Professional services agencies are one of the most common types of small businesses in the world. One of the most essential tools they can and should embrace is time tracking. However, many of these agencies don’t track their time, or do so inefficiently.
We were once one of those agencies that tracked their time poorly. We had a few time tracking mishaps in our first few years, which taught us the real costs of not tracking your time well. Here’s what we learned.
I’ll never forget the excitement of landing our first big client. By then we had completed a good number of smaller projects, and we felt confident about taking on something bigger. Before work could begin, however, we had to go through the process of estimating the project.
We had very little historical data to go on, mostly in the form of paper timesheets and Excel spreadsheets. We did our best to analyze what data we had and put our best estimate forward.
Months later, as the project was coming to a close, we realized we had underestimated our time and effort. Not only that, but we’d understated our actual hours as we tracked them. This was not going to be a profitable project. When we finally tallied our time, we confirmed we’d lost money on the project.
That didn’t have to happen. If we’d had been more disciplined at tracking our time, and used proper time tracking tools, we would have been able to estimate the project more accurately. (This moment became the catalyst that launched our journey into building Intervals, our time tracking software for professional services agencies.)
Once we ditched the paper timesheets and Excel spreadsheets, and started using time tracking software, a peculiar thing happened. Our revenue started going up. We were still coming into the office and leaving at the same time each day, and juggling the same number of projects — so what happened?
We dug into the data, comparing the old and new methods of tracking time, and quickly discovered the answer. Our software featured timers, which we used to track our time as we worked on each task throughout the day. We were no longer waiting until our next break, or worse, the end of the day, to jot down our hours. As long as we remembered to start and stop our timers, the software took care of the rest.
Our analysis revealed that our previous methods of tracking time were capturing only 70% of our time. In the years since that revelation, we’ve heard from countless companies with the same experience.
The lesson here is simple. If you aren’t tracking your time well, you’re not getting paid enough.
Every professional services agency will have some clients who question their bill. These clients are usually well-meaning and simply want a better understanding of where their money is going. It’s important to be able to answer their questions with confidence and accuracy. Accountability builds trust, a cornerstone of any business.
When agencies don’t track their time, or track it poorly, they will lose some accountability with clients who want a more transparent business relationship. They might even lose those clients altogether.
Fortunately, the inverse is also true. Those agencies that deploy time tracking software will experience longer lasting, more profitable, relationships with their clients.
The post The Real Costs of Not Tracking Your Time first appeared on Intervals.]]>
The clients section in your Intervals account is a place to keep all of your client information readily available and up to date. It can include contacts, billing information, payment histories, and more. It is also a gateway into all of your projects, both past and present.
With the mobile app you can now access all of this information when away from your desk. For example, you might need to look up the phone number of a client, or check to see if they’ve paid their invoice.
Every Intervals account includes the ability to upload documents to any project, milestone, or task, depending on where it’s needed most. The documents section aggregates all of your uploads into one place, so you don’t have to go searching too far to find them. Use the filter options to narrow down the list of documents, then preview or download them.
Now you can do all of this from your mobile device. For example, you might need to review a project contract from the train, or spell check some copy from the coffee shop. This improvement puts all of your uploaded documents at your fingertips, literally.
If you’d like to start using the mobile app alongside your Intervals account, it can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play.
Visit our web site for general information about the Intervals mobile app.
The post Mobile App Improvement: Clients and Documents first appeared on Intervals.]]>Tracking time is one of the most worthwhile endeavors that a company can pursue to improve their productivity and profitability. But, it’s not an easy undertaking. Many companies have deployed time tracking software with the best of intentions, only to abandon their efforts later. There are a number of reasons why an organization fails at tracking their time. This article will focus on just one culprit — the absence of a long term plan. If you find yourself deploying time tracking software for your team, here are a few benefits that can be harvested from building a forward-thinking strategy.
A weekly timesheet is an indispensable tool for capturing each person’s time. However, it’s not suitable for managing projects or billing clients. Consider the features you will need for running a small business beyond payroll. Delivering projects on time and under budget requires advanced reporting to reveal anomalies that could derail your efforts. Look for time tracking software that features time estimates and reports that will compare actuals and estimates in real time.
Billing clients requires building invoices. Depending on your client’s needs, your invoices will range from a single line item to a detailed accounting of billable hours. If your clients don’t currently expect a detailed bill of services, think ahead to how such a report will bring more transparency and trust into the relationship, and how that will benefit your bottom line in the long run.
Most companies track their time in one application and manage their tasks in another. These apps might have integrations that will pull data from one to the other, but they can’t correlate time and tasks. Knowing exactly where your time is going is a huge advantage for improving productivity and profitability. It means you can see which projects were successful, or not, then take any measures necessary to ensure the next project is a success.
Look for time tracking software that not only features task management, but maintains a tight integration between the two. In addition to gaining a deeper understanding of where your time is going, you’ll also know who’s working on what — in real time. The sooner you can respond to potential issues, the easier it will be to keep your projects on track.
Time tracking is useful for more than just managing projects and billing time. It has the potential to give you insights into your business. Insights that will show you how to become more productive and profitable. One way to achieve this goal is to have your team categorize their hours when they enter their time.
For example, We’ve consulted with companies who created buckets for tracking tax-deductible research and development time, and others buckets for different areas of specialization. As a result, they are able to perform a comparative analysis of their time and extract answers to their most important questions. Look for software that features custom categories and create buckets that are both meaningful and practical for your company.
We’ve been helping small businesses and teams onboard time tracking software since 2006. The most common mistake we see is the failure to implement a long term plan. Most companies will deploy time tracking because they are trying to fix an immediate problem. As important as that is, it’s equally as important to know what you’ll want to do after solving it. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself scrapping months or years of hard work only to start over with a new plan. Before you begin, come up a list of questions that you’d like answered in a year or two, and let that guide your time tracking plan.
The post How to Reap the Long Term Benefits of Time Tracking first appeared on Intervals.]]>
Spreadsheets, such as Excel or Google Sheets, are a great way to get started tracking your time. However, they do have drawbacks. At some point you’re going reach a place in your journey where spreadsheets will no longer scale to meet your needs. Here are six reasons to move on from tracking time with spreadsheets.
Tracking your time shouldn’t take too much of your time. In fact, it should be as seamless a process as possible. Working with spreadsheets, however, is an almost entirely manual process. Recording hours on a spreadsheet will feel like it’s taking longer than it should, and only gets more cumbersome as you add more people to your team. It’s not uncommon for a small team to spend a few hours a week getting their time tracking spreadsheets up to date.
Sure, most spreadsheets can turn your data into basic graphs and charts, but it’s still basic. Because a spreadsheet is just plots of data on two axes, all it can really do is display simple reports. If you’re going to extract any intelligence from your data you’ll need to plug in third party software or build a custom solution. Bars and charts might look great, but if they lack intelligence they also lack value.
While it is possible to automate some aspects of a spreadsheet it does require more advanced knowledge of the software. Tools, such as macros, can be used to create automations that will help with your time tracking efforts. However, they are a complex solution to a simple problem and generally not worth the time. It might be fun for that one Excel power user at your office who loves tinkering with macros, but, what happens when they no longer work there?
Spreadsheets are indifferent to your data — they simply hold and display your data however you’ve configured them to do so. A small error in a calculation, such as a sum of column values, can have big repercussions. It doesn’t take much to make a small, but costly, mistake that will compound over time. You don’t want to find out weeks from now that your billable hours are off because you left a few cells out of a calculation.
