When a creative agency enters into a monthly retainer contract with a client, they are selling units of time — a precious and limited resource. Therefore, the time spent on each client project needs to be closely tracked and managed. If your creative agency is going over — or coming in under — the hours contracted to each client, you need to know.

How you manage the time allotted under a retainer agreement depends on your agency’s billing methods. Some agencies will allow their clients to roll unused hours over to the next month. Other agencies will bill for overages and expire unused hours. And some agencies simply just wipe the slate clean each month and start afresh with a new bucket of hours. Do whatever works best for your agency.

More important than how you are billing a client for a monthly retainer is whether or not you are tracking your time. Tracking your time on each monthly retainer can answer the questions that commonly plague agencies. Are you going over, or coming in under, the allotted hours on any monthly retainers? What is the actual hourly rate on this project? Can creative team take on another monthly retainer?

Are you over or under the allotted hours?

The worst thing that can happen to a monthly retainer is repeated overages. One month is okay. Every month? Not okay. If a client is taking advantage of your agency, or if you underestimated the amount of time required, it needs to be addressed. The upside to a monthly retainer is that it can be renegotiated each month. The number of hours and the dollar amount are subject to change. The downside is the client may decide not to renew the monthly retainer.

Tracking your time on monthly retainer agreements will quickly identify which client projects need to be addressed. It may be a simple conversation with the client, explaining to them that the number of requests needs to be reduced to more accurately reflect the agreed upon hours. But it may also require renegotiating the contract to reflect the reality of the client’s current workload.

What is the actual hourly rate on this project?

When you repeatedly go over the agreed upon number of hours, without billing for the overage, you dilute the value of your billable time. Your team can only work so many hours in one day, so it makes sense that you would want to bill the highest reasonable amount for that time. The data you accumulate from time tracking will tell you exactly how much you are billing per hour.

Time is the most valuable asset your agency has to offer. Each hour over budget on a project dilutes the value of the hours already worked. Go over on enough projects and this dilution of time will start cutting into profits. For example, if my hourly rate is $100 per hour on a monthly retainer for 50 hours, a 5 hour overage reduces my hourly rate to $90/hr. Ouch. As with any small business, it does not make much sense to do more work if you are not getting paid for it.

Can you take on another monthly retainer?

Working with clients on a monthly retainer is one of the best ways for creative agencies to regulate cash flow and build recurring revenue. They are so effective, in fact, that you will find yourself wanting to take on more and more of them. But, should you? Can your creative team take on more hours, or do you need to consider hiring someone?

If you’ve been tracking your time, you will know how many hours your team can bill, on average, per month. Just pull up a report in your time tracking app and run the numbers. If your team of four can bill 600 hours a month, and you’ve already committed to 550 hours a month, you will need to be careful how many more hours you commit to a new monthly retainer.

Monthly retainers are a great way for a creative agency to bring in recurring revenue. But if you aren’t tracking how much time your agency is spending on these contracts, you may find yourself struggling. Projects may lose money by repeatedly going over their monthly budget. The team may become overworked and start falling behind. You might diminish the dollar value of your billable time.

All of these potential scenarios can be easily avoided, simply by using online time tracking software. Want to get started tracking your time? Try a free 30 day trial of our online time tracking app, Intervals. 

Photo credits: Train tracks and trucks by Horia Varlan

Start out with your best guess and track against that. The next project, guess again and track. You will begin to notice some repetition as you break down each estimate into smaller deliverables. Patterns will present themselves, making it easier to more accurately estimate future projects.

One advantage of using online time tracking software is the wealth of data you accumulate. Time tracking data is an invaluable asset for making intelligent, informed project decisions. More importantly, time tracking data will tell you how you are performing compared to your original estimates. Here is how it works using Intervals, our online time tracking software.

First, you break down your estimate into smaller pieces. How much time will be spent in meetings? How much time doing web design? How much time doing web development? Breaking down a project into smaller estimates makes it easier to estimate the project as a whole.

The above screenshot shows a project with a budget of $14,000. So we’ve broken down our estimates by the different types of work we expect to perform. We add hours to each bucket until our estimate matches our client’s budget.  Then we start tracking our time on the project.

As you make progress on the project you will begin accumulating more and more time tracking data. Intervals is able to compare this time tracking data against your original estimate, in real time. Quickly find out if you have gone over the budgeted hours for meetings, web design, web development, or the project as a whole.

In this example, we can see that our budget is only at half, but we’ve already gone over our hourly estimate for engineering hours. Perhaps the project was front-loaded with engineering, or perhaps the requirements changed. We are still safely within our budget. At this point we can decide if we should pull hours over from other buckets, or if we need to dial back on our engineering hours. The data won’t tell us what to do, but it gives us the information we need to make that decision ourselves.

This is just one example of how comparing estimated to actual time tracking data keeps us better informed and able to make smarter decisions in the earlier stages of a project. With this data we can keep projects under budget and on time, and alert the client and our team to early warnings. Data is good. Data is powerful. Use it to your advantage the next time you need to track your time on a project.

View a person’s recent activity from their profile page

We recently introduced an activity feed to each project that allows you to see what’s been going on recently with a project. We’ve now extended this feature over to people’s profile pages. See what’s been going on recently with any member of your team.

To see this feature in action, click through to any person’s profile and notice the new Recent Activity box in the left column. Here you will see a few recent entries. To see more, click on the “View all activity” link.

From the person’s feed page you will be able to filter their activity by date and type. Need to know what your designer was working on last week? The person feed will tell you.

Redesigned timers

In light of some more subtle design changes we’ve been making to buttons throughout the interface, we decided to revisit the timer buttons. We’ve redesigned the timer buttons to be easier to click, take up less space, and provide a more intuitive time tracking experience.

A new calendar for selecting dates

There is a new calendar for selecting dates on the home calendar, list views, reports, and other areas scattered throughout the interface. Click on the calendar icon to select a date and you will immediately notice a cleaner, more intuitive, redesigned calendar.

Use the arrows to move the calendar from month to month, or click on the month name to jump to forward or backward a few months.

Optimizations and foundational work for upcoming features

In addition to the updates mentioned above, we’ve also completed a round of bug fixes and optimizations to help Intervals run faster. And we’ve overhauled some of the underlying code in the application to prepare for some new features coming up on our road map.

There was some heavy lifting to do in preparation for these upcoming features, but, we’ll soon be introducing a much more fluid calendar with more interactive projects, milestones and tasks.

Meanwhile…

We hope you enjoy this round of updates. Please feel free to send us any comments, questions, or criticism, by clicking on the “General question?” link at the bottom of any page from within your account. We love hearing from you. Meanwhile, we’ll be working on the next batch of features and improvements we have planned.

The role playing realms of Dungeons and Dragons, and its infinite number of analog and digital spin-offs, all played an influential part in my becoming an entrepreneur and co-founder of Intervals. The obvious conclusion is that Dungeons and Dragons stretched my imagination to consider all possibilities, regardless of how outrageous or impossibly fantastic they might seem. While that is true, a limitless imagination will only take you so far in a startup.

Dungeons and Dragons was a game of strategy. Its fantasy worlds were subject to rules and laws of their own, limitations to make the experience more realistic. Role playing within the confines of these limitations is what really taught me how to run a startup. Because if there is anything I have learned as an entrepreneur, it is that your success will depend on your resourcefulness in the face of limitations.

My favorite incarnation of the Dungeons and Dragons genre was a computer game published in 1985 called The Bard’s Tale that I played on the family’s Apple IIe computer. The game allowed you a party of six characters whom you would take through towns, catacombs, and castles battling monsters and collecting treasure. My ten-year-old self didn’t realize it at the time, but playing the game was giving me an experience that would later inform my 30-something self in running a startup. The struggles I encounter running a startup typically hearken back to one or more of the same three lessons I learned during my countless hours of playing The Bard’s Tale.

Lesson One:
You have to spend your share of time in the dungeons

When you first start playing The Bard’s Tale your characters do not have any experience and can only fight weaker monsters and take on smaller quests. So you start out doing dungeon crawls through the cellars and catacombs below the city, fighting any monsters you come across to collect experience and treasure. The stronger and more experienced you become, the larger the challenges you can take on.

