FastBooks understands the power of teams and the importance of working together. In fact, their entire platform is built with teamwork in mind…

You don’t achieve much in isolation. That holds true for anything in life. But humans love to celebrate the individual with magazines often painting a picture of a warrior who grew a company. Think Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey. I guess we enjoy putting others on a pedestal. It makes for a good story. It’s inspiring. It’s engaging. It sells. But, it’s rarely true.

The majority of success stems from teamwork, whether it’s employees working together, or employees working with clients and contractors. Teamwork allows people to achieve common goals. It allows businesses to get more done in less time. It contributes to innovative ideas. How often has brainstorming led to that to that light bulb moment?

FastBooks understands the power of teams and the importance of working together. In fact, their entire platform is built with teamwork in mind. And today, we’ll highlight three ways that FastBooks makes your team more effective.

1. FastBooks Improves Productivity Through Time Tracking Features

Time-tracking will help you grow your business. Don’t believe me? Consider these benefits:

• Time tracking improves productivity by identifying how you spend your time
• Time tracking helps identify areas that need improvement by pinpointing time-consuming tasks
• Time tracking ensures invoices are correct by reflecting actual hours worked
• Time tracking helps with future projections by looking at how long previous similar projects took
• Time tracking improves business focus by negating multitasking

Online time tracking tools help you unlock these benefits. But many time tracking tools do not function as they should. They’re disruptive, don’t cater to business needs and often require users to jump through many hoops before using them.

FastBooks is different.

FastBooks created it’s time tracking tool by working with hundreds of small businesses. By understanding their problems, FastBooks created something special. A product that’s built for the customer. A product that’s easy to use. A product that saves you time, instead of wasting it.

With FastBooks time tracking you can:

• Track time by either setting a timer while you work or logging time after
• Effortlessly add projects or services while the timer is running
• Track your time against clients and specific projects
• View daily breakdowns to see how productive you are
• Use at-a-glance overviews to see how your team is spending their time
• See what projects are complete and pinpoint issues for projects that are behind schedule. Users can compare the actual time against estimates to help highlight any issues.
• Create accurate invoices within the time-tracking dashboard. Not only will your invoices be correct but you’ll get paid faster. Your team will feel more motivated knowing they’re getting paid for all the work they’ve done.
• Run project post-mortems by accessing the time-tracking information from the dashboard. You can assess what’s worked and what hasn’t for a particular project
• Build business intelligence to price future projects. For example, if your team often works on creating blog posts for clients, they’ll soon learn how long it takes to create a blog post from start to finish. Your team can then factor this time in when quoting for future projects.

2. FastBooks Improves Collaboration With Project Management and Team Collaboration Software

If you aren’t already sold on the use of online collaboration tools, consider the remote working trend that is showing no signs of slowing. To help you collaborate, deal with this trend and get the most out of your team, FastBooks offers powerful online project management and collaboration software.

Let’s look at how FastBooks can help your team become more efficient:

EASILY COLLABORATE WITH YOUR TEAM

You can invite employees, contractors and clients to work together in one place. You will work more efficiently and produce quality work, faster.

SHARE IMPORTANT FILES WITH YOUR TEAM

Easily upload any documents and files that are relevant to a project. You don’t have to sift through endless emails to find the right file because you can access files centrally.

HAVE CENTRALIZED PROJECT CONVERSATIONS

It’s easy for you and your teammates to have conversations. Communication occurs in one place for fast feedback which helps you achieve project milestones faster.

SET PROJECT DUE DATES

Without deadlines, you can find yourself procrastinating and taking forever to finish. FastBooks lets you set project deadlines so that you have something to work towards, and can plan your schedule.

KEEP TABS ON YOUR TEAM WITH WITH THE PROJECT OVERVIEW SCREEN

If you’re busy and want a quick overview of how your team is doing, visit the “project overview” screen. Also if you’re on the road and need project updates, access the overview screen from your smartphone using the iPhone or Android App.

3. FastBooks Allows For Shared Visibility With Their Reporting Features

I once worked for a company that had regular meetings to inform employees about growth, profitability and future plans. Top management was transparent. That transparency made me feel part of the team. I felt valued.

But more than that, I could see that my efforts were making a difference in the company. They were contributing toward business success, and I felt proud to be part of that.

For you to get the most out of your team, you need to show them that the work they’re doing is getting results. Do that, and it will help your team set goals for the next time. In the process, they’ll align what they’re doing with what your business needs.

The unique reporting features in FastBooks provide those results. The reporting dashboard offers an at a glance summary of profitability, allowing you to see where the business stands. What’s more, it’ll also helps for doing a project post-mortem.

Take note: not everyone can see the dashboard. Only those who you wish to share certain visibility with can.