As years go by and your team grows you’ll amass more and more data. The size and complexity of your spreadsheets will increase, and with it the likelihood of hidden mistakes. Going back into your data archives to analyze past performance and harvest any meaningful intelligence will be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Historical time tracking data should always be at your fingertips. As the great philosopher, Mater, once said, “don’t need to know where I’m going, just need to know where I’ve been.”
If everyone on your team is tracking their own time on the same spreadsheet, what’s keeping them from accidentally (or, intentionally) overwriting one another’s hours? Trying to keep everyone from stepping on each other’s toes is difficult when you are working with shared documents. You could create a separate spreadsheet for each person, but then you also need to find a way to aggregate all that data into one place. And that is going to take time — time that you could, and should, be devoting to billable work.
Once you’ve realized you need to move on from tracking time with spreadsheets, the challenge becomes selecting which time tracking software to deploy. There are many to choose from — perhaps, too many. What matters is that you identify a few that seem like a good fit, and then try each one out to be sure. Not sure? Talk to someone from each software vendor and ask them the questions that matter most to you. The qualities of the time tracking software you choose to put your trust in is just as important as the team behind it.
The post Six Reasons to Move On From Tracking Time with Spreadsheets first appeared on Intervals.]]>Most people, when they hear the words “time tracking,” will roll their eyes and groan — maybe even utter a few four-letter words under their breath. Their reaction would be justified. Tracking their time can seem like it’s just one more task to add to an already long list of work responsibilities. And, it doesn’t help at all that companies have historically taken an Orwellian approach to time tracking.
When done right, however, time tracking will bring harmony to the workplace by reducing stress and improving work-life balance. Here’s how.
Time tracking makes you more aware of how you’re spending your time. Understanding exactly where your time is going allows you to identify time-wasting activities, interruptions, and unproductive tasks. Recognizing these patterns makes it easier to eliminate or minimize time sinks, leading to a more efficient use of your time.
When you track your time, you gain insights into which tasks are consuming the most time and effort. This helps you prioritize your work more effectively. By focusing on high-impact tasks and deprioritizing or delegating less important ones, you reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed and stressed by a never-ending to-do list.
Time tracking provides data on how long tasks actually take to complete, and compares that against your initial estimates. This helps you set more realistic expectations for yourself and your team. When expectations align with reality, you’ll feel less pressured to meet unrealistic deadlines.
Time tracking helps establish clear boundaries between work and personal life. By tracking your work hours, you can ensure that you aren’t consistently working beyond your designated hours. Taking ownership of your work hours makes you more accountable to yourself and makes it easier to disconnect and recharge during your personal time.
With a clear understanding of how you spend your time, you can better manage your work schedule. This includes allocating time for breaks, meetings, and internal projects. Creating balance in your work day is just as important as having balance in your personal life.
Time tracking can reveal recurring challenges or bottlenecks in your work processes. By identifying these issues, you can proactively seek solutions, streamline workflows, and reduce the stress associated with repetitive problems. Time tracking enables you to meet deadlines and budgets by identifying potential problems before they become disruptive.
Time tracking allows you to allocate time for self-care activities, such as exercise, hobbies, or spending time with family and friends. In today’s networked world. where work and life are seamlessly interconnected, self-care can look like morning coffee with friends, or a mid-day jog with co-workers. Prioritizing self-care is essential for reducing stress and maintaining overall well-being.
The idea that work and personal life are mutually exclusive is quickly becoming an antiquated concept. Rather than thinking of work and personal life as separate, time tracking encourages a more integrated approach. It helps you allocate time for work, personal activities, and relaxation in a way that promotes overall balance and harmony. Just because your phone is always on doesn’t mean you should be.
When deployed in a collaborative manner and embraced by the team, time tracking is a valuable tool that brings about significant reductions in stress levels and substantial improvements in work-life balance. The act of meticulously recording and analyzing time gives your team insight as to where their efforts are going and mitigates the anxieties often associated with time management. This leads to them making more informed decisions and identifying areas for improvement in both their professional and personal lives.
The post How Time Tracking Reduces Stress, Improves Work-Life Balance first appeared on Intervals.]]>Before we built Intervals, our flagship time tracking software, we were a professional services agency that designed and developed web sites. In a span of five years we built and deployed over 300 projects. As a small team of designers and engineers, we had to be efficient if we were going to be successful. And that meant dialing in our project management process.
There was one part of the process, however, that we always grappled with — estimating new projects. We got our estimates wrong more than a few times and lost money on those projects. These experiences were always painful, but, they also inspired us to create our time tracking software, Intervals, to ultimately fix the problem.
Based on our own failures, here are three reasons why estimating projects is difficult, and how time tracking software can help.
We naturally formed an opinion about every project we estimated. Some projects had an air of excitement and buzz. Some projects promised to be practical and profitable. And some projects seemed downright tedious and boring. The bias we each formed in our minds was noticeable in how we created our estimates.
We had a habit of underestimating most of our projects. However, the degree to which we underestimated each one was directly affected by our perception of the project. If the project was an opportunity to work on something new and cutting edge, for example, we had to be careful not to let our excitement sway us toward promising too much. If the project seemed boring, we wouldn’t put our best effort into the estimate.
Time tracking software solved this problem by giving us objective data that can’t be swayed by emotion. Data that reveals how similar projects have unfolded in the past. When we referenced past projects our estimates became increasingly more accurate with each new contract.
The typical approach to a project was to wait until the scope was complete before creating an estimate. The problem with this approach is that the requirements were difficult to encapsulate in a single document, and even if they were, they would often change mid project. This was especially true with web design and development, where clients couldn’t visualize the end product until you actually started building it.
If the scope is going to change unexpectedly the accuracy of your estimate doesn’t matter. It’s going to be irrelevant after that first change request. To stop this from happening, we would give our clients two choices. They could provide a more detailed, concrete scope that we would estimate up front. Or, we could do the work under a time and materials contract, estimating each phase along the way.
If the client chose to deliver a more detailed scope, we would reference the time tracking data from past projects to build a more accurate estimate. If they chose the second option, we would use time tracking software to keep track of the billable hours and use that data to build detailed monthly reports and invoices.
Estimating is a learned skill that takes time to hone. Even after years of experience, some people will still struggle with estimating their own time. When we would create estimates we would start by breaking down the project into the smallest number of parts possible. Then we’d ask each person on the team to evaluate their portion of the work on each of those parts.
After months and years of estimating project based work, individuals on our team (including myself) would continue to underestimate their time. We learned to increase each of our estimates by a certain percentage to account for the discrepancy. Even then, estimating was still difficult.
We fixed this problem by configuring our time tracking software to keep track of hours using the same breakdown as our estimates. By tracking time on each individual part of a project, our data was structured in a way that made it easy to create estimates. When estimating a new project, we would still break it down into smaller parts, but then we’d reference past projects to see how long it took to develop those same, or similar, parts.
The post Three Reasons Why Estimating Project-based Work is Difficult first appeared on Intervals.]]>
We recently launched a new feature that allows you to copy all, or part, of your weekly timesheet from one week to another. It’s based on feedback from numerous customers who reached out to us and shared how such a feature would make their day to day time tracking efforts more efficient and less painful.