There are very few overnight successes in the startup world. You aren’t going to be one of them. Building a successful startup takes time. A lot of time. We all have to work our way up from somewhere. It’s the experience we gain along the way that forges our abilities to run a startup. The battles we faced in the past may seem trivial now, but they weren’t at the time.

Just like in the game,  the challenges never get much easier. What does change is our ability to take on more difficult challenges. What others might dismiss as impossible, we are willing to risk, because we’ve successfully overcome similar challenges already.

Lesson Two:
You need the right blend of characters on your team

The Bard’s tale allowed you to have six characters in your party, but only three of them could engage in hand-to-hand combat. This left you with three characters that might have been useless, if it wasn’t for the fact they they could still use magic spells. I had three fighters, two spell casters, and one character in reserves.

Each character had different qualities that made them unique and essential to the team. And while the fighters in the front demanded the most attention, the magic users were indispensable due to their abilities to heal, protect, and illuminate the path ahead for the entire party.

Running a startup requires a team with a diverse set of skills. Specialization is good, but coverage is more important. Everyone on the team has to be willing to go outside their area of expertise for the benefit of the business. A startup requires a team with the specific skills necessary to succeed, but also diverse enough to cover seemingly menial needs — from general bookkeeping to human resources. Running a startup requires a team talented enough to produce amazing work, and humble enough to go pick up a late afternoon round of coffees.

Bonus lesson: There were no ninjas in The Bard’s Tale. There shouldn’t be any on your startup team, either.

Lesson Three:
Sometimes it takes a few tries to complete a quest

Each level of The Bard’s Tale, from the deepest catacombs to the highest castle towers, contained a quest that had to be completed before moving on to the next level. Sometimes it took a few attempts to pass a quest. Inevitably, you would fail to acquire a key, a trap would catch you unawares, or the monster at the end would best you. You would fail, learn what you did wrong, and try again, until you completed the quest. In fact, the earliest quests were the most difficult because I lacked the patience and experience necessary to overcome failure.

When you are running a startup, the odds are against you. Failure is almost certain. While you may or may not fail on a grand scale, you will most certainly fail at smaller things. You have to accept failure and learn from it if you are going to succeed. If you allow failure to define you, there will be no pushing past it. Failure to do something right is not actually failure, it’s a lesson in how not to do something. You won’t be able to figure out the right way unless you try again.

The final quest in The Bard’s Tale is to defeat Mangar in his tower, where he is protected by 396 barbarians. When you enter the room, the game says:

You face death itself in the form of, 99 Barbarians, 99 Barbarians, 99 Barbarians, and 99 Barbarians.
Will your stalwart band choose to (F)ight or (R)un?

There are times when running a startup feels just as impossible as defeating 396 barbarians and their boss. But after several tries I quickly deduced how to defeat the barbarians and use the right combination of items to defeat their boss, Mangar. There will always be obstacles in our path threatening to bar our way. Navigating around them is up to us. When it is six against 397, as it often is when running a startup, do we fight, or do we run?

Photo credit: !!!! scogle

Task management software provides a great foundation for managing projects, and many creative agencies may find it to be all they need to successfully deliver projects on time and under budget. In my experience, however, online task management software is more effective when coupled with project management features.

Managing a project successfully using only tasks depends more on the size of the project and the teams ability to self organize, than it will your adopting the latest and greatest task management software. Some pros and cons to consider…

The benefits of a task-only approach

Some projects are small, simple, and straightforward enough they don’t require more than a typical task-based workflow. These types of projects can be broken down into a handful of tasks to be completed by one or two people. You will typically come across these projects in a freelancing scenario, where the project is small enough for one person to both manage and complete the work.

Repetitive, straightforward projects are also good candidates for a task-based management process. These are sometimes referred to by agencies as “Bread and Butter” projects. These types of projects aren’t glamorous, they don’t stretch our creativity, but they do pay the bills. These projects are familiar, making it easy for the team to manage the process and stay organized with a simple task management app.

Why task management alone may not be enough

Most projects your agency encounters will require more project management features than a standalone task management app can provide. Features that will help prevent scope creep, prioritize one project over another, analyze current projects, estimate new projects, and get paid for the projects you’ve already completed.

In other words, the ability to make smart business decisions plays an important role in project management.  Let’s take scope creep, for example. If our project management software includes time tracking, we can run a report to see the number and value of hours we’ve put into a project — right up until that moment the client asks us to change something.

Instead of responding with a resounding “no” or the dreaded change request, the project manager might be able to accommodate the request because another task came in way under budget. Or they may still say “no” and resort to the change request because the project is already over budget. Either way, they made a decision based on where the project stood at that time, not based on where they thought it would end up when the contracts were signed.

A project is more than the sum of its tasks

Managing a project using tasks alone is a myopic methodology. Sure, it gets the project done. But it doesn’t take into account the necessity of historical data for making better project management decisions in the future. If you can discipline your team to track their time and document their work on each task, you will have a wealth of data that can be used to estimate projects more accurately.

If you can track project payments and expenses, you can prioritize projects for those clients who pay on time. If you can generate detailed reports you can quickly respond to client questions regarding how and when their money spent. Putting in a little more effort while working on tasks translates to a lot less effort when making overarching project management decisions in the not so distant future.  

Photo credit: VFS Digital Design, mcginnly

How the Eastern Sierra influenced our company culture

A few days after graduating from college, I found myself and my best friend wandering through the Long Valley Caldera. It was late. The crescent moon had been swallowed whole by the Minarets, leaving the Milky Way in its wake. A warm wind blew up from the south to greet us. I can’t tell you exactly where I was, because I don’t know. My long-time best friend, Braden, had made me throw out the map somewhere along the 395, in protest to my distrust of the open road. In retrospect, a map would have gotten us to the nearest hotel or camp site, but it wouldn’t have gotten us here.

That road trip was 15 years ago — just one of the many treks I’ve made to the Eastern Sierra since I was little boy. Each trip is its own story. Some are just mine and some I’ve been lucky enough to share with good friends. When I co-founded Pelago with Michael Payne and Braden Jones, the Eastern Sierra was the one place that played a significant role in all our pasts. So we loaded up Michael’s Vanagon and drove to a cabin, perched on the edge of that same caldera, where we would spend the next few days forging a foundation for our company culture, a road map of ideas, principles, and philosophies.

We fished a lot during the trip. We found our best business ideas came from letting our minds wander out loud while wading through chest-deep water to reach a secret fishing hole, awaiting the gloaming alongside the upper Owens River, and chasing browns through the gorge. Ideas that would later become the foundation of our business, an online time, task and project management application dubbed Intervals.

Why we partnered with the Eastern Sierra Land Trust

Becoming a member of 1% for the Planet was dictated by our company’s DNA. It just made sense to us, as entrepreneurs, that we would leverage our company’s success to help preserve and protect a resource that was pivotal to our personal and collective experience.

The Eastern Sierra Land Trust exists to  ”preserve a healthy balance of uses — from ranching to hiking, wildlife habitats to favorite fishing spots — that can be sustained forever, ensuring a strong local economy and healthy environment for generations to come.” As entrepreneurs, we believe a strong local economy and healthy environment are essential to our success. Partnering with ESLT is an extension of this business philosophy, an act of symbiosis. It’s more than just donating 1% of our revenues for a write-off, it’s an investment in our own future, one where I can take my kids camping and watch them write stories of their own.

Our road map

We still get up to the Eastern Sierra every chance we get, for both company retreats and family fun. We are still helplessly drawn to its mountains, streams, and meadows. We still don’t take a map. And, no, we won’t tell you the locations of our secret fishing spots. But we will continue to help preserve this precious resource for your benefit as much as our own.

If your small business is interested in donating time or money to the environment, we encourage you to contact 1% for the Planet and ask about becoming a member. They will help you find a partner from their vast network of non-profits.

Intervals customer George Gonzalez-Rivas has published a book to address these concerns. Far From the Factory, Lean for the Information Age, describes the tools and techniques needed to adapt to the technology-rich, service-oriented office.

One important factor to consider when organizing your team are the tools you will use for collaboration and management. A comprehensive project management app like Intervals can prove invaluable for managing the accumulation, transfer, and storage of knowledge. In fact, the chapter on Customized-off-the-Shelf web-based software gives a glowing review of Intervals:

We found and tested several tools. One of them, Intervals from Pelago, is billed as hosted project tracking for small business and made us immediately feel comfortable in its approach, tools, and structure. If we’d had this years ago, we wouldn’t have found it necessary to build [custom] tools…

If you need help in becoming more efficient in using information and knowledge to make smart business decisions, take a closer look at George’s book.

