Time tracking is important in many industries in order to improve efficiency and profitability. But when it comes to nonprofits, whose goals are much bigger than the bottom line, time tracking is just as vital to success.

Why? Just because they’re not being paid for the work, doesn’t mean volunteer time is any less valuable to your organization – on average a volunteer hour is worth $24.14. With over 170,000 charitable and nonprofit organizations in Canada and over 13 million volunteers, this amounts to a huge amount of labour and time.

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Why Should Nonprofits Time Track

For many nonprofits, volunteers are the lifeblood of the organization, offering their time and skills without payment in return. Without them, many nonprofits simply wouldn’t be able to continue, so it’s imperative that the generosity and selflessness of volunteers aren’t wasted.

Time tracking volunteer hours ensures that their varied skills and time spent at your nonprofit are put to their best possible use for the continued success of the organization. Integrating time tracking software into the nonprofit’s internal processes can benefit the organization in many ways, including the following.

1. Easily track volunteer hours

Whether you have one volunteer or a team of hundreds, ensuring that their time is put to good use at your nonprofit is paramount. Tracking volunteer hours doesn’t have to be complex or time-consuming, but creating a simple system to record team members’ time will help with organization and planning.

A volunteer hours tracking sheet can be filled out by the volunteers themselves or their manager and updated day-to-day so that you have an accurate record of what was done when, and how long it took.

Alternatively, time tracking software for nonprofits makes time tracking even easier, with an automated time clock feature and a mobile app for clear record-keeping. Easily track time with an intuitive tracking tool to make life easier for your team.

2. Optimal resource planning

Time tracking solutions helps with resource planning as it gives you better insights into how long tasks and projects take. You can then use these insights to allocate your resources to volunteers accordingly.

QuickBooks Time lets you monitor employee hours and run reports on specific projects or tasks easily. Not only does this mean your volunteers’ time can be used more effectively and efficiently, but it also allows you to plan ahead and better allocate grant money and funds to projects.

3. Improved program management

Volunteer programs at nonprofits often mean you’ll have a group of volunteers for a set timeframe with a goal in mind. Time tracking software can be a big help in these situations, allowing you to plan a project out from start to finish and allocate time and resources accordingly.

Volunteers like to know that their hard work is making a difference, and efficiently managed programs help to build trust between managers and their teams.

4. Increases chances of government grant funding

It’s no good having the money to cover program budgets if there is nobody to do the work! Nonprofits that can provide detailed evidence of the work they are doing and how the money will be spent put themselves in a strong position to apply for government grants and other funding sources.

Government agencies look for evidence that your nonprofit has the capacity and credibility to implement your program as part of your business plan , and timesheets showing consistent and reliable volunteers working at your organization certainly checkmarks that box. This information can also be used to secure important donors, as they will want to see the same thing.

5. Effective baseline for measuring productivity

When you track employee time and volunteer hours, you quickly gain an overall picture of the productivity of your nonprofit. With Quickbooks Time, every task and shift is recorded accurately, with instant access to this data broken down into easy-to-understand reports whenever you need it.

Managers can analyze reports to better understand where efficiencies can be made and measure the productivity of projects, programs, and campaigns. Tracking time means implementing these metrics to better understand the organization overall.

6. Time tracking solution help prepare for audits

Although charities are exempt from paying taxes, they can be subjected to audits by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Nonprofits can be selected for audit for a range of reasons, from random selection to complaints from the public. Audits involve examining books and records such as:

• Bank accounts
• Contracts
• Annual reports
• Governing documents
• Board minutes

If your nonprofit is selected for an audit, having accurate, organized and well-documented information readily available helps streamline the process. Time tracking keeps accountability going day to day while the time data collected can prove that your organization is following everything to the book.

Quickbooks Time records employee and volunteer time accurately and simply without you having to do a thing – so that’s one less thing to worry about if you’re selected for an audit.

Time Tracking Software for Nonprofits

QuickBooks Time makes time tracking volunteers’ hours so much easier. Get accurate time reporting from every volunteer, no matter where they are, thanks to our mobile app. Take the hassle out of using timesheet templates with our time tracking software for nonprofits, which automates timesheet records for you, so you can focus on more meaningful work. And analyze reports and schedules at a glance thanks to our simple data visualizations.

Take advantage of these benefits and more when your nonprofit organization uses QuickBooks Time to help them manage their time effectively.

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