After gathering initial feedback and working through different ideas, we defined a few scenarios where one would benefit from being able to copy multiple time entries at once. In all of these cases, the ability to copy time entries greatly reduces the number of mouse clicks and key clacks required to fill out your weekly timesheet.
The premise is that there are people who want to track their time by manually filling out their weekly timesheet. Their workdays are such that they don’t need the precision of timers or the automation they provide. When they add the time is less important than how they add their time.
The benefit of copying a timesheet is that it provides a template based on work completed in a prior week. This cuts down considerably the time spent tracking one’s time. Here are three relatable use cases where copying your weekly timesheet can make time tracking less painful.
Many companies will find themselves working on one or more of the same projects for a season. For example, your agency takes on a large, multifaceted project that will take months, or years, to complete. Or, your boutique consultancy is focused on a small handful of ongoing projects.
The number of hours you spend on these projects will differ from week to week. However, copying the previous week’s time entries speeds up the process by creating a prefilled timesheet. All you have to do is enter the correct number of hours for each project and day.
Weekly meetings are a common occurrence in any workplace. Many companies will meet Monday to kick off the week, for example. And anyone working with clients, such as agencies and consultants, will hold weekly check-ins to go over project updates.
It’s highly likely that these meetings will not only occur on the same weekday, but also for the same amount of time. When entering your time for these meetings, simply copy the time entries from your previous weekly timesheet. It will save the time and energy spent manually entering your time for each meeting.
Research has unveiled that we spend up to 40% of our day on repetitive work. While that number is high, and certainly implies that much of that time is being wasted, many will still need to track it. (On a side note, using time tracking software will help you waste less time by identifying daily time sinks.)
Manually entering your time for the same daily tasks, week after week, will quickly become a tedious chore. It’s one of the top reasons people don’t want to track their time in the first place. The ability to copy a timesheet, however, solves this issue by greatly reducing the amount of time and effort required to enter your time.
The post 3 Relatable Use Cases For Copying Your Weekly Timesheet first appeared on Intervals.]]>
If time tracking software is going to be adopted and embraced by a company, it needs to make time tracking as painless as possible. Over the years we’ve added several features and made just as many optimizations to make entering time easy.
Most recently, we’ve added the ability to copy a weekly timesheet. This new feature is ideal for people who perform repetitive tasks from week to week. And because you select which time entries to copy, this is a fast and convenient way to enter a day or a week’s worth of time all at once.
Copying a weekly timesheet is a two step process. First, you use the bulk updater to select which time entries to copy. We recommend selecting all of the time entries with one click, then uncheck any that shouldn’t be copied.
Intervals will then take you to the multiple time entry form and prepopulate it with the selected time entries. The second step is to review the time entries and make any adjustments necessary before saving. By default, the multiple time entry form will load the current week. To change the week where your copied time is going, simply click the left or right arrows.
The post Copy a Weekly Timesheet [New Feature] first appeared on Intervals.]]>We are excited to unveil the new card view for tasks. This new feature turns your task list into a Kanban, Scrum, or custom task board. The card view is an intuitive and interactive visualization tool ideal for working tasks through to completion. Creating task boards with the card view empowers you to collaborate faster and smarter, making this feature an indispensable centerpiece in meetings and huddles.
Originally drawing inspiration from Kanban, the card view is designed to be flexible for all task management scenarios. For example, teams practicing Agile and Scrum will find the card view perfectly suited for sprints. Teams unaccustomed to Kanban or Scrum will find the card view is ideal for creating unique task boards for marketing campaigns, procedural workflows, professional services automation, and more.
Intervals enables teams to define their own custom task workflows by creating and prioritizing task statuses. The card view is an extension of this feature — a visual representation that shows where each task is at in your workflow. To progress a task forward, simply drag it to the right and place it into the column that corresponds to its new status. Tasks can also be dragged to the left to move them back.
Prioritize cards by sorting them by an attribute, like priority, or sort them manually in any order. Right click on existing tasks to update them or add time. And, easily create new tasks and insert them directly into your flow.
When managing tasks using a card view, it’s helpful to organize task cards into boards. A board is simply a collection of cards that have some commonality, whether it be a project, an assignee, a sprint, or something else. The task filters and saved views feature is the equivalent of a board in Intervals. Using the task filters already available, you can create an infinite number of task boards.
→ Read help documentation for the card view
→ Learn more about the three different task views — table, simple, and card.
Promoting and maintaining a positive company culture is a priority for many small businesses. A vibrant company culture plays a significant role in hiring talented people and differentiating the business from the competition.
In the quest to balance company culture with efficiency and productivity, integrating task management and time tracking software will accelerate your goals. The right tools will provide a comprehensive solution that not only addresses operational challenges but also fosters a positive work environment. By leveraging the power of time tracking alongside task management, small businesses can optimize productivity, boost employee engagement, and nurture a thriving company culture.
Small businesses committed to a positive company culture often embrace flexibility, including remote work arrangements. Task management tools equipped with remote access enable employees to access, update, and track their tasks and time entries from anywhere. When integrated with time tracking, remote workers can accurately log their time against specific tasks or projects, creating a trove of data for billing and reporting, all while promoting a sense of trust and autonomy.
In a positive company culture, employee privacy and trust are of utmost importance. Implementing time tracking systems can raise concerns, but task management systems can help address these issues. Task management platforms provide a transparent and collaborative space where employees can communicate and collaborate, learning how to work better together. When implementing time tracking, you should focus on building unity on the team, but also emphasize the importance of each individual’s privacy.
Integrating task management with other business systems, such as accounting or payroll software, streamlines operations and reduces administrative burdens. By integrating task management with time tracking, small businesses can ensure accurate time records and minimize manual data entry. This integration not only improves productivity but also creates a work environment where employees can focus on meaningful work, and see the direct results of their time and contributions.
Promoting employee adoption and engagement is fundamental to maintaining a positive company culture. Task management systems enhance adoption and engagement by providing user-friendly interfaces, intuitive task assignment features, and progress tracking capabilities. When combined with time tracking, employees can visualize how their time contributes to task completion and project progress. This sense of ownership and involvement increases employee engagement and satisfaction, contributing to a culture where employees feel valued and empowered.
Data-driven insights are essential for making smart business decisions. Task management tools generate analytics on task completion, project timelines, and employee performance. Integrating this data with time tracking information provides comprehensive productivity metrics. Small businesses can identify areas for improvement and reward achievements. Leveraging analytics and performance insights creates a culture of continuous improvement and recognition.
Scalability and flexibility is vital for small businesses aiming to grow and maintain a positive company culture. Task management systems with scalability features can accommodate increasing employee numbers, evolving workflows, and changing business needs. When time tracking and task management are bundled together, businesses can seamlessly scale their both processes, add new employees, and adapt workflows without compromising productivity or data management.
The post Time Tracking, Task Management, & Company Culture first appeared on Intervals.]]>The act of juggling several projects at once can quickly overwhelm any team. Once the work is broken down into tasks, delegated out, and set in motion, it’s all too easy to get lost in the details. Teams need to regularly get above the fray to gauge overall project health. But even then, how does the team create and maintain a strategic, high level outlook of all their current projects? The most simple and powerful solution to this quandary is to use project labels.
A project label is nothing more than a few words and a color swatch that, when applied to a project, convey meaning and denote what next steps should be taken. And the choice of color creates a visual indicator that can be quickly understood without having to actually read the label. A good label ecosystem creates a high level of organization where each project’s context in it can quickly and easily be deduced.
