If time is our enemy, then time-tracking software is our friend.
I’m a late adopter when it comes to business technology so time-tracking is new in my life … but I know it will be a lasting relationship. We’re definitely besties.
Why? Because this diminutive, plain-looking application has let me unlock the lost time in my haphazard week, nail down those straggling fifteen-minute blocks and pounce on those elusive billable hours – the ones that were never reflected in my invoices, even though I knew they lurked mysteriously within my job sheets or diary jottings.
The cynics among you may be thinking “big bucks”. You’d be wrong. I outlaid less than fifty dollars on my time tracking product and downloaded it immediately. By day’s end it had paid for itself by pinpointing just one otherwise-lost hour.
For a soloist like myself, the benefits are clear. For most projects I bill by the hour and usually have up to a dozen or so jobs running concurrently in various stages of drafting, researching and approval. Time tracking lets me clock-in and clock-out directly from my desktop against multiple projects, add memos with each entry, create and customise reports, and much more.
At any given time I can see how many hours I’ve clocked to a particular project for the current session, the day, the week, the month … or even the year.
For jobs quoted “whole of project” I can see how I’m tracking against my estimates and ensure I don’t blow-out my time allocation.
For bigger businesses time tracking has even more to offer. You can track multiple jobs across multiple employees, export to other applications (like MS Excel) and integrate to all sorts of systems and processes – all from a simple desktop application.
You can see who is doing what and when, how long it’s taking them and who is paying for it, that is, where the invoicing trail ends for each session clocked. And it’s in real-time, so there’s no backfilling the job sheet at the end of the day (unless you OK it).
For me, time tracking revolutionised the way I think about my time. I identified chunks of wasted space in my days, which added up to days in my month; I have translated some of those chunks into paid hours. Monitoring how much time I spend on unbilled work such as administrative tasks and research helps me make decisions about outsourcing. Even keeping on eye on my breaks helps me carve out some much-desired work/life integration.
My favourite feature? I’ve set my time tracker so that when my keyboard is active and I’m not clocked in to a project, a jaunty tune blasts through my speakers to remind me I’m losing billable time. No wonder my accountant loves my time tracking almost as much as I do!
There are a myriad of time-tracking products available and many of them are free. Just enter “time tracker” in your favourite search engine and be rewarded with a multitude of sellers and resellers. I recommend you go a step further and enter “time tracker reviews” then spend some time researching independent product reviews to discover what features are available and what others find useful.
Trial a product or two to check if the interface works well for you. It’s a bit like a first date to make sure you’re compatible. I’m confident the benefits to you and your business will be apparent fairly quickly and that, before long, you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without one another.
Has time-tracking worked for you? What’s your fave feature? Why not share your experiences … if you’ve got time!
Author Bio: Sheryl Allen is a Professional Copywriter with over 15 years of experience dealing with all types of businesses – from small start-ups to national brands. To find out more about Sheryl, visit her online at www.overthepage.com.au.
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