I was pleasantly surprised this year to see one of the oldest analog technologies in history, the bicycle, being used as a catalyst for innovation, communication, and new business ideas. Below are some of the bicycle related highlights from the 2013 SXSW Interactive Festival, all great examples of how the lowly bicycle is truly making a comeback.

SXCycles: Free Bike Rentals

Austin, Texas, is swarmed with people and cars during SXSW, making it challenging to traverse the city on foot or by car. The pedicab business bustles, taxiing attendees to their next panel. And now there are bikes in the mix. Lots of them.

SXCycles is a recent program at SXSW offering free bicycle rentals to attendees. Grab a bike and go. Pedal all around town for the day and drop it off before you head to bed. Now you can make that beer run out to Whole Foods on Lamar or join the Mobile Social starting out at Mellow Johnny’s on Nueces. And with a bicycle, you can finally attend those panels on the other side of the river.

Raspberry Pi Powered Bike Headlight

The Raspberry Pi is taking over the DIY market by storm. It’s a Linux computer the size of a credit card with USB ports, HDMI out, and a GPIO (General Purpose Input Output). If you’ve ever wanted to build your own tech prototype, the Raspberry Pi makes it much easier to do so.

Matt Richardson, a writer for MAKE magazine, showed us to what ends the Raspberry Pi can match our imagination. He took the idea of the bike headlight and turned it into a miniature projector that displays your current rate of speed.

The idea is so simple it makes me wonder “why didn’t I think of that?” But as I’ve said before, ideas are worthless unless executed, and executed well. And this headlight prototype proves that. The rate of speed is rendered by the absence of light inside the projected circle. As you go faster, the number increases.

The recreational applications are plenty enough to spawn a whole new market of bike headlights that display everything from rate of speed to calories burned, even directional imagery from a GPS telling you when and where to make your next turn.

Bicycled Bikes

Lola, a product design agency in Madrid, presented one of their sidecar projects called Bicycled Bikes. This small creative group has found a way to build bicycles from scrapped cars. The idea itself may not seem like much, but the execution is impeccable.

Steel from scrapped cars is melted down to make the bicycle frame. The leather for the seat and handlebars are salvaged from the car interior. Turn signals are transformed into tail lights. And car handles are re-purposed for quick release levers. Toss in your favorite gruppo and you are left with a truly unique and beautiful bicycle.

The bicycles are a result of Lola Makes, a sidecar project designed to explore new ideas from the different creative minds at Lola. They already have 3,000 pre-orders, so get yours in now.

Electric Motorized Bicycles

Electric bikes with motors on them haven’t really caught on in the States. This is likely due to their being bulky, heavy, and just plain ugly. We’ve always put form before function with our gadgets (i.e. iPhone), why should our choice of bicycle be any different?

Fortunately, there are some talented product designers creating electric motorized bicycle prototypes that are beautiful and utilitarian. Mission Workshop Sutro is one such design group currently working on a fleet of electric bicycles to be used by a San Francisco bicycle touring company. If there is any place I’d want an extra little push, it would be on the hills of San Francisco.

These custom designed electric motorized bicycles utilize a battery pack disguised as a saddle bag and a front hub motor. Matching this up to an internal 7 speed rear hub the bike provides just enough boost to get you going, without anyone else knowing you are riding an electric bike.

These are just a few examples of how technology is scaling and making it possible for bicycles to be a platform for new business ideas. At SXSWi we tend to focus so much on app design and development that we neglect hardware’s ability to transform marketplaces. Can’t wait to see what SXSWi comes up with next year.

Photo credits: Hugger Industries.
For more resources on bicycles and SXSW, check out BikeHugger.com

The Intervals team is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, a small city with an unusually large tech presence. It’s hard to walk a few blocks without running into someone we’ve worked with in the past, be it a tech partner, mentor, or a web site design and development client.

I recently bumped into a past client while grabbing and iced tea at the local CBTL. We were talking about the good old days of web design and development circa 2004, when he stopped to ask, “how many hours do you think you’ve put into our web site over the years?” It was a rhetorical question, but I answered it in all seriousness. “I can look that up and tell you if you’d like?” I responded.

Later in the day, I did look it up. The answer is 876.025 hours, to be exact. While meant to be more an introspective exercise, this recent experience does bring up some interesting questions. Most importantly, what can be learned from analyzing 10 years worth of time tracking data?

The time tracking trends report from Intervals, showing the amount of time spent on this client since 2004.

The last two or three years of time tracking data are quite useful. We can use the data to accurately estimate web design and development projects, by comparing client needs to similar projects we’ve managed and tracked in the past. But data from five to ten years ago? Is it useful data?

I can think of several questions (I am positive there are more) we can answer with this trove of historical time tracking data. Thankfully, we have this time tracking data in the first place, so that our agency can interpret it and identify useful trends. Two questions that immediately come to mind…

How much residual income have we made?

If you can maintain a profitable working relationship with a client, your agency will have less cash flow issues. Our historical time tracking data shows us that long-term client relationships result in steady and consistent revenue, with one or two big projects thrown in. These are the best type of client an agency can have, hands down.

How has our agency evolved?

When we first started Pelago as a web design and development agency, we were certain we’d be focusing on front end web design and development, the visual bits. We ended up going in a completely different direction and became experts in back end development. Our historical time tracking data shows this transition quite well, as we can see that our design hours are more prominent in the beginning, but quickly give way to several hourly rates related to databases, server-side scripting, and system administration.

Whether or not you are billing your clients based on hourly work, it’s important to track your time so you can make educated and informed business decisions. It’s hard to argue with data, and the more of it you have, the less emotion will taint your decision making process.

Photo credit: tkksummers

Web developers are known to come up with jargon to describe different software programming situations. One of our favorites is the term Bugfoot, the mysterious bug discovered by one person that no one else can reproduce. Creative classification of all things programming is fun, but it also helps the team communicate with one another in a common vernacular.

Inevitably, we come up with jargon that is only meaningful to our development team, but is very descriptive and direct. The Intervals development team has coined some jargon of our own. One term that has stuck is “Wobbles in the Spectrum.” Before I explain what this means, I’ll need to share some background on where this term comes from.

Doppler Spectroscopy and the Discovery of Distant Planets

This photograph was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Astronomers have been using a technique called Doppler Spectroscopy to deduce the location of planets, or what they call exoplanet candidates, since 1993. Because telescopes are not powerful enough to see distant planets, astronomers came up with a way to deduce the location of distant planets.

The theory is that planets orbiting a star will cause the star to experience changes in position and velocity as they both orbit a common center of mass. These changes produce small fluctuations in the light travelling from the star to earth. Astronomers are able to observe wavelength changes in the spectrum of light emitted by the star, using this information to deduce the presence of a planet orbiting the star.

When Software Experiences Wobbles in the Spectrum

Wobbles in the Spectrum are like Bugfoot’s footprints. Some of us have seen muddied remnants of them, but we can’t determine if they are real or not. Software bugs will sometimes leave footprints, without revealing their location, or much less, whether or not they are actually real.

When we encounter such a bug we call it a wobble in the spectrum. The software development team has noticed something, a small shift in the usual day-to-day spectrum of the application’s expected behavior. The app chewed up too much RAM without explanation. The job queue got stuck. A few users experienced white screens when trying to use your app.

When we experience wobbles in the spectrum, we have to decide if these nuances are being created by an actual bug, or if its an “artifact of stellar activity.” In other words, these wobbles have to be watched closely so we can conclude whether it’s a legitimate bug or just a fluke.

Finding Bugs Using Doppler Spectroscopy

The methods used by astronomers to detect planets can be analogous to detecting bugs in software development. When we can’t pinpoint the exact location of a bug we identify the areas of the application that it is affecting.

No portion of a web-based app is completely isolated. If there is a bug in one area, it will have an effect on other areas. By looking at the affected areas of the application we can deduce where the bug is located. And if we can figure out where the bug is located, we can fix it.