Label lists will vary from team to team, depending on the industry they work in and the type of work performed. To help your team get started here are a few examples of how labels can be used to deliver more successful projects.
It’s a common practice for project workflows to be based on phases. Each phase, or step, informs the team and the client how the project is progressing.
When modeled after project phases, labels are useful for keeping projects on track and for scheduling upcoming work. An example list of phases are “discovery,” “design,” “development,” and “deployment.” When a project is in it’s deployment phase, that’s a cue to the team that they can queue another project to begin.
A multidisciplinary team will not only juggle multiple projects, but projects with entirely different scopes. Many full service agencies fall into this camp.
Basing labels on the type of project helps a team keep their work segmented at a high level. Labels might include “social media,” “content,” “design,” and “SEO.” These labels are useful for singling out specific projects based on expertise. Your UX designer, for example, can use the labels to focus in on projects for which they are the lead.
Some projects will always be more important than others. For example, a higher priority should be placed on projects where the client paid a rush fee. Whereas, a lower priority should be given to unpaid side projects.
A listing of priority-based labels is simple and straightforward. Name them “low,” “medium,” “high,” and assign them the colors green, orange, and red. This makes it incredibly easy to scan a list of projects and zero in on the higher priority ones. Plus, it is useful when running productivity reports to make sure each project is getting a level of attention relative to its priority.
In larger companies there are typically multiple teams, each one focusing on their domain of responsibility and expertise. In these companies, labels can be used to organize projects based on the team doing the work.
An example of labels for a larger company with multiple teams would be “design,” “engineering,” “administration,” and so on. Associating a project with its team makes it easier for those teams to stay focused on their work. This is especially useful for people who work on multiple teams, because, it enables them to filter project listings and run productivity reports based on which team they’re working on at that moment.
There are a number of variables that factor in to gauging the health of a project. Is it in danger of going over budget? Has the deadline been delayed? Is work behind schedule?
Once you’ve deduced a project’s health, apply a project label to it. Then use these labels to monitor projects based on their last health check. Color swatches can be particularly useful. For example, an unhealthy project can be given a more eye-catching red swatch, so it can’t be easily overlooked. Then perform a weekly health check by sorting your project list based on label and follow up with the most at-risk projects.
There is a lot of work to keep track of before a contract is signed. And it’s incredibly helpful to track and manage that work with your project management software. However, it gets confusing when sales projects are mixed in with ongoing work.
Project labels are useful in this scenario for denoting where the project is at in its sales cycle. For example, your list of project labels could include “lead,” “qualified lead,” “signed,” and so on. Not only will this help you keep track of where the project is at in its sales cycle, now your team can easily filter out sales and focus on contracted work.
The post Six Practical Use Cases for Project Labels first appeared on Intervals.]]>We recently launched a new project labels feature and wanted to follow up with some tips on how to get the most use from them. Project labels are a valuable tool for managing tasks and tracking time effectively. Here’s a few ways project labels will help you improve and maintain better task organization and workflow.
Group tasks by label on the projects they belong to and create more context. This allows you to indicate the nature of the project and focus on a subset of tasks across similar, multiple projects at once. For example, when managing multiple projects simultaneously, create labels for each project, such as “Research” “Design,” and so on. This way, you can easily filter and view tasks specific to each project label.
Basic time tracking reports will reveal how much time is going to different project categories. Use this information to assign different types of tasks and allocate time blocks to balance out your work day.
Use project labels to indicate task priorities. For instance, assign labels like “High Priority,” “Medium Priority,” or “Low Priority” at the project level. This communicates to your team that all tasks under these projects should be given a certain priority. Now your team can focus on the most important tasks first and ensure that time-sensitive activities are not overlooked.
Additionally, tracking time directly on tasks will give you the data needed to quantify which highest priority projects are being worked on. Time tracking will also reveal if any time is being wasted on lower priority work.
Labels can be used to track the progress of the project at a high level. Create labels such as “Unstarted,” “In Progress,” and “Completed” to indicate the current status of each project. As you work on tasks, update the labels for the project they belong to accordingly. This provides a visual overview of your progress and helps you identify projects with tasks that require immediate attention.
When you have numerous tasks across multiple projects, labels enable you to filter and search for specific tasks quickly. You can easily access all tasks associated with a particular project category or phase by applying the relevant labels as filters. Plus, the ability to save these filters enables you to create multiple views that can be loaded quickly.
For example, create a saved filter for all tasks assigned to your designer and belonging to projects currently on hold. Then review this filtered task view weekly with your team to see if anything can be done to push tasks forward.
Project labels can assist in planning and scheduling tasks effectively. For example, assigning labels to projects like “Backlog” and “Icebox” can help prioritize which tasks should be pulled in to the next deliverable. As tasks become ready to implement move them to the project labeled as current. That way your team can focus on the tasks of most importance and not waste time sifting through tasks belonging to projects still coming down the pipeline.
By leveraging project labels, you can analyze the performance of different groupings of projects. For example, you can compare the number of tasks completed, analyze billable hours, and assess the overall health of projects labeled “In progress.” This information can then guide decision-making and time estimating for future projects.
Remember, the key to effective task management and time tracking lies in consistently applying and updating project labels. We recommend regularly reviewing and adjusting your project labels as needed to ensure they align with your evolving priorities and project requirements.
The post Better Task Management Through Project Labels first appeared on Intervals.]]>We recently made some usability improvements to the default work type and module sections of Intervals. Found under the settings and defaults section of your account, the default modules and work types are configured when first starting out. As you manage more and more client projects it may be necessary to revisit how the work types and modules are set up and make some changes. For example, you might want to remove a work type from a project that doesn’t require it.
We’ve added a new column to each listing that displays the number of projects where the work type or module is associated. To see which projects, click on the number. Intervals will load for you a list of all projects where that work type or module is in use.
→ Take a look at this help article for more information on how to use this feature.
The post Improved Work Type and Module Management first appeared on Intervals.]]>
Time tracking software, when implemented effectively, is an indispensable tool for project-driven teams who want to deliver more. However, when used poorly or without consensus, it will create more problems than it will solve. Here are 5 pitfalls to avoid when rolling out time tracking software at your company.
Some employees may feel that time tracking software is intrusive and distrustful, as it requires constant monitoring of their work. An overbearing or punitive implementation will create a culture of surveillance. And that will only lead to decreased morale and a lack of trust between you and your employees.
Solution: To avoid becoming Big Brother, be transparent and up front throughout the process. Establish expectations and set boundaries with your team by soliciting their feedback. Focus on reaching the overall goal as a team, whether that be improved productivity, better billing, or something else.
Depending on the software’s design, the process of tracking time can be time-consuming, especially if it requires too much manual input. This will frustrate employees who feel that they are spending more time tracking their work than actually doing it.
Solution: It’s important to use time tracking software that is intuitive and easy-to-use for this reason. For example, insist on software that features timers that will do the time tracking for you. Increased buy-in from your team will lead to higher adoption rates and more accurate time tracking. Therefore, involve your team in the process of selecting which software to use.
Employers may use time tracking software to set productivity targets that are not achievable. This will distract the team’s focus away from creating good work and place it instead on logging enough hours. This will lead to employee’s becoming burnt out, stressed, and potentially misrepresenting how much time they worked.
