales process and limit their ability to close deals. Identifying and addressing these issues is critical for optimizing your sales performance and achieving your goals.
Timesheets.com can help you identify specific bottlenecks or roadblocks that are slowing down your sales process. For example, you might notice that deals tend to get stuck at a particular stage, such as proposal development or contract negotiation. This could indicate a need for better templates, clearer communication with stakeholders, or more training on overcoming objections.
Timesheets reporting features can help you spot these bottlenecks by highlighting stages or activities with unusually long durations. By drilling down into the specific deals or interactions causing these delays, you can identify root causes and develop targeted solutions.
Another way to identify inefficiencies in your sales process is to compare your workflow and metrics to best practices and benchmarks in your industry. It could be that your average time to close a deal is significantly longer than the industry average, suggesting a need to streamline your process or adopt more efficient tools and techniques. Or, you might discover that your conversion rates at certain stages are lower than those of top performers, indicating a need to improve your skills or strategies in those areas.
Once you’ve identified inefficiencies or bottlenecks in your sales process, the next step is to test and iterate on potential improvements. Timesheets.com‘s time-tracking app and data can help you measure the impact of these changes over time, allowing you to refine your approach based on real-world results.
Test out a new proposal template or collaboration tool to see if it helps you create and deliver proposals more efficiently. By tracking the time spent on this stage and the resulting outcomes before and after the change, you can determine whether the improvement is having the desired effect and make further adjustments as needed.
Identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks in your sales process is essential for optimizing your performance and achieving your goals.
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Empowering Your Sales Team with Time Tracking Insights
Fostering a Data-Driven Sales Culture
In today’s fast-paced, competitive sales landscape, making decisions based on gut instinct or past experience alone is no longer enough. To stay ahead of the curve and achieve sustainable success, sales teams must embrace a data-driven approach that leverages insights from tools like Timesheets.com to inform strategy, optimize processes, and drive continuous improvement.
Fostering a data-driven sales culture is about more than just adopting new tools and technologies. It requires a fundamental shift in mindset and behavior, where every team member is empowered to use data to make better decisions, solve problems, and deliver results. Here are some key strategies for building a data-driven sales culture with the help of Timesheets.com:
Leading by Example
To create a data-driven sales culture, leadership must set the tone by modeling the desired behaviors and decision-making processes. Sales managers and executives should regularly use Timesheets.com data to inform their own strategic decisions, and communicate the impact of those decisions to their teams. They should also actively encourage and reward team members who use data to drive improvements and solve problems.
Providing Training and Support
Encouraging Experimentation and Iteration
A data-driven sales culture is not about blindly following the numbers, but rather using data to inform hypotheses, test ideas, and iterate based on results. Sales teams should be encouraged to use Timesheets.com data to identify areas for improvement, develop and test new strategies or tactics, and measure the impact of those changes over time. This experimental mindset helps teams stay agile, adapt to changing conditions, and continuously optimize their performance.
Celebrating Successes and Learning from Failures
Creating a data-driven culture requires a supportive environment where team members feel empowered to take risks, try new things, and learn from both successes and failures. Sales leaders should publicly recognize and celebrate individuals and teams who use data to drive significant improvements or achieve key goals. At the same time, they should frame failures or setbacks as valuable learning opportunities, using Timesheets.com data to identify root causes and develop actionable insights for future success.
Aligning Metrics with Business Goals
To be truly effective, a data-driven sales culture must be aligned with the broader goals and priorities of the business. Sales leaders should work with their teams to define key metrics and targets that reflect those goals and use Timesheets.com to track progress and performance over time. This helps ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives, and that data insights are being used to drive meaningful business outcomes.
Using Time Tracking Insights for Coaching and Skill Development
One of the most powerful applications of all the data from Timesheets.com is in the realm of coaching and skill development. By leveraging insights into how reps are spending their time, sales managers can identify areas for improvement, provide targeted feedback and guidance, and help their teams develop the skills and habits needed for success.