I’ll use an example using our own application, Intervals. Several years ago we noticed our app was having minor performance issues each Sunday afternoon. We wanted to get it fixed before it became disruptive. We dug through log files, looked at usage graphs, and brainstormed with the development team. We could not figure it out.

The culprit turned out to be a job queue that reviews current timesheets and determines whether or not to mark them as overdue. It was using database transactions improperly, but didn’t become problematic until it was Monday in time zones east of GMT.

We changed one line of code and the problem was resolved. It took one minute to fix a bug that had required several hours to deduce.

It took astronomers some 40 years to go from the theory of Doppler Spectroscopy to developing the instruments accurate enough to measure a star’s light spectrum with the precision necessary to detect distant planets. One day we may have web development tools powerful enough to find the most remote, outlandish bugs. Until then, we’ll have to keep working with our finely honed skills in deduction and intuition.

Photo credit: j-dub1980

The ability to track tasks online using web-based software is a boon to any creative agency in need of better organization and more fluid collaboration. But, updating a task using a web browser can be a hassle, requiring you to log in to your account, find the task, and then update it. And with mobile devices extending our digital reach, a web-based interface can be cumbersome while on the go.

Email has been around for decades. And despite the harbingers of email’s demise, it is still holding its own as a productive, organized, and collaborative, form of communication. So why not use email to communicate with your tasks? Email, when coupled with online task tracking software, is a great way to update and track your tasks.

In this article, we’ll be using our own online task tracking app, Intervals, to illustrate how tasks can easily be updated and tracked via email.

Updating a task via email

Following up on a task to add notes and documents is the most common use case for logging in to update a task.  Simply sending an email to a unique email address for this task saves a lot of time, and gives you more control over the formatting.

To get started, open a new email and paste in the address for the task. Attach any supporting documents and type up your notes. Then click send. That’s it. The task tracking software does the rest.

The contents of the email will be posted to the task as a comment, and the attachments will be posted as documents. Now the rest of your team can access these updates in one central location.

Replying to a task notification via email

The second most common use case for updating a task is logging in to respond to a recent comment. Again, we can accomplish this much faster and easier using email.

When a task is updated an email notification is sent to the people designated as owners, assignees, and followers. The email lets them know what was updated. To respond, reply to the email and type your response above the horizontal line. You can attach any documents to the email that should accompany your response.

Click send and you are done. The task will be updated with your comments and documents, and your team will be notified.

Communication is essential to collaboration and task management. Updating a task using email keeps everyone up-to-date and records the dialogue in one online, centralized space. When used in this manner, online time tracking software can be a strong catalyst for facilitating communication and collaboration at your creative agency.

Photo credit: wStrauss

Keeping track of all these deliverables can be tricky. Who’s working on what sketches? When is the final comp being presented to the client? Where do I put my notes from the last crit? It helps to have the project-related notes and documents in one place, which is why we recommend tracking each of these deliverables with online task tracking software. Because staying organized is an essential component to good project management.

Tracking internal deliverables as tasks

Before the initial design comps can be presented to the client they must go through a series of internal reviews. This process requires research, meetings, thumbnails, wireframes, and rough comps. To better keep track of these pieces, assign them as tasks.

Creating a task for each deliverable enables the creative team to track all of the details and visuals. Sketches of thumbnail scan be uploaded to the task. Notes on design research can be posted to the task. And a history of these events unfolds as the task progresses.

Tracking client deliverables as tasks

The deliverables we present to the client are the visual result of our collaborative creative efforts on the project, using the internal deliverables as signposts along the way. Creating a task for each client deliverable enables the creative team to log client feedback and post iterations of the design.

Tracking these client deliverables is done much the same way we track the internal. But these tasks are managed knowing they will be partially transparent to the client. These are the tasks we turn to when the client has questions, or when we need to reference recent progress.

Tracking multiple tasks at once using milestones

Now that we have all of these tasks floating around, we need a way to organize them. We need a way to group them together in a way that mirrors our workflow. Milestones are a perfect candidate for grouping tasks together and tracking them as a group.

A milestone is simply a meaningful point in our design process. Milestones can be synonymous with project phases, final deliverables, or time periods. For example, we could group several tasks into a milestone for the initial phase of a web site redesign. The tasks would represent the stages of this initial phase, such as UX research and wireframes.

These suggestions are just a starting point for tracking design deliverables. How they fit into the larger context of  a design project is up to you. But you will find that once you start organizing your deliverables into tasks, the rest will come naturally.

Photo credit: Andrea_44

Quickly view and create projects, milestones, tasks, and more

We’ve redesigned the upper left corner of the header, replacing the previous links with buttons to view and create items quickly. We’ve tucked them away into drop down menus and added more options. The next time you need to quickly view your projects or create a new task, simply mouse over the new quick link buttons to bring up a list of options.

The scratchpad is still there, too. Use it to jot down ideas, to dos, grocery lists, or any other notes you’ll need later.  When the scratchpad has content saved to it, the icon will change its state to subtly remind you of the notes.

Changes to the alerts pane in the header

The alerts located at the top center of the page have been redesigned and placed into a more flexible pane. Tired of being reminded that you have seven overdue timesheets? Minimize the alerts pane to hide these messages. The alerts will be there when you are ready to address them. Expand the alerts pane click on the alert and follow through with it. Once the actions are completed, the alert will go away.

Why? The ability to minimize the alerts pane in the header is ideal for those who approve timesheets on a regular basis, or perhaps, don’t approve them at all, and don’t want to be reminded of overdue timesheets on each page. Some may want to review the request queue once a day instead assigning every request as it comes in. Minimizing the alerts pane reduces the nag factor.

Improved calendar navigation

The calendar on the Intervals home page has always been filterable by week, month, or a custom date range. To make the calendar more intuitive, we’ve redesigned the buttons for choosing weekly, monthly, or custom view, as well as the buttons for moving back and forth through weeks and months.

Pull up the weekly view to see what’s going on this week, or the monthly view for the bigger picture. Then advance the calendar forward to see what’s coming up due in the next few weeks. Use the custom date range to view several weeks or months at once, useful when reviewing project and milestone deadlines.

iCalendar subscriptions

If you’ve ever wanted to pull milestones, tasks and notes from your Intervals calendar into your favorite calendaring client, now you can. The iCalendar subscription feature gives you a unique URL to plug in to your calendar client, be it Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, or any others that support iCalendar subscriptions.

iCalendar subscriptions let you take your Intervals calendar with you wherever you go, so you can easily review upcoming milestones and tasks from your mobile device or laptop without logging in to your Intervals account.

Meanwhile…

We hope you enjoy this round of updates. Please feel free to send us any comments, questions, or criticism, by clicking on the “General question?” link at the bottom of any page from within your account. We love hearing from you. Meanwhile, we’ll be working on the next batch of features and improvements we have planned.

A note about authentication

The iCalendar URL does not require any authentication when you subscribe to it with your calendar software. Do not share your iCalendar URL with anyone — your iCalendar URL is unique to your Intervals account and includes your milestones, your tasks, and your notes.

How often will my calendar update?

The rate at which your calendar refreshes itself depends on the iCalendar software and its settings.  The software might refresh the iCalendar subscription every 30 minutes, or only once a day. If you don’t see your calendar changes showing up as soon as you would like, look at the settings or follow up with the software vendor.

Where to Find the URL for Your iCalendar Subscription

The first step in setting up your iCalendar subscription URL is to decide what should be included in it. To do this, use the filter options in the right column of the home calendar. For example, you might want to filter the calendar milestones and tasks by a certain client. Once the filter options have been selected, click the “Filter” button to redraw the calendar.

Next, hover your mouse over the iCalendar icon (pictured at right) and select “Subscribe” from the drop down menu. This will bring up a lightbox window (pictured below), with the URL for your iCalendar subscription. Highlight the URL and copy it. You are now ready to set up your Intervals calendar subscription using your preferred desktop or web-based software.

Adding Your iCalendar Subscription to Google Calendar

After logging in to your Google calendar account at www.google.com/calendar you should see something similar to the screenshot below. Click on the drop down menu labeled “Other calendars” and select the “Add by URL” option.

Paste the iCalendar URL that you copied from Intervals into the “URL” field. Click the “Add Calendar” button to finish adding the calendar to your Google account.

Tasks, milestones, and notes will appear at the top of the calendar as all-day events, Tasks will span the calendar from their start date to their due date. Milestones and notes will appear as single day events.