Solution: The best approach to tracking time for beginners is to not set any goals at all. Instead, focus on capturing as much of the team’s time as possible. Then analyze the data and see what it reveals. Once you know exactly where your team’s time is going, you can begin to set clear and realistic goals.
If employees feel that they are expected to work more than they are able to, this will lead to a culture of overwork and burnout. While time tracking software is helpful in identifying inefficiencies and improving productivity, it should never come at the expense of employee’s health and wellbeing.
Solution: Focus on identifying inefficiencies and improving productivity, but do not take a one-size-fits-all approach with your team. Some people might work faster than others, while some may need more downtime between tasks. Create a collective culture where people are valued and rewarded for their ability to collaborate and contribute to the team, not the number of hours they put in.
Certain types of work may not lend themselves well to time tracking. For example, work that involves frequent interruptions. Focusing too much on quantifying this work will lead to inaccurate tracking and a false sense of productivity.
Solution: Don’t try to account for every minute. Answering a phone call, replying to an email, hopping on a brief chat — these are all frequent interruptions that take up our time but don’t need to be tracked. Trying to track every minute of an eight hour work day will result in more than just inaccuracy and inefficacy. It will create a fertile ground for the negative outcomes mentioned above to sprout.
As the creators of time tracking software, we always say “it depends.” That’s why we’ve come up with these 5 reasons why someone may choose not to use time tracking software. It’s important to note, however, that these concerns can often be addressed by choosing the right software for your team and implementing it in a way that is transparent and fair to everyone.
The post 5 Reasons Not to Use Time Tracking Software first appeared on Intervals.]]>
We’re excited to announce that the new card view for tasks feature is launching soon! Here’s how it will work. Each card represents a task, and cards are grouped into columns based on their current status. Drag and drop tasks from one column to another to change their status as they progress through your workflow.
The card view is based on the concept of a kanban board commonly used in agile project management. It’s useful for visualizing work and managing tasks as they flow through to completion.
We created this feature after soliciting feedback from customers using our experimental kanban tool. The external kanban tool was popular with our customers, so we decided to incorporate card views into the core Intervals experience.
When this feature is released there will be three ways to visualize your tasks on the task listing. This new “Card” view, a “Table” view that is the current task listing, and a “Simple” view which is similar to how tasks look on the mobile app. You can toggle between the views to fit how you like to work.
When managing tasks using a card view, it’s helpful to organize task cards into boards. A board is simply a collection of cards that have some commonality, whether it be a project, an assignee, a sprint, or something else.
The task filters and saved views feature is the equivalent of a board in Intervals. Each saved view you create will be listed in the left column. Simply click it to load the cards for that view. There is no limit to the number of saved views, so you’ll be able to create as many boards as you would like.
If you would like to be on the early notification list for this feature, contact our support team.
The post Coming Soon: Card View for Tasks first appeared on Intervals.]]>
We’re excited to announce that Intervals now includes project labels. This new feature empowers you to group your projects into custom categories. Project labels are now available to all Intervals customers and can be found in the Settings & Defaults section of your account.
The labels you create and how you use them is entirely up to you. This customizable list of labels could represent project phases, statuses, or services. When you create your list of project labels, drag and drop them into the right order for your workflow. Similar to task statuses, the labels will appear in their sorted order on project pages and reports.
Use the project labels to filter your project and task listings — and focus on the work that matters most in the moment. Additionally, labels can also be used to filter report data, so you can analyze your efforts based on how you’ve categorized your projects.
Running Time: 4:01
If you would like to skip ahead, the video includes the following chapter markers:
00:05 Why Use Project Labels?
00:15 Use Case – Project Workflow
00:42 Use Case – Project Categories
00:56 Who can edit labels?
01:06 Managing Project Labels
02:08 Assigning labels to projects
02:58 How labels are used in reports
03:33 Bonus functionality
→ Please refer to this help article for more information on how to use project labels.
The post Introducing Project Labels [New Feature] first appeared on Intervals.]]>Productivity culture, also know as hustle culture, is a societal mindset that pressures teams to promote and quantify performance above all else. The demand to constantly produce work often goes unchecked, and results in team members making unhealthy personal sacrifices.
Common symptoms of toxic productivity culture are anxiety, burnout, and an unhealthy focus on quantity over quality. Teams mired in this culture may find themselves feeling like they can’t rest or enjoy any downtime. The irony of hustle culture is that a team’s work will inevitably degrade as a result of pushing too hard.
Sadly, time tracking is one of the major contributors to a toxic productivity culture.
The most basic description of time tracking is that it is a tool used to quantify the number of hours and minutes spent working on a task. When we deploy time tracking as a quantitative tool, and nothing else, we are stepping on to a slippery slope that leads directly downward into toxic productivity culture.
Work environments that focus too much on quantifying time will end up encouraging negative behaviors. For example, some team members will simply lie on their timesheet. Others will focus only on busy work, ignoring more creative and challenging pursuits. And, some will push themselves too hard just so they can appear to be doing enough.
Here are just a few practical ways time tracking has been misused that promote a toxic work environment:
When properly implemented, time tracking tools give teams an accurate measure of their efforts. The data gives us a feedback loop that is essential in making smarter decisions as a team. Here are a few practical examples of how time tracking data will help project-focused teams work better together:
One important factor to consider is the time tracking data itself — it only measures the hours and minutes we’ve actually worked. To steer clear of productivity culture, we need to focus just as much on the gaps in our workday.
Because it’s these gaps — the moments of down time in the midst of a busy workday — that will make us more creative, innovative, and successful in the long run. It’s an idea known as productive procrastination.
Productive procrastination is the counter-intuitive idea that taking breaks and allowing your mind to roam will actually make you more innovative. It’s centered on the theory that our brains need time to rest and recharge, not just when we sleep at night, but throughout our workday.
Taking a mentally healthful approach to productivity requires that we intentionally take breaks throughout the day. This means allowing our minds to relax, while still maintaining a sense of direction. Research has show that when we give our brains a break we are better able to think up new ideas and solutions.
Teams that are intentional about practicing productive procrastination will find themselves more aligned, productive, and successful, in the long run. Admittingly, this can be especially difficult in the face of a westernized work culture that glorifies the hustle. Here are three practical ways that time tracking tools will help:
In summary, the toxic culture of a productivity-focused workplace can have dire consequences. People working in this environment will experience burnout, mental health issues, limited innovation, and a work-life imbalance. Time tracking tools, when used improperly, will contribute in a negative way. However, when used to promote the overall well-being of the team, time tracking tools will help build a healthy and balanced workplace.
The post The Dark Side of Time Tracking and Productivity Culture first appeared on Intervals.]]>When we first started our web design and development agency in 2000, we relied solely on paper timesheets to track our billable time. Today, paper timesheets can still provide a simple and low-tech way of tracking time, but they also have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the pros and cons of tracking time with paper timesheets, and where our experience with them has taken us to this day.
In our experience, paper timesheets can be a good option for individuals that need a simple and cost-effective way to track time. However, most teams will require more advanced features, making online time tracking tools the better option.
Where did our agency end up? After a few years of using paper timesheets, we drew from our experience and pivoted into SaaS with the launch of our flagship time tracking software, Intervals. We have since helped countless companies make the transition from paper timesheets to time tracking software. If you would like to learn more about implementing time tracking at your company, here’s some more information on how to make it a painless transition.
