10 Proven Ways to Boost Profitability With Hubstaff Premium

If you’re one of the 33% of business owners who work 50 hours or more each week, it’s fair to assume you have a lot on your plate. Unfortunately, it only gets busier for entrepreneurs at year-end.

One thing that’s likely always on your mind? How to reduce operating costs and increase revenue.

It’s easy to understand why. In addition to ensuring the long-term success of your business, increasing scrutiny of operating expenses is critical for effective cash flow management. Managing your cash flow well is a game-changer for businesses according to SmallBizTrends.

Let’s dive into the most common expenses and how to minimize their burden.

How to cut back on the most common small business expenses

Reducing overhead

The #1 source of business costs according to The Balance? Office space. Instead, the small business publication suggests seeking commercial real estate in affordable areas, or something different altogether:

“If you don’t really need to run your business from commercial premises why not operate from your home or go mobile?”

If you’re looking for ways to lower your business expenses, or are starting a new business, consider a remote team — you may find it saves you as many headaches and expenses as it did for us. For more on that, check out our post on why Hubstaff was started.

Streamlining operations

The longer you’re in business, the more efficient you become. You start to identify new, time-saving processes, and try out software that automates the most common (and time-consuming) tasks.

If you really want to be ahead of the curve, you can start your business in productivity mode from the very beginning.

One way to do this is with the help of virtual assistants. As a business owner, you’re already short on time, so it’s important to stay focused on what’s going to move the needle. Hiring virtual assistants can help with the rest. To save you even more time, we’ve compiled the top software for managing virtual assistants.

Reduce operating expenses and increase revenue with Hubstaff premium

Hubstaff was created to help business owners, entrepreneurs, and freelancers streamline their businesses so they can focus on what they do best. The premium features we offer were all designed with this in mind.

Let us show you what we mean. Here are ten specific ways you can run your business better with Hubstaff premium.

1. Save on payroll by automating payments

Most business owners don’t follow their dreams just so they can get worn out running payroll every couple of weeks. It’s a task that few entrepreneurs choose to DIY, but one that many do because of the costs associated with outsourcing.

But how much does it cost, exactly? A 10-person company could pay more than $3,000 per year for payroll outsourcing. Ouch.

Hubstaff aims to lighten that burden. With a premium plan, you can automate your payroll. Simply enter pay rates for each team member, choose a payment integration, and Hubstaff will send payments on a regular basis that you determine (weekly, monthly, you name it).

You can even choose to add a safeguard with employee timesheet approvals, which we’ll discuss more later on.

The idea is that once you add a team member to Hubstaff, payment to each person is 100% accurate because it’s based on their set hourly rate and the exact time worked.

Potential savings: 3,000 per year on payroll outsourcing for a team of 10

2. Save on scheduling software

Time and attendance software can run anywhere from $10/user per month to upwards of $25 per month for just one person.

For this reason, it’s best to find software that combines scheduling and time tracking. It only makes sense. That way, everything works in-sync and you’re not bouncing from system to system just to check one person’s hours.

The cost savings of using an all-in-one team management platform that has time tracking, scheduling, time off, and more are pretty great, too. You can skip ahead to #6 for more on that.

Potential savings: $108 per year when comparing against a more affordable standalone scheduling app.

3. Save the time you spend checking in on team members with random screen capture (optional for any business)

One big time waster for business owners and managers is having to check in on their team members for status updates, progress reports, or to determine if a project is still on track.

Randomized screenshots serve up an easy glance at where projects are, without having to interrupt a member of your team. It’s a Hubstaff premium feature that can be customized to your preferences: capture once, twice or three times every ten minutes, or turn it off altogether.

Potential savings: All the daily status meetings or weekly calls you can skip. That’s right. No more on-hold music.

4. Save overhead by making remote work possible and streamlined

This is far from our first endorsement of virtual employees. But can you blame us? Topping the endless list of benefits is one that small business owners love: cutting unnecessary costs while improving productivity.

As Money Crashers explains, “Telecommuting also directly impacts companies’ and employees’ bottom lines by:

• Reducing utility costs through lower electricity and water usage
• Reducing the amount of space required to house employees in a central location (for instance, by replacing dedicated desks with collaborative workstations that home-based employees can use when they visit the office)
• Reducing travel and commuting costs for employees
• Reducing time lost to commuting and travel

How does Hubstaff premium make remote work simple?

It’s less about one feature and more about how we’ve built Hubstaff over the years. The main features, which include accurate to-the-minute time tracking, mobile, web and desktop apps, productivity features like activity rates, and app and URL tracking, all add up to easier work tracking for remote companies.

These features give managers a dashboard to view their team at a glance, and gives team members the freedom and flexibility to work from wherever they are.

Working while traveling? There’s an iOS app for that. Want to see how much of the budget has been used so far? There’s a specific report designed just for that.