Adding Your iCalendar Subscription to Apple iCal

Open up iCal on your Mac. Right-click in the left column and select “Subscribe” from the drop down menu.

Paste the iCalendar URL from Intervals into the “Calendar URL” field and click the “Subscribe” button to go to the next step.

Configure and confirm the settings for this iCalendar subscription. Change the name to match the filtering options used to generate the iCalendar subscription in Intervals. Use the available settings to determine what should appear and how often to refresh. Click “OK” to continue.

Your milestones, tasks, and notes will appear in Apple iCal as all-day events at the top of your calendar. The calendar itself will have been repositioned in the left column and will now appear under the heading “SUBSCRIPTIONS.”

Adding Your iCalendar Subscription to Microsoft Outlook

Open up Outlook and go to the calendar. Click on “Open Calendar” in the header and select “From Internet…”

Paste the iCalendar URL from Intervals into the location. Click the “OK” button to continue.

The milestones, tasks, and notes from your Intervals home calendar will now appear as all-day events at the top of the new calendar. This calendar is located in the left column under the “Other Calendars” heading and can be toggled on and off as needed.

Tracking a Large Number of Tasks Online Using Milestones

Tracking how much task time is left on a milestone

The most valuable benefit of grouping tasks into a milestone is the estimated time versus actual time tracked on the tasks. Intervals allows you to estimate how much time each task should require. The milestone sums the individual task estimates and compares them to the actual time tracked on the tasks.

One look at the milestone and you will know if there is enough time remaining to complete all of the tasks. If your milestone has more time remaining than the number of days left will allow, you’ve got a problem. Grouping tasks into a milestone and tracking time against them will reveal timing problems sooner, rather than later.

Filter the list of tasks by status

Grouping tasks into a milestone is a good way to reduce the number of tasks being managed at once. The ability to filter the list of tasks within the milestone helps you concentrate your efforts even more.

Focus only on the tasks that are ready for client review, or the tasks that are in need of assistance. Task status tells you what needs to happen next, making this filtered view ideal for planning out your daily to-do list.

Tracking the percentage of tasks completed on a milestone

A milestone is considered completed once all of its tasks have been closed. A quick glance at this progress bar tells you how far along the milestone has come, and how much farther it still h as to go.

Because each task requires a different level of effort, this progress bar is less a measure of time. Tracking the percentage of closed tasks on a milestone is a quick and easy way to quantify the amount of effort remaining, relative to the amount of effort already put in to the milestone.

Tracking tasks using the milestone

The list of tasks on the milestone provides a detailed view of what needs to happen. The task list shows when each task starts and is due, so they can be managed better within the milestone’s deadline. And the assignee column shows who in the group is responsible for working on each task.

More details about each task can be found simply by clicking on them. While each task is in progress — as time is tracked, comments are added, documents are uploaded — the overall efforts can be managed at the milestone level. This is why milestones are such a great way to break up larger task lists into smaller,  manageable groups.

Perhaps the greatest advantage to a team using online task tracking software is the increase in productivity from being able to quickly search, sort, and update tasks in a centralized manner, helping the entire team to collaborate more effectively. As these tasks begin to accumulate, the sheer number of tasks and their details can become overwhelming.

This is why it is important to classify and group tasks, with attributes like categories, milestones, due dates, and projects. Not only do these attributes help find tasks faster, they also help organize your day-to-day to-do list.

These attributes are also helpful for gauging project health. How? In this example, we’ll use the Project Landscape report from Intervals. This report gives us a high level overview of where our projects stand, according to different criteria. We are looking at the Tasks tab, which shows us the number of total, unstarted, overdue, open, and closed tasks for each project.

This screenshot of the report tells what we need to know about each project, in terms of the number of tasks and where they stand. The first project is getting close to completion, but has stalled out. We can see this because the number of unstarted and overdue tasks are greater than the number of open tasks.

To find out which unstarted and overdue tasks are holding up this project, we just click on the respective number. This pulls up those tasks so we can immediately see them. This screenshot shows us the seven unstarted tasks in a list view. We can use this list of tasks to follow up with the task assignee, or the client, to find out what’s holding it up.

Regardless of the online time tracking software you decide to use, be sure it supports team collaboration and enough attributes to properly classify your tasks. A plain list of to-dos won’t do you much good if you have to sift through too many of them to keep a project from going past the deadline, review a history of tasks, or share them with your team.

Photo credit: rosmary

What happens when members of your team don’t track their time? You have two choices. The easiest, short-sighted, choice is to abandon the software and try something else. The more difficult, more rewarding, option is to work with your team, helping them learn the discipline of tracking their time online.

Our online time tracking software, Intervals, has a feature designed to help encourage team members who aren’t tracking their time. The missing timesheet feature, pictured above, renders a list of people and weeks that don’t have any time entries recorded. The list also includes the ability to notify those on it, to gently remind them to log in and add their time.

Getting your entire team on board with tracking their time online is not going to be easy, nor should it be difficult. The missing timesheets report from Intervals is just one of many features that can help your team. To find out how some of these features might benefit your team, sign up for a free and fully functional 30 day trial.

Most web designers and developers are familiar with the term PEBKAC. It stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair and is often used to describe a bug that was triggered or caused by user error, not the application itself. Developers sometimes have a laugh at the expense of users who they feel should have taken more time to understand the application before submitting non-existent errors. And while I’ve been guilty of such thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s misguided. PEBKAC is, at its heart, an error of design, and the primary people to blame for it are not the users, but the application’s creators.

First, let me try to give you an example of PEBKAC that we can all probably relate to. Over the Christmas holiday, Randi Zuckerberg, the sister of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, engaged in a very public, very messy exchange with a Twitter user who shared what was supposed to be a private picture of the Zuckerberg family enjoying the holiday. Randi assumed that the person who obtained the picture had done so by illicit means. The picture had been shared with a limited audience, and the person who released the image was not among that group.

The truth later emerged that the person who released the picture was friends with another Zuckerberg who appeared in the picture, and the picture had appeared on her Facebook news feed as part of the ordinary, normal functions of the Facebook application. The irony of all this was how the incident perfectly outlined what so many of us complain about on a regular basis: that the privacy settings on Facebook are so byzantine in their complexity that no normal person can fully comprehend them—not even the sister of the company’s founder.

The photo in question. I share Mark Zuckerberg’s skepticism of his family’s enthusiasm for Facebook Poke.

The Facebook story, with all its drama and schadenfreude, is a great example of what can happen when important, private data intersects with user error. If users can’t trust that your application will deal with your data the way they expect it to, it creates uncertainty. And given the choice between uncertainty and certainty, users will choose certainty every time. If you run a banking portal with a bill payment system, I need to be absolutely certain that if I use it to pay my mortgage, my payment will arrive where it needs to, on time, every time. This is crucially important for businesses that use software to manage their employees, finances, or projects. It’s imperative that they know what the effects of their interaction with the application will be, and that the application will never behave in a way that they don’t expect it to.

Good UX Design Requires Empathy

As the applications we use get more complex in terms of what they can do, they tend to become more complicated to use as well. User experience (UX) designers know this and use tools like confirmations, prompts, animations, visual affordances and messages to convey what effect a user’s actions will have on the application and the user’s data. Many web design conventions are so common that we no longer give any thought to how we interact with them. We know a series of ordered numbers at the bottom of a list usually indicated pagination. We know an “x” icon next to a message usually indicates that it can be dismissed.

Some things aren’t quite as straightforward to people first using your application. How can I know whether a link will perform an AJAX action or whether it will reload an entirely new page (or if it will open a page in a new tab, or in a popup)?

Which of these icons best conveys common application actions (create, view, save, delete)? If I saw any of them with no context, would it be absolutely clear to me what it does?

Destructive Actions

One of the most difficult UX challenges we deal with on Intervals concerns deleting things. I’ve found this to be true of many other applications as well.

• Will clicking an icon perform the action I expect it to (i.e. does “trash can icon” indicate that the item will be deleted)?
• Will clicking an icon prompt me to confirm my intention to delete this item?
• Once I delete this item, will there be any way to retrieve it should I change my mind?
• Will deleting this item affect other items? If so, will it tell me what those other items are? Will dependencies get resolved automatically, or do I need to do that myself?