The post The Pros and Cons of Tracking Time with Paper Timesheets first appeared on Intervals.]]>For more than a decade, we’ve consulted with countless small agencies to help them validate their fixed pricing models. The primary question they are asking is, “how much profit, if any, are we making on our fixed price contracts?” To answer that question, we help them configure and deploy time tracking software, integrating it as seamlessly as possible into their day-to-day workflow. The agencies we work with typically use one of two different fixed price models.
The first model is project-based, where they charge a lump sum for the entire project. This is useful for agencies that work primarily on one-off projects, such as marketing campaigns, building plans, or web site designs. In this use case each deliverable is unique to the client, so pricing is based more on market value than billable hours.
The second model is time-based, where they charge a monthly subscription amount. This model is ideal for agencies that do repeat work, such as maintaining web sites, writing articles, or doing social media outreach. In this use case the agency receives a monthly payment for the duration of their working relationship with the client.
Regardless of which model they use, agencies are selling the same thing — their time. Time is a limited resource bound by the number of people on your team and the hours they can work. Finding out where your time is going is a must in deducing whether or not you’re actually profitable. That’s why we recommend using time tracking to validate your fixed pricing model. Here’s how:
The first step is to estimate how much time you think the project will require. If you are currently billing clients using a fixed price model, you are already doing some form of estimating. However, there are a few things you can do to improve your estimate.
First, factor in other variables, such as rent, utilities, and payroll taxes. Then, pad your estimate to account for the likelihood that your original estimate was too optimistic. You may also want to increase your estimate if the market value of your work is higher than your final estimate.
As soon as the project kicks off, your goal is to track every hour spent working on it. Good time tracking software will feature timers and reminders that make this process less painful. We’ll be the first to admit that time tracking is not fun. However, the benefits make it well worth building a culture of time tracking.
Check in on the project weekly to see how well your team is doing. Some may need encouragement or direction in getting their hours entered. The important thing is to acknowledge the learning curve and work together as a team. The primary objective with this step is to capture as much time as possible. You’re collecting data that you will analyze later.
The final step is to learn from your data. However, you don’t have to wait until the project is over to start analyzing your time. We recommend running reports early and often. Time tracking reports will reveal potential problems that could derail a project, enabling you to correct them and keep the project on course.
When the project is complete, you’ll have amassed a trove of time tracking data, and a clear picture of how much time and effort was put into it. You’ll be able to run reports and reveal whether or not the project was profitable. Then, you can take a deeper dive into your data and learn why the project was a success, or a disappointment.
The end game is to continuously apply what you’ve learned to your next project, and the one after that, and so on. When you repeat this process, your estimates will become more accurate, and your profitability will increase.
The post Using Time Tracking to Validate Your Fixed Pricing Model first appeared on Intervals.]]>We recently consulted with a small creative agency that was struggling with communication and collaboration after having transitioned to remote work. Their team dynamic had thrived on being a small group of highly talented individuals working in the same space. Working remote was proving to be more disruptive than anyone had anticipated.
To help regain their harmony, the team implemented our time tracking software, Intervals. We consulted by learning their business operations and helping them customize Intervals to complement their workflow processes. After a few months, here are the benefits the small creative agency reported experiencing as a direct result of deploying time tracking software for remote work.
At the end of the day, time tracking helped this small creative agency improve its communications and work remotely more efficiently. And, it provided valuable insights into their productivity and profitability, revealing how they can continue to improve workflow and grow the agency.
The post How Small Creative Agencies Benefit From Time Tracking first appeared on Intervals.]]>The project landscape report is ideal for getting a high level overview of multiple projects all in one snapshot. There are five tabs available on this report: Basics, Time, Budget & Invoices, Tasks, and Milestones. For this post we’ll be focusing on the Budget & Invoices tab, specifically, the columns related to invoices.
Historically, the project landscape report included only two columns specific to invoices. Those were the unpaid invoices and uninvoiced columns. The unpaid invoices column tells you how much of your invoices are still outstanding. The uninvoiced column calculates the amount of billable work that hasn’t yet been invoiced. The uninvoiced column is an indication of when the next invoice should be issued.
We recently added a column for total invoices. While it was being used in calculating the other two invoice columns, it wasn’t being displayed. Many of our customers requested that we include this column to help round out the report.
With this new addition, the project landscape report is even more suitable to creating a financial snapshot of your projects. Find out how much work has been completed, how much has been billed, and how much has yet to be billed. Other columns in the report, such as payments and outstanding balance, give you an indispensable way to gauge a project’s financial health.
→ Read our help article on how to use the project landscape report.
The post Reviewing Invoices with the Project Landscape Report first appeared on Intervals.]]>No two consultants are alike. Every consultant brings with them a unique perspective and background, based on years, sometimes decades, of experience. One thing all consultants do have in common, however, is they must be good at managing their time. Most consultants employ time tracking software for this reason — so they can manage their client work and get paid. But, there’s more reasons than just those two. Here are five ways consultants can benefit from time tracking.
Consultants can ensure that they are accurately billing the time spent working on client projects. Because every billable hour is recorded, an accurate report or invoice can be generated in seconds. This can help build trust with clients and prevent misunderstandings about the amount of time being billed.
If you are not tracking your time you are giving some of it away for free. We have interviewed several of our customers and they all share the same story. After deploying time tracking software they saw up to a 30% increase in billable hours. Without having to work a single hour more, consultants can increase revenue simply by keeping better track of time.
Time tracking can help consultants better understand how long different tasks take. Once you have accumulated time tracking data it’s much easier to query it and make more accurate estimates for future projects. This can help you better manage workloads while keeping projects on time and under budget.
Knowing exactly where your time is going makes it easier to improve productivity. For example, you may realize you are spending too much time on billing or other administrative tasks. Then you can take steps to be more efficient by outsourcing or streamlining these processes.
Perhaps the single most powerful benefit of tracking time is the amount of time it frees up. Increasing revenue and decreasing wasted time opens up more time in your work schedule. How you use this time is entirely up to you. As an example, some consultants might use that time to fit in more billable work, while others might use it to learn more about their field of expertise.
The post Five Ways Consultants can Benefit from Time Tracking first appeared on Intervals.]]>
Intervals has been featured as one of the Best Project Management Software Tools at ListCos. ListCos is a professional review and rating site with an emphasis on B2B tools.
We ranked well for easy implementation, robust reporting, and for being ideal for consultants and IT service companies..
The post Intervals Listed in Best Project Management Software and Tools Category first appeared on Intervals.]]>Consultants operate in every industry that requires any modicum of expertise — which is all of them. Each consultant brings with them a unique brand of expertise that is as varying as the field they represent. However, one thing all consultants have in common is they are all selling the same thing — their time.
To get paid, a consultant needs to keep track of their time, but, without wasting their time doing it. Time tracking needs to be efficient and effortless so that time can be spent more on billable work, and less on administrative tasks. Here are three time tracking methods for consultants to consider, along with the pros and cons of each one.
The lowly paper timesheet can be surprisingly effective for a one-person consultancy with only a handful of clients. They are effortless and portable, so you can easily jot down billable hours as you work from your desk, coffee shop, or airplane. Their ease of use makes them a great entry point into the practice of time tracking.
