Time management is an essential skill for any employee, and finance professionals are no exception. Without a plan for how to manage your time, you'll find it difficult to get everything done in a day. However, with proper planning and organisation, you'll be able to maximise your efficiency and productivity and make the most of every minute of your workday.
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In this guide, we discuss the importance of time management for finance professionals, while revealing our top 5 time management tips. We also uncover three of the best software for helping finance workers manage their projects, track their time, and save valuable hours on one of their most important tasks: expense management.
What is Time Management?
Time management is the process of planning and controlling the time spent on tasks, activities, and jobs. It’s important for all professionals in any field to ensure that they are spending their time effectively.
Why is Time Management Important for Finance Professionals?
Time management is an important part of every finance professional’s job. It doesn’t matter what type of finance work you do, or where you do it; everyone needs to know how to manage their time effectively. Without proper time management skills, you will find yourself overwhelmed with tasks and unable to complete them on time—or at all!
There are many benefits to mastering time management as a finance professional. These include:
Productivity
You can become more productive by using your time wisely and not wasting any minute of it. Instead of procrastinating or making small talk with co-workers, you'll be able to focus on getting high quality work done. You’ll also be able to meet deadlines and deliver results quicker than those who don't use good time management practices.
Career Progression
If you're a finance professional who wants to move up the career ladder, then it's important that you have great time management skills in order to be more productive and deliver better results than other people at your level. You can then use this as an advantage over others when applying for promotions or asking for pay raises.
Work-Life Balance
Using good time management skills will help you manage stress levels in both your professional and personal lives, thus helping you to balance your work and family life better.
5 Time Management Tips for Better Efficiency
Thankfully, there are many time management tips that can help you get the most out of your day. We’ve included the top 5 tips for finance professionals below.
1. Utilise a To-Do List
You should always have a to-do list with you so that you can write down tasks as they come up during your workday. This will ensure that none of them slip through the cracks or are forgotten about until later on in the day when it’s more difficult for you to deal with them effectively.
2. Prioritise Tasks Based on Urgency and Importance
A key step to improving time management is to determine what your priorities are. This will allow you to focus on the tasks that you need to do, while delegating tasks that can be done by others. You should also clearly define your goals and objectives so that you can determine how much time should be spent on each task.
Focus on completing urgent tasks first, as these are higher in priority. This means they'll take up more time if left unfinished until later in the week when other things start piling up around them too.
3. Use Your Calendar Wisely
Make sure all deadlines are recorded accurately and that all meetings or appointments are scheduled into both yours and your other finance team members’ calendars well ahead of time. This ensures everyone involved knows exactly what needs to be done and when it’s needed by. Also, don't forget about any holidays or vacations coming up. Putting these in your calendar will allow you to plan accordingly.
4. Make Sure You're Not Overbooked
As the old adage goes, “don't bite off more than you can chew." Try not to take on more than two or three tasks at once because this will only get in the way of doing each one correctly and on time.
If possible, try not schedule back-to-back meetings unless absolutely necessary. Focus on having small breaks between each meeting instead, so you and your team can relax and mentally recharge yourselves before jumping back into the next task at-hand.
5. Delegate Where Possible
If possible, try to delegate some of your responsibilities to others so that you don't have too much on your plate. If you don't have anyone to delegate tasks to, consider hiring an assistant or training someone from within your company. This will help to keep things running smoothly and prevent burn out.
The Best Time Management Software for Finance Professionals
Software can help you manage your schedule, tasks, and projects in a number of ways. The best time management software is the one that works for you. There are many options on the market today, so it's important to find a system that fits your needs.
Below, we’ve included three popular time management tools for finance teams to consider.
Monday
Monday.com is a project and team management tool. It’s similar to a Kanban board in that it helps you manage your workload and communicate with your entire team via a visual, board structure. To help you stay on track, Monday makes it simple to see both a big picture of your task management and a more detailed picture of the work that needs to be done this week and the following week.
Clockify
Clockify is a time tracker and timesheet app that allows you to keep track of work hours across multiple projects. The best part is it’s free, whilst also allowing unlimited users to help teams boost their productivity and time management.
ExpenseIn
Last but not least is ExpenseIn, our very own cloud-based expense management app. ExpenseIn brings everything you need to create, approve, and report on expenses into one easy-to-use package. Automating the entire expense management process in this way saves finance teams numerous hours each week, allowing them to better manage their workflow.
For more employment tips, here are 6 mistakes to avoid when hiring a new finance team member.