In building Intervals, we tried to make these steps as straightforward as possible. We use a conventional “trash can” icon to indicate that an item will be deleted (most of the time with text that states as much beside it or in a hover state). In most places, we prompt users to confirm their intentions. Typically, when deleting an item cannot be undone, we offer an “archive” or “inactive” state that lets the user move the item to the background, while still maintaining that data’s integrity. Finally, Intervals has a lot of interrelated data (e.g. tasks belong to a project and are usually assigned to people), so if any other items will be affected by deleting an item, we direct users to an interstitial web page to allow them to see the whole effect of what a delete would do.

Despite all this, we still had occasional incidents where a user would submit a support request asking assistance in recovering data they had, for whatever reason, deleted — and then changed their mind. Recovering this data was particularly laborious, as altered dependencies needed to be painstakingly and meticulously restored to get as close as possible to the previous state of the data. It often involved multiple emails back and forth with the customer (sometimes across a language barrier).

We thought we had done everything correctly from a UX standpoint, but these incidents were proving otherwise. An analysis of our safeguards quickly revealed the problem: people were able to move through the delete process too quickly. They weren’t reading the warnings we had placed in the deletion process to explain the consequences of the action.

“Foistware”: Less scrupulous businesses often take advantage of a user’s haste, relying on it to get the user to consent to something the user neither wants nor needs.

Constructive Solutions

Our solution to this issue was to attempt to slow the user down whenever they were about to commit an irreversible destructive action. You’ve seen this solution many times before in other software applications. Firefox makes you wait a few seconds before you can open a file you’ve just downloaded. Apple encourages its developers to use verbs on buttons (and distinguish them visually) to force users to process what their action will do, rather than just click OK/Cancel. Hard drive partitioning software requires that users type a word to confirm that they want to delete a hard drive partition.

We wanted to incorporate as many of these as possible into Intervals. As a result, we redesigned our interstitial confirmation pages with the following features:

• Users are warned prominently that what they’re about to do cannot be undone.
• Users are given an explanation of all interrelated items that will be affected by a delete (and any other actions that may take place).
• Verbs are used on action buttons (rather than OK/Cancel) to tell users what will happen when they are clicked.
• Users are forced to type the word “DELETE” to confirm they want to proceed.

As you can see, deleting this item would take a lot of other data with it. This makes data recovery especially difficult.

This last step is what proved to be the most effective. It forces the user to read instructions to know how to proceed (which encourages them to read the entire warning). Additionally, it requires that a user move his or her hands from the mouse to the keyboard and back, which slows the user down to consider the consequences of a deletion and also prevents accidental or impulsive confirmations by mouse click.

The option to proceed only becomes available once the user has typed in the word “DELETE”.

Reducing User Error

It’s true that there are tons of resources out there for enhancing user experience and interaction design: heatmaps, focus groups, surveys, usability testing, and so on. But assuming you don’t have a huge budget or your own UX department, there are things you can still do. It’s often as simple as listening to and responding to your customers’ frustrations with your application. As a result of analyzing data recovery support requests in Intervals and implementing simple solutions, the number of data recovery support requests has dropped to near zero.

First and foremost, don’t disregard user error as a non-existent bug. Instead, treat it as you would any other bug. Catalog and categorize these support submissions to help you pinpoint common failure points in your software.

• Log as much as you can.
• Make it easy for users to report existing bugs and request new features.
• Look for unfinished steps in user tasks, where users began an action but didn’t finish it. This may be a sign that the steps to completion aren’t intuitive or explained sufficiently.
• Look for feature requests for features your application already has. This may be a sign that the feature is too hard to locate or needs to be featured more prominently.
• Monitor what users are saying about your software elsewhere on the internet, particularly social media and blogs.

Finally, if you make changes with the intention of reducing user error, make sure your changes are actually having that effect, and not inadvertently introducing additional complexity. For example, in the case I described above, it was very important for us to fix the deletion process without making the process so cumbersome that people would not delete anything at all.

Photo credit: Cherry Cyanide

Now that I have two boys who also love Lego, the bins are down from the garage and new creations are hatching from our collective minds every day. It got me thinking, wow, there are a lot of parallels between what I do as a Web developer  and Lego.  On this 55th anniversary of the Lego patent, here are some thoughts on how playing with Lego is a lot like developing for the Web.

Develop using basic building blocks

The Lego brick is a very simple concept, from which stems every Lego piece in existence today. It’s a lot like a programming language with basic loops and conditional constructs, from which stems frameworks and libraries. Reusable code can be assembled in an infinite number of variations, morphing into web sites and web-based applications.

We rarely see the humble Lego brick in the spotlight, but we parade clever Lego creations through the Internet. When we develop for the web it about the types of bricks we are using — PHP, Python, or Ruby. We celebrate the end results, the beautifully developed web sites and web-based applications we use in our day-to-day.

Develop anything you want — simple or complex

Us Web developers can create anything we want with just a computer and our fingertips. Just like Lego, we can develop something basic and simple, like an online to-do list / task manager. Or, we can develop more advanced web-based applications to help manage complex problems. There is no limit to what we can build with Lego bricks or develop with web-based programming languages.

Lego bricks have been used to build everything from squat and square cars to four-wheel drive trucks with independent suspension. The specific details depend on the developer and what they are trying to accomplish.

Develop things to solve real-world practical problems

Lego bricks aren’t just for building toy cars and airplanes. They are often times used to real-world practical problems. I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi, a small $35 Linux computer popular with hobbyists like myself. The Raspberry Pi does not come with any type of enclosure, so I built one using Lego. The Lego case has since been connected to a USB hub and Web cam, also enclosed in Lego. Lego enthusiasts throughout the world have developed a printer, a pancake bot, a beer machine, and more.

Web developers do this every day. We develop web sites and web-based applications to solve real-world problems for our clients. We take seemingly complex business problems and break them down into basic building blocks, then we re-assemble those blocks into a useful web site or web-based application.

Learning is a side-effect of having fun

Playing with Lego is all about having fun while learning. Lucky for us web developers, we have chosen a line of work where we are always learning, having fun, and developing practical (and sometimes whimsical) web sites and web-based applications. If you are a Web developer who isn’t satisfied with her job, maybe it’s time to play more with Lego.

Photo credit: oskay

Web design and development agencies, offering more digitally oriented creative services, often track time according to the type of work being performed. For example, billable time will be tracked by work types such as development/engineering, design, HTML/CSS, client-side scripting, server-side scripting, etc.

Traditional print and graphic design agencies, offering creative services more in the analog realm, will sometimes track time associated with the person doing the billable work. In this example, billable hours are tracked against people’s names or job titles. For example, senior designer, junior designer, copywriter, etc.

Setting up People / Roles as Work Types

Billable hourly rates set up as type of work.

We designed and developed our online time tracking software, Intervals, to dovetail with creative agencies tracking their time as the type of work being performed, such as programming, marketing, or design hours. This is why people are presented with the option to select any type of work when adding their time using Intervals.

However, Intervals will just as easily track billable hours according to the person doing the work, or their role. To do this, simply name the work types after each person or role. The example below shows a work type set up for each person at a creative agency.

Billable hourly rates set up as person or role.

When a member of the creative team goes online to track their time, they will select their own name from the list of work types. Now you have all the data you need to generate granular reports and invoices for your clients, with details showing the billable rate each person was billed out at.

Using Reports to Calculate Billable Time Per Person / Role

Pie chart showing online time tracking data billed by personal hourly rates.

Tracking your agency’s billable rates as people or roles is easy when using flexible online time tracking software. To see if  Intervals might be a good fit for your time tracking needs, sign up for a free 30 day trial.

Photo credit: Victor1558

On the Importance of Having a Post-Launch Process

It’s good to have a process. In fact it’s absolutely necessary. But, often times these processes neglect one final and important phase — post launch. How do we address what happens to a web site after the project is completed? Once we launch a web site and put it out into the wild, it still requires nurturing and attention. There will be bugs to fix, additional features to add, and usability tweaks to make based on viewer behavior and feedback.

Whatever you want to call this phase — post-launch, maintenance mode, warranty period — your client’s web site is going to have ongoing needs after it’s been released out into the wild. Yes, the wild. Because the Interwebs are in a constant state of flux, a web site needs to adapt to stay relevant to its audience and search engines, as well as the client’s ongoing business needs.