The biggest disadvantage to paper timesheets is that tallying up the hours is a tedious process that is prone to human error. If you want to run any reports, you will have to enter the data into a spreadsheet. And, there is no backup if you lose the sheet of paper.
→ Download our free paper timesheet
A spreadsheet provides consultants with more control over how they track their time, because, it can be configured to accommodate any workflow. Columns and rows are easily summed, making the reporting less painful. Plus, online spreadsheets automatically back up the data.
The flexibility of a spreadsheet is also its weakness. The reporting capabilities are limited by the fact that you will have to build each report from scratch. And those reports will be basic. The ability to aggregate data from multiple timesheets and analyze different segments of your business is going to be limited. As your consultancy grows, you will discover that tracking time with spreadsheets does not scale well.
→ Try our free weekly timesheet spreadsheet
Using software to keep track of consulting time is the most efficient and accurate method. In fact, you’re practically guaranteed to notice an uptick in billable hours after adopting it. Running reports and billing clients is fast and painless, empowering you to segment and analyze your data using several different cohorts.
The negative to time tracking software for consultants is that you must cede control of how your data is stored and structured. You will need to trust that the company will store your data soundly and securely. And the reports, while far more powerful than a spreadsheet, may present your data in a format that doesn’t quite fit your needs. Before going all in with any time tracking software, make sure it will let you export your data.
The post 3 Time Tracking Methods for Consultants first appeared on Intervals.]]>The worst of the pandemic appears to be behind us, however, small businesses and their employees are still adapting to a new normal. They are exploring and experimenting with new ways of working in teams.
Part of the process is redefining the role of the office in a remote friendly work environment. Some teams are transitioning back to the office full-time, while others are doubling down on being 100% remote. And, some are creating their own hybrid schedule, working some days in the office and others remote.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for any team considering remote work. The decision will depend largely on established workflows, individual personalities, management styles, and more. For those teams that do decide to transition to a hybrid or full-time remote work schedule, here are six tips based on our experience.
Chances are the people working in your office will be reliant on some form of infrastructure. That could be a mail server, file server, development server, router, VPN, or phone system — to name just a few. There are cloud based equivalents that can replace just about any type of in-office infrastructure.
Retiring old hardware, moving data, and establishing new workflows is not an easy process. However, it’s well worth it. The immediate benefit is that it frees up your team to work remotely from anywhere. The long term benefit is the savings in money and time no longer spent to maintain aging infrastructure.
Being at work doesn’t mean your team is always working. Conversations in the office hallway or snack room may not be work related, but they are work enabling. These impromptu moments of chatter create connections that are foundational for keeping teams productive, motivated, and engaged.
Be intentional and creative when replicating the social environment of the office. One option is to create a recurring video meeting that people can join daily at a preset hour to chat about movies, sports, or anything else not related to work. Another option is to create a Slack channel dedicated for such off-topic discussions. Then show up and be a part of the conversation.
Not everyone on your team will have what they need to work remotely. Some might need a monitor, others a keyboard, or a more ergonomic chair. Find out what your team needs to work comfortably and efficiently outside the office and provide it for them. The budget for these purchases can come from the money saved by downsizing or ditching the office.
Providing a budget for these improvements and empowering your team to make their own purchasing decisions creates an environment of autonomy and ownership. It’s another simple way to boost and maintain morale during the transition to remote work.
As much as we can approximate the in-person work experience with video chat and screen sharing, remote work may leave your team feeling isolated from one another. It’s important to provide everyone who wants it the opportunity to work together in the same room. Plus, there are some high level tasks that can be completed more efficiently and effectively in person — such as brainstorming new product ideas or planning upcoming initiatives.
Creating these opportunities can be as simple as encouraging and paying for neighboring co-workers to pair up at a coffee shop once a week. Or, it can be a more formalized annual gathering where everyone flies in for a week of in-person work and team building.
Historically speaking, working in an office required a more established and continuous routine — a “9 to 5” workday during regular daytime hours. Remote work in a post-pandemic world has changed the relationship between individuals and their work. The workday will inevitably be interrupted by home life, so embrace it.
Allow your team flexibility in their workday — trips to the grocery store or dropping the kids off at school. Having the time to get personal stuff done during off peak hours is a huge benefit to remote workers. To encourage this, focus more on the quality of your team’s work and less on the number of hours spent at their computer.
Managing work with post-it notes, whiteboards, and Excel spreadsheets simply won’t work for remote teams. You need to incorporate centralized workflow management software into your day-to-day operations. With features like project management, task management, and time tracking, online software will keep everyone on your team communicating and collaborating effectively. It will also give you invaluable insights into your projects, helping you deliver client work on time and under budget.
When it comes to selecting a workflow management platform, there are countless options to choose from. We recommend trying out our software, Intervals, which our remote team built and uses daily to manage our work. It’s workflow software with integrated time tracking and unparalleled reports and we promise it will improve the way you work.
The post Six Tips for Transitioning Your Team to Remote Work first appeared on Intervals.]]>Some recurring tasks may need to be put on hold temporarily. For example, you may want to pause a daily recurring task assigned to you while on vacation. This can be done by finding the profile task for the recurring task in question, navigating to the “Recurrence” tab, and clicking on “Pause recurrence.”
→ Learn more about pausing a recurring task schedule
To have a task that occurs every six months, find the profile task and click on the recurrence tab, then select monthly. On the monthly scheduling dialogue there is an option to have the task repeat every six months.
→ Learn more about biannual tasks
To have a task that occurs every two weeks, find the profile task and click on the recurrence tab, then select weekly. On the weekly scheduling dialogue there is an option to have the task repeat every two weeks.
→ Learn more about biweekly tasks
→ Visit our help site for more information on recurring tasks.
The post Recurring Task Improvements first appeared on Intervals.]]>Time tracking is an important part of the project management process. How it’s implemented, however, varies from company to company. My 16 year plus experience designing and developing time tracking software has only reinforced my original theory. The more thorough your setup, the more your team will benefit. The greatest benefits of tracking time spent on tasks are projects delivered on time, under budget, and increased profitability. Here’s how to get started.
The first step is to define your deliverables and the steps required to complete each one. Then create tasks for each of these steps. How you divide up the work is up to you, however, know that it’s not necessary to break down the entire project all at once. Planning out the first few deliverables is all that is needed to get started — plan the rest as you go.
This modular approach to project management makes it easier to schedule, delegate, and manage your tasks. It also creates the ideal framework for estimating, tracking, and analyzing your time.
Estimating a project is hard. Estimating a task is much less daunting because you’re projecting your efforts in terms of hours — not days, weeks, or months. The primary benefit to estimating your hours on each task is that it makes you a better estimator in the long run. And, accurate estimating is the key to delivering profitable projects.
This step is optional, however, I strongly recommend doing it. Task estimates help your team prioritize work and catch project overruns before they become a problem.
Once the work begins, track the time spent on each task. Using online time tracking software is the most effective way to do this, especially software featuring built-in task timers. This one simple tip will result in up to a 30% increase in the amount of hours tracked without having to do more work.
Remember to check in on the project as it progresses. Build a few reports and run them often, keeping an eye on how much time has been tracked on each task relative to its original estimate. If you find any anomalies, it’s time to investigate further and find out where that time is going.
When you start analyzing your time tracking data you will get two indispensable benefits. First, you’ll discover which parts of the project we’re successful, and which areas will require improvement. And, because you tracked your time on each task, you will know exactly where to tune your process on the next project.