There’s even a robust project management tool called Hubstaff Tasks that syncs perfectly with Hubstaff for peak productivity.

Hubstaff was born out of a desire to make remote work possible for more companies. And no plan is better for remote teams than Hubstaff premium.

Potential savings: By going remote? An average of 9 days worth of commute time, and real estate savings of $10,000 per employee per year.

5. Never go over budget again by setting hours and budget limits for clients and projects

If you’re running an agency or consulting firm, staying on budget and on deadline is what keeps your business going. Needless to say, the worry of going over budget can keep a business owner up at night.

With Hubstaff, you can set a budget for each client or project — alleviating the panic of not knowing what’s still available. You’ll even get reminders when you’ve reached set percentages of the budget, so that your team isn’t tracking more than the hours set for that project.

Potential savings: Any amount that your team went over budget on a project in the past year.

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6. Save the time you spend managing time off and holiday requests

Manually calculating paid time off, holiday pay, and other vacation policies can be time-consuming and frustrating. It’s likely that different team members have different time off quantities, and thus different accrual rates.

That’s why tracking time off policies is, you guessed it, a built-in Hubstaff premium feature.

Get detailed accounts of time available and used by each team member. Set policies and rates on a person-by-person basis so there’s no more manual calculations.

Potential savings: At least an hour per month calculating time off usage for your team. Which means more time for forecasting and less time spent looking back on the past month.

7. Save the hours you spend at the end of each week with built-in timesheet approvals

Even if your payroll is automated, it’s nice to have a system in place so that you can easily review and approve timesheets before payments are sent. Hubstaff premium makes timesheet approvals simple with alerts and reminders when your team has submitted a timesheet and needs review.

The time you used to spend reminding teams to enter their time for the week is now free to focus on other things. Hubstaff will email your team reminding them to submit their time for approval, and another alert once their timesheet has been approved.

Potential savings: Up to an hour a week on average, especially if you’re used to waiting for timesheets to be filled out.

8. Save the money you’d spend on accounting software by sending invoices directly through Hubstaff

Here’s one business expense no one wants to pay: fees just for getting paid. Many of the top invoicing software options come with monthly costs, or even have some processing fees when you use it for business transactions.

Depending on which accounting software you use, you could pay 2.4% + $.25 when an invoice is paid by card.

Using Hubstaff with Transferwise means that it’s free to receive money in AUD, EUR, GBP & USD.

Your clients can also pay invoices directly using their PayPal account.

Best of all, generating invoices with Hubstaff is a breeze because it’s all automatic once you setup your account. Simply set bill rates for each team member when you add them to Hubstaff, and use the exact time tracked to create invoices.

You can add your own branding, edit a template, and then export as a PDF or send directly through email.

Hubstaff will even generate reports for invoices so you can see which clients have paid and which invoices are still outstanding.

Potential savings: On the lower end, software for sending invoices starts at $6/month, for annual savings of $72. Plus, the time you’d spend manually entering amounts and creating invoices each month.

9. Save the costs of overtime and inaccurate timesheets with weekly limits and idle time settings

Another unexpected cost for small business is accidental overtime. Without keeping a close eye on your team, which isn’t the best use of your time, you may end up paying more than you had budgeted for a project.

To help you avoid paying overtime, Hubstaff premium offers weekly hours limits for each member of your team.

Set the amount of hours for each person, and then get notified as the limit is approached. The ability to track time will end once the weekly limit is reached, at which point you can add more hours if needed.

Further, you can adjust your idle timeout settings in Hubstaff. If a team member forgets to stop the timer and goes idle, Hubstaff will automatically remove that time or allow that team member to decide whether to keep or remove it.

Potential savings: Overtime pay for teams, and the time you’d spend checking timesheets throughout the week.

10. Save the money you’d spend on GPS tracking software for mobile teams

It’s not always easy to track teams on the go. Having to call in or enter timesheets after the day ends opens your business up to inaccuracies and wasted time.

Companies with mobile teams such as landscapers, cleaning companies, delivery services and more can save a lot of hassle by implementing GPS location time tracking software.

Some of the best GPS tracking apps start at a $20 base fee plus $5/user each month.

But when you’re already using Hubstaff premium for time tracking and attendance, turning on the GPS tracking feature is a snap. Hubstaff also offers geofence time tracking that allows you to automatically clock employees in and out as they enter and leave job locations

Potential savings: Up to $25 per month if you used a separate app for tracking GPS location. In other words, $300 in annual savings.

Is Hubstaff premium worth the cost?

Compared to similar tools, Hubstaff premium costs less on a monthly basis. But it’s more than that. As you can see, Hubstaff premium includes a wide range of time-saving tools for any business.

Where other tools only offer a few features, Hubstaff has thought of everything and offers it for an affordable monthly fee. That’s what happens a product is built out of a need to work better and improve business performance.