Discussing a web site’s post-launch needs with your clients presents a great business opportunity for your web design and development agency. Offer your clients a retainer agreement for recurring monthly web site work. This enables your clients to make changes and add features to their web site in a timely manner by simply submitting a request. There is not contractual void to get in the way. And, retainer agreements helps regulate cash flow — a constant struggle for many agencies.

Implementing the Post-Launch Phase into Your Web Site Projects

Our own web design and development agency, Pelago, recognized a need for this final project phase and created a maintenance contract to address it with our clients. We would always present the contract to our clients in the beginning of their initial web site project, to get them thinking ahead about how they were going to maintain their web site once it was launched. The conversation alone was valuable to our clients, because it made them look at their web site from a more fluid perspective, as an ongoing project defined, but not confined, to the main project phases.

If you are an agency offering web design and development services to your clients, consider the post-launch client relationship, and how to keep the web site from going stale. To help with this process, we provide our maintenance contract available for free download. Take it and use it with your clients to help ease their transition into the post-launch phase on your next web site project.

Photo credit: AGeekMom

Using online time tracking software can help a creative agency identify which client commitments are in danger of being dropped before it happens. In this article, we’ll be using the Mr. Pie Chart report from Intervals, our online time tracking software. The pie chart pictured below is ideal for comparing how much time you are billing different clients.

As we can see, more than half of our billable time is being tracked against the orange and light blue clients. The question to ask ourselves is, what about the clients represented by the smaller slivers? This chart is showing us that the mauve and sage green clients are not being billed as much.

Once we know which clients are being billed less, we can look into they why. Perhaps they’ve been delayed by the client, so there isn’t any work to do this week. Or, perhaps our team is stretched too thin and hasn’t been able to work on this client’s projects.

The time tracking data as rendered by the pie chart tells us our client commitments are slipping. The chart may not tell us why, but it does tell us where to look. Generating another report or two is all it should require to start a conversation with the client and/or the team to find out why the billable hours are lessening and to resolve any workflow issues that may be contributing to the decline.

It turns out that online time tracking software is also a great tool for analyzing the performance of your creative agency. In this article, we’ll use Intervals and it’s Trends report to illustrate how time tracking data can be used by creative agencies to identify seasonality and predict trends. In other words, we’ll be looking back on past data to find patterns, and then projecting those patterns forward to predict and prepare for trends.

Identifying Seasonality

Seasonality is difficult to identify, especially for creative agencies, where erratic cash flow is the norm and projects come and go so quickly. If we are tracking the time spent on each project, the resulting data may reveal some patterns. The downside is that it may take some time to accumulate enough data make analysis possible. The upside is that anything is better than nothing, and even a little data can help the decision making process.

Seasonality is important for a creative agency to understand because it will help with business decisions, such as who to hire and when. And while some agencies may have obvious seasonality, others may not. For those creative agencies that aren’t sure when the projects are going to come in, time tracking data may reveal when to push and when to hold back.

The above Trends graph shows two years of time tracking data at a web design agency. Each color represents a different client. As we can plainly see, the blue client has been consistent during this time. Their projects peak around the  new year, but overall they are a consistent source of billable work.

In contrast, the red client had a lot of billable work early on, but the work was sporadic and dissipated over time. The green client gradually increased in billable work — while the red client was phased out — resulting in more consistent billable work that increases in November and tapers off after the new year.

The bird’s-eye view of the data shows our billable work peaking from November to February, with a small surge during July. And it shows that billable work decreases significantly from April to June. This web design agency was able to use this data to identify “seasons” of high and low volumes of billable work, which lead to making better business decisions going forward.

Predicting Trends

What about the future? Can we make any predictions from this data? I believe so. I’ve projected the data out one year to visualize what we might expect. We have two existing clients, blue and green, that are going to increase their billable work during the holiday season and a little into the new year. Unless we lose one of those clients, it’s nice to know we can rely on them for consistent revenue.

Next, we need to find more work during the months of April, May, and June. For whatever reason, these months are the lightest in billable hours. These months would be a good time to bring on new clients, or drum up some new projects from existing clients. It might also be a good time to reduce commitments to subcontractors and freelancers, and perhaps tell our team to go on vacation.

What about the red client? They are an anomaly, a disruption, and should not be considered a reliable source of revenue. The red client is an example of the web design agency taking on a large project and then knocking it out over a short period of time. These types of projects can be taxing on the team and cash flow. We won’t include the red client in our predictions because we’ve learned our lesson and will avoid similar projects going forward.

Reliably Foreseeing the Future

Tracking your creative agency’s billable hours using online time tracking software results in very useful data. But it is important not to read too much into the data. Seasonality is highly subject to change due to factors beyond our control, and trends are difficult to predict. But that does not mean you shouldn’t try to identify seasonality and predict trends.

Time tracking data will help you grow your creative agency, but it can’t make decisions for you. Leave room in the decision making process for experience and intuition and your creative agency will prosper. Ignore the data altogether and you leave the future of your creative agency in the hands of the gods.

In this article, Jaime shows you how to add a title tag and hover effects to your HubSpot CTAs. The title tag is helpful for both SEO and displaying a small amount of text when the viewer mouses over a CTA. The hover effects add a nice touch often seen on web site buttons.

Introduction to HubSpot CTAs

What is a Call To Action?

A HubSpot CTA is an attention-getting button or link on a page. It is intelligently placed on a page to encourage viewers to click on it and to start a flow that will lead to a conversion on the site. Some example CTAs are “Start a Free Trial” or “Download a Whitepaper” buttons.

CTAs in HubSpot have a lot of inherent functionality. For example, they track how many times they have been viewed, how many clicks they’ve garnered, and how much of those clicks lead to conversions. Some advanced features also include the ability to perform A/B tests to determine which version of a CTA results in better goal completion.

CTAs in HubSpot

CTAs are built using HubSpots CTA builder tool. You don’t need to touch code in order to create one and the end result will be an HTML/JavaScript code for installing on your website. Once the code is generated it will contain something similar to this:


<!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code -->
<span class="hs-cta-wrapper" id="hs-cta-wrapper-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc">
<span class="hs-cta-node hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" id="hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" data-title="Click me!" data-img="/i/buttons/bgbutton_try.png" data-onimg="/i/buttons/bgbutton_ontry.png">
<!--[if lte IE 8]><div id="hs-cta-ie-element"></div><![endif]-->
<a href="http://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/201885/e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc"><img class="hs-cta-img" id="hs-cta-img-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" style="border-width:0px;" src="http://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/201885/e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc.png" /></a>
</span>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(){
var s='hubspotutk',r,c=((r=new RegExp('(^|; )'+s+'=([^;]*)').exec(document.cookie))?r[2]:''),w=window;w[s]=w[s]||c,
hsjs = document.createElement("script"), el=document.getElementById("hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc");
hsjs.type = "text/javascript";hsjs.async = true;
hsjs.src = "//cta-service-cms2.hubspot.com/cs/loader-v2.js?pg=e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc&pid=201885&hsutk=" + encodeURIComponent(c);
(document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]||document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0]).appendChild(hsjs);
try{el.style.visibility="hidden";}catch(err){}
setTimeout(function() {try{el.style.visibility="visible";}catch(err){}}, 2500);
})();
</script>
</span>
<!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code -->


The above code generates a button that can be managed remotely from your HubSpot account. Here’s a screenshot show ing just a few details on one particular CTA:

How to set up a basic CTA

Setup of a basic CTA is really easy in HubSpot. The first step is to select a button style, which can be done using the button builder or by using a custom image. The only difference between the two is that the custom image route ensures the button will look exactly as you desire. If you already have an existing design, it is best to use this option. Once the design is finalized, you can create the CTA and retrieve it’s installation code for your website.

What are the limitations of of a HubSpot CTA?

No Title tags

In our CTAs, we wanted to have a title attribute on the A tag in order to tell the viewer more about the plan they’re selecting. Unfortunately this isn’t an option while creating the CTA and we were left without an alternative. The CTA renderes only an A tag with an IMG tag and that’s it.

No Hover State

One of the drawbacks of the custom image route is that there’s no option to define a hover state. If your design includes a hover state, it will not work and you’ll be stuck with just a regular image button with no hover effects. Maybe HubsSpot will support this in the future, but for now it is not supported by the application. We ran into this problem while building some CTAs and ended up making a custom solution that enabled us to add hover functionality to these buttons, without having to modify the CTA in such a way that it interfered with its functionality.