Here are some key ways that sales leaders can use time-tracking insights from Timesheets.com to coach and develop their teams:
- Identifying Skill Gaps and Training Needs: Time tracking data can reveal patterns in how reps are allocating their time across different activities and stages of the sales process. By comparing this data to performance metrics like conversion rates and deal size, managers can identify areas where reps may be struggling or underperforming. For example, if a rep is spending a disproportionate amount of time on prospecting but has low conversion rates to qualified leads, this may indicate a need for training on effective outreach and qualification techniques.
- Providing Targeted Feedback and Coaching: Armed with insights from Timesheets.com, sales managers can provide more targeted, actionable feedback to their reps. Instead of generic advice like “work harder” or “be more aggressive,” managers can point to specific behaviors or habits that need improvement, based on the rep’s time allocation and performance data. For example, a manager might advise a rep to spend more time on client research and customization before each meeting, based on data showing a correlation between prep time and close rates.
- Highlighting Best Practices and Success Stories: Time-tracking data can also be used to identify top performers and uncover the habits and practices that contribute to their success. By analyzing how these reps allocate their time and comparing it to their performance metrics, managers can identify best practices that can be shared and replicated across the team. For example, if top performers consistently spend more time on relationship-building activities like client check-ins and referral requests, managers can encourage other reps to prioritize these activities as well.
- Facilitating Peer Coaching and Mentoring: In addition to manager-led coaching, time-tracking insights can also be used to facilitate peer coaching and mentoring relationships within the team. By pairing up reps with complementary strengths and weaknesses based on their time allocation and performance data, managers can create opportunities for reps to learn from and support each other. For example, a rep who excels at time management and productivity could be paired with a rep who struggles in these areas, to share tips and strategies for optimizing their workflow.
- Tracking Progress and Celebrating Growth: Finally, time tracking data can be used to measure the impact of coaching and skill development efforts over time. By setting goals and tracking progress based on key metrics like time allocation, conversion rates, and revenue generation, managers can help reps stay motivated and accountable for their own growth and development. Celebrating milestones and improvements along the way can help reinforce the value of a data-driven approach to coaching and skill-building.
By leveraging time tracking insights from Timesheets.com for coaching and skill development, sales leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams and drive sustainable performance improvements over time. By providing targeted feedback, highlighting best practices, facilitating peer learning, and tracking progress, managers can help their reps develop the skills, habits, and mindsets needed for success in today’s competitive sales landscape.
Gamifying Sales Performance with Leaderboards and Challenges
Gamification has emerged as a powerful tool for driving engagement, motivation, and performance in sales teams. By leveraging the principles of game design, such as competition, rewards, and recognition, sales leaders can create a more dynamic and exciting work environment that encourages reps to push themselves and achieve their full potential.
Time tracking data from Timesheets.com can be a valuable input for gamification strategies, providing the metrics and insights needed to create compelling leaderboards, challenges, and incentives. Here are some ways that sales teams can use Timesheets.com to gamify sales performance:
Creating Leaderboards and Contests
Leaderboards are a classic gamification technique that taps into reps’ natural competitive drive. Using data from Timesheets.com, sales leaders can create leaderboards that rank reps based on key performance metrics like calls made, meetings booked, or deals closed. These leaderboards can be displayed in real-time on office TVs, mobile apps, or web dashboards, creating a sense of urgency and excitement around sales performance. Managers can also use leaderboards to create contests and challenges, such as seeing who can make the most calls in a day or close the most deals in a week.
Setting Personal and Team Challenges
In addition to leaderboards, Timesheets.com data can also be used to create personalized challenges and goals for individual reps or teams. For example, a manager might challenge a rep to increase their prospecting time by 10% over the next month, or set a team goal to reduce the average time spent on non-selling activities. By using Timesheets.com data to track progress and provide real-time feedback, managers can help reps stay motivated and accountable for their own development.
Rewarding High Performers and Standout Efforts
Gamification is not just about competition, but also about recognition and rewards. Sales leaders can use Timesheets.com data to identify top performers and standout efforts, and provide meaningful rewards and incentives. For example, the rep with the highest conversion rate for the month might earn a bonus or a special prize, while the team that logs the most productive hours in a quarter might earn a group outing or celebration. By tying rewards directly to measurable performance metrics, managers can create a clear link between effort and outcomes.