Second, the ability to show your client or manager exactly where your time went will answer 99% of their questions. This alone will save you hours in time. Time that would otherwise be spent justifying a vague invoice or cobbling together a spreadsheet report from disparate data.
Repeat this process with the next project and not only will your estimating skills improve, your team will become more productive and profitable.
The post How To Track Time Spent on Tasks first appeared on Intervals.]]>We’re pleased to announce that we’ve made several updates and improvements to our recently launched dark mode feature.
Most devices now have a setting that will automatically enable dark mode in the evenings, or according to a custom schedule. Intervals can now inherit the device’s setting and enable dark mode according to that same schedule. This is a great way to “set it and forget it” and avoid having to toggle dark mode on and off manually.
This setting can be updated by going to your personal profile page.
As we continue to receive feedback from customers using various devices in different settings, we’ve been tuning icons and colors to make the dark mode display more readable and vibrant. Many of these changes are subtle, and may not be noticeable at all. And that is a good thing, as our goal with the dark mode feature is to create a seamless visual experience that is easy on the eyes and brain.
The post Dark Mode Updated and Improved first appeared on Intervals.]]>When looking for time tracking software you may be wondering what features will be the most beneficial to you. Unless you’ve already been using time tracking software, it’s hard to know for sure. There are so many different software options to choose from that researching and testing them all is typically an overwhelming and exhausting experience.
To help whittle down your list of candidates we’ve put together this list of what we consider to be the five most essential time tracking software features. These are features that go above and beyond basic time tracking and leverage your data in ways that will increase productivity and profitability.
This list is based on our sixteen year history of helping consultants, teams, and small businesses all over the world track their time accurately and efficiently. If the time tracking software you are considering includes these features, and implements them well, it should be on your shortlist.
A weekly timesheet provides an overview of your week framed by the projects you worked on. In the context of day-to-day work a timesheet is indispensable for gauging your efforts and making sure higher priority projects are being addressed. Reviewing your weekly timesheet at the end of the each day reduces the risk of projects being neglected or overlooked.
Additionally, weekly timesheets provide a historical accounting of your work that are useful for two reasons. First, past timesheets can be approved and therefore locked. This enables you to generate reports and invoices for clients with confidence that the data won’t be altered after delivering them.
Second, timesheets provide a historical context of not just the number of hours, but where that time was spent. Looking back at past days and weeks you will be able to correlate your mood with your work. For example, feeling tired at the end of a workday may not be an anomaly. Your timesheet could reveal you worked on a tough project or were at your desk too long.
In the same way that a weekly timesheet frames your efforts by project and by day, tracking time on tasks provides meaningful structure. The powerful combination of task management and time tracking not only tells you exactly where your time is going, it adds a layer of transparency to reports and billing that will fortify client trust.
When you break down a project into smaller, manageable tasks, you also create structure for capturing time in more detail. For productivity purposes, this data is indispensable in analyzing project timelines and budgets. Plus, your historical time tracking data becomes a powerful forecasting tool for estimating future work.
The ability to tie your time back to a task makes client billing a less painful process and builds client trust. When a client can see a report that details exactly where their money is being spent, it reduces the number of questions and speeds up getting paid.
Time tracking software needs to provide more than just an accounting of your time. Good reporting and analytics will give your data context and meaning by utilizing both high level visuals and detailed tabulations. Use these reports to gain perspective on your projects, then dive deeper and analyze exactly where your time is going.
When you can catch and fix productivity and profitability issues before they become a problem it’s much easier to keep your projects on time and under budget. You can’t draw these project-wide conclusions from one person’s weekly timesheet. The best time tracking tools will transform your data into powerful visualizations for making more informed decisions.
Client billing is a painful and laborious process when you have to tally billable hours from paper timesheets, spreadsheets, or incompatible time tracking software. I’ve consulted with companies who will spend countless, unbillable hours each week creating client invoices. The process is cumbersome and prone to error.
Time tracking software with invoicing options will create client invoices from your data in seconds, not hours. And, because the process is largely automated, the resulting invoices are beautifully detailed and accurate. Invoicing features make it easier to get paid and give you back those unbillable hours.
The key to tracking time effectively is to be diligent until it becomes habit. It requires dedication and faith that the benefits will outweigh the effort. A mobile time tracking app increases your chances of success because it enables you to track time from anywhere.
It’s not uncommon for teams to struggle with filling out weekly timesheets when they are busy with billable work, away from their desk, or done working for the day. Whether you are stepping into a meeting or on the train home from work, having the app on your phone decreases odds of time going missing.
The post The Five Most Essential Time Tracking Software Features first appeared on Intervals.]]>
More people are working from home than at any other time in history. For many it’s their first experience ever working remotely. The transition from a workplace office to a home office requires adopting new habits to stay balanced and productive. Whether you are a freelancer or part of a team, getting paid hourly or a salary, I recommend adding time tracking to your toolbox. Here’s why…
Working remotely has blurred the line between the professional and personal. One of the advantages to working remotely is that you can take breaks throughout the day to attend to your personal life. Like, rotating the laundry, unloading the dishwasher, or reading the newspaper. However, the home office is also full of distractions that can easily derail a workday.
The inverse is also a concern — it’s harder to switch off work when your laptop is always within reach. Home life can be ignored too easily if there’s always something to be done “at” work.
When you track your time you will quickly find out exactly where your time is going. And, once you’ve accumulated a few weeks of data, the numbers will reveal if you’ve been spending too much time, or too little, at work. Understanding how much of your time is going toward work makes it easier to justify spending more time on the personal.
Just because you are working remotely doesn’t mean you’re working in isolation. You’re still part of a team. Not being in an office together makes collaborating and communicating with your remote team more challenging. Time tracking helps because it keeps each person informed as to what others are working on.
While it’s important to check in with your remote team at least once a day, it’s also useful to know where their time is going throughout the week. Weekly and daily time tracking reports will reveal which projects and tasks received the most attention, and highlight the work that was neglected. Project managers and team leaders, especially, will find this data useful for keeping projects on time and under budget.
Working remote from home requires building new work habits. What worked at the office won’t necessarily work at home. With longer periods of uninterrupted time you will find your work habits shifting. While you’re still doing the same work remote, when you get it done is going to be different. For example, you may find yourself more focused and productive in the early morning or late afternoon now that you don’t have to commute.
Time tracking can help you identify and maintain routines to keep you productive. After you’ve filled out a few weekly timesheets you’ll begin to see a pattern. You’ll see which days are more productive than others, and which days are more likely to be consumed with meetings. When you understand where your time is going you can plan your work week accordingly.
The post How Your Remote Work Can Benefit From Time Tracking first appeared on Intervals.]]>Two of the most important responsibilities consultants have is keeping track of billable hours and getting paid in a timely manner. That’s why most consultants will employ paper timesheets, spreadsheets, or time tracking software. Tracking consultant hours can seem overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple billable projects at once. And, you may be hesitant to take on yet another responsibility. That said, here are a few good reasons and tips to get started tracking your consulting time.
The first step is to sign up for time tracking software. There are plenty to choose from, but I recommend using one that has timers, a weekly timesheet, and reports. Good time tracking software is more than just a digital timesheet, it should track time for you and generate detailed reports for analyzing your billable hours.
Using timers daily will increase your billable hours up to 30%. And, detailed time tracking reports will help