How to create an advanced HubSpot CTA

Using the code from above, identify the SPAN with the class name “hs-cta-node”. This tag will be used to hold extra information, specifically the hover state of the image and a custom title tag.


<!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code -->
<span class="hs-cta-wrapper" id="hs-cta-wrapper-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc">
<span class="hs-cta-node hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" id="hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc">
...


Next, change it by adding these attributes, and customize them to your specific setup:


<span class="hs-cta-node hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" id="hs-cta-e4459cb8-88cc-4881-aed2-73d3e8c4f4fc" data-title="Click me!" data-img="/i/buttons/bgbutton_try.png" data-onimg="/i/buttons/bgbutton_ontry.png" >


The data-title attribute will be the title, data-img will be the off state of the image, and data-onimg will be the onstate when hovered. The images being referenced will have to be manually created and uploaded by you into your site as well.

Next, place this utility function so it lies after the CTA code:

<script>
(function(d) {
  var customize = function(e) {
    var target = e.target ? e.target : e.srcElement;
    if(target && target.className == 'hs-cta-img' 
       && !target.getAttribute('data-registered') && target.parentNode) {
      var span = target.parentNode.parentNode;
      target.title = span.getAttribute('data-title');
      target.src   = span.getAttribute('data-onimg');
      target.onmouseover = function() {
          target.src = span.getAttribute('data-onimg');
      }
      target.onmouseout = function() {
          target.src = span.getAttribute('data-img');
      }
      target.setAttribute('data-registered',1);
    }
  }
  if (d.addEventListener) {
    d.addEventListener('mousemove', customize, false); 
  } else if (d.attachEvent)  {
    d.attachEvent('onmousemove', customize);
  }
})(document);
</script>

That’s it. Now, every time the page loads, and HubSpot renders the CTAs on your page, this utility function will detect your custom hover images and title and apply them on the image any time the viewer hovers over it. The script doesn’t depend on a javascript framework so it should play nice if you already have one.

This is why you should be charging your clients an hourly rate and tracking that time using online software. Anybody can design and build a web site. Those anybodies are not you, and your client knows that. Tracking time helps quantify the personality and perspective your creative agency will breathe into their project.

When you use an online time tracking application, like Intervals, it takes less than a minute to pull up a report showing exactly where you time is going. Was too much time spent going back and forth on the design? Did the client request a big change? Meetings go longer than they should have?

Online time tracking software can answer these questions and assist your creative agency in quickly presenting accurate reports to your client. Reduce client questions and concerns over billing with a few clicks, and get paid what you are worth.

Photo credit: marc falardeau

If you are tracking your time, the data can help answer these business questions. Our online time tracking software, Intervals, has an advanced report we call the Crosschart report. This report allows you to define the X and Y axis as any combination of data points — client, project, milestone, task, work type, or person.

The Crosschart report, showing time tracking data for a client by task and by person. 

The Crosschart report can filter this time tracking data as well, narrowing down the data to focus on one client, one person, or several other criteria. Filter and cross reference time tracking data points with one another for a given date range and you have an advanced report providing a unique insight into your workflow.

Regardless of how we format our contracts, all creative agencies are limited by the same thing; throughput, a measure of productivity based on the number of people.

To calculate profitability on a contract, we need to track people’s billable hours using online time tracking software. The data available to creative agencies tracking their time is indispensable when deducing which contracts are losing money and which are profitable, and when making informed decisions on new contracts.

For this article, we’ll be using Intervals to illustrate how to record payments, track time, and calculate profitability. We’ll also illustrate how to use reports to zero in on the problems causing contracts to lose money.

Setting up the Contract as a Project

The first step is to set up the contract as a project with hourly rates. To do this in Intervals, a project is created and hourly rates defined for each type of service being offered under this contract. If a prepayment has been collected, add it to the project.

Enter the hourly rates for each type of billable service

Add each payment to the project as they are received

Tracking Time Online

Create a task for each deliverable. Add a time estimate to each task. This will allow you to track time at a  more granular level, which will result in more advanced reporting and the ability to compare estimates against actuals at the task level. And it’s a great way to manage contractual work in general.

Create a task for tracking time on each deliverable, estimate the number of hours

Start tracking your time against the contract as you work through the tasks. Intervals offers timers that will track your time for you, or you may simply use the Add Time button to add time to the task. And don’t forget to enter additional payments to the project as the contract progresses.

Add time to each task for more advanced reporting on profitability

Calculate Profitability Using the Project Dashboard

Now that we are managing the project online and tracking our time against it, we’ll have accumulated enough data to calculate profitability. At the beginning of any project the reports are going to show that we are profitable, which is what we would expect. We’ll have to wait until the project is near it’s end, when we’ve tallied up enough time and payments to calculate profitability with more accuracy.

Calculate profitability using the project dashboard, based on time tracking data and payments

Intervals provides a dashboard for each project that lists a high level overview of billable work, fees, payments, and the outstanding balance. This dashboard view is based on billable time tracked and contract payments. In other words, the dashboard calculates profitability based on how much money we have received from the client.

Identify Problem Areas Using the Project Activity Report

While the project dashboard tells us if we lost money on a contract, it doesn’t tell us why. For that we’ll have to go to the Project Activity report to get a breakdown of the work performed under this contract.

The Project Activity report will help identify which tasks made the project lose money

The Project Activity report can be broken down by several different criteria — “by task” being the most useful for identifying problem areas. When we run this report by task, we can quickly see which tasks took more time than we estimated, or may have been outside the scope of the contract.

Going Forward…

With Intervals there is less intuit required, because it takes personality and emotion out of the equation. It’s really hard to argue with the data.
— Jeff Day, Hök Nik

The ability to calculate profitability using online time tracking software is a powerful asset to any creative agency. Once we’ve analyzed a project and identified the reasons we lost money, we can make necessary changes to avoid it happening again in the future.

We may need to make some changes to our workflow to become more efficient. We may need to raise our hourly rates. We may need to reduce the scope of our contracts. There are several different changes an agency can make, all depending on your situation. The important thing is having the data to make informed decisions.

Photo credit: El Bibliomata

The Project Landscape report supports several different views of your ongoing projects. The Time tab, pictured above, displays estimated and actual hours. Because Intervals allows you to estimate the amount of time at the project and task levels, both of these estimates are included on the report. The actuals columns are broken down by unbillable and billable time. And, of course, the total and remaining columns give us the big picture for the project.

This online report is a high level view of time tracking data, data that can help a project manager complete the project on time and under budget.

However, not every agency — especially smaller teams and freelancers — requires this high degree of functionality when invoicing clients. Perhaps you already have billing software in place, like QuickBooks or Billings. A standalone report including a summary of billable time, along with a detailed breakdown of the work completed, is often times more then sufficient for getting paid. Many clients simply want to see a breakdown of how their money is being spent — a very simple task when using Intervals for online time tracking.

Generating a Project Activity Report Online From Your Time Tracking Data

At it’s very core, Intervals is a time tracking application designed to enhance basic time tracking data with additional layers of granularity. These additional layers allow you to slice the data quickly into meaningful reports. The Project Activity Report is just one example of how your billable hours can be articulated to the client.

The Project Activity Report is separated out into two different parts. The top part is a summary of billable work performed, grouped by  your various billable rates. The bottom part of the report is optional, and provides an itemized listing of each time entry grouped and subtotaled by date, task, or person.

The Project Activity Report, one of the many detailed and useful reports available in the Intervals online time tracking application.

If you are like many other agencies, small teams, and freelancers, whose invoicing needs aren’t that complicated, try Intervals for free and run a few reports using your own time tracking data.

“No other web design agency can provide the same level of visibility and transparency as one using Intervals.”

Founded in 2005 and based in Los Angeles, California,Media Contour is a small collective of talented web designers who have created an impressive portfolio of work. They are an interactive agency focused on web design and development.

But Media Contour is more than just a successful web design agency. Their undeniable passion for helping small businesses and enriching the Los Angeles web design community has produced a long list of happy and successful clients, a wall full of awards, and a blog devoted to web design events.

Read the Media Contour Case Study

Read our other case studies