Encouraging Teamwork and Collaboration
While competition can be a powerful motivator, it’s also important to encourage teamwork and collaboration within sales teams. Timesheets.com data can be used to create team-based challenges and rewards that encourage reps to work together and support each other. For example, a manager might create a challenge for the team to collectively log a certain number of productive hours in a week, or reward the team with the highest average deal size for the quarter. By fostering a sense of shared purpose and collective achievement, managers can help build a more cohesive and supportive team culture.
Keeping Things Fresh and Engaging
Finally, to maintain the effectiveness of gamification over time, it’s important to keep things fresh and engaging. Sales leaders should regularly update leaderboards, challenges, and rewards based on changing business priorities and performance trends. They should also seek feedback from reps on what types of games and incentives are most motivating and enjoyable and be willing to experiment with new ideas and formats. By continuously iterating and improving their gamification strategies, sales teams can maintain a high level of energy and enthusiasm over the long term.
Creating compelling leaderboards, challenges, and incentives based on real-time performance data enables managers to help their teams stay focused, energized, and committed to achieving their goals. With the right gamification strategies in place, sales teams can not only meet but exceed their targets, while building a culture of fun, camaraderie, and success.
Aligning Individual Goals with Organizational Objectives
One of the key challenges facing sales organizations today is ensuring that individual rep goals and activities are aligned with the broader objectives and priorities of the business. Without this alignment, reps may pursue strategies or tactics that are not in the best interests of the company, leading to suboptimal results and missed opportunities.
Time tracking data from Timesheets.com is a powerful tool for aligning individual goals with organizational objectives by providing visibility into how reps are spending their time and whether those activities are driving the right outcomes. Here are some ways that sales leaders can create greater goal alignment:
- Translating Organizational Goals into Individual Metrics: The first step in aligning individual goals with organizational objectives is to translate those high-level objectives into specific, measurable metrics that can be tracked and managed at the individual rep level.
- Setting Realistic and Achievable Targets: Once the key metrics have been defined, the next step is to set realistic and achievable targets for each rep based on their individual skills, experience, and territory.
- Aligning Time Allocation with Priority Activities: In addition to setting metrics and targets, it’s also important to ensure that reps are allocating their time in ways that support the achievement of those goals.
- Providing Visibility and Transparency: To create true alignment between individual goals and organizational objectives, it’s important to provide visibility and transparency into performance at all levels of the organization
- Continuously Reviewing and Adjusting: Finally, aligning individual goals with organizational objectives is not a one-time event but an ongoing process that requires continuous review and adjustment. As business priorities shift and new challenges emerge, sales leaders must be able to quickly adapt their strategies and tactics to stay on track.
Translate high-level objectives into measurable metrics, setting realistic targets, aligning time allocation with priority activities, providing visibility and transparency, and continuously reviewing and adjusting. Managers can help their teams stay on track this way and deliver the results the business needs to succeed.
Conclusion
Through features like time tracking, mobile apps, payroll integrations, and real-time reporting, Timesheets.com makes it easy to gain unprecedented visibility into how you and your team are spending your time. Armed with this data and good project management, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts, how to streamline your processes, and how to optimize your performance for maximum impact.
But the benefits of Timesheets.com go beyond just individual productivity gains. By fostering a data-driven sales culture and using insights from a robust time tracking tool for coaching, skill development, and performance management, sales leaders can empower their entire team to achieve their full potential. Through strategies like gamification, peer mentoring, and goal alignment, Timesheets.com can help create a more engaged, motivated, and effective sales organization that consistently delivers results.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best time tracking system?
When it comes to time tracking tools for sales professionals, employee monitoring software Timesheets.com is the clear winner. With its powerful tracking and reporting, Timesheets.com makes it easy to gain visibility into how you and your team are spending your time.
Does Microsoft have a time tracking tool?
While Microsoft does offer some basic time tracking functionality within its Office 365 suite, it's not specifically designed for sales teams and lacks many of the advanced features and integrations that Timesheets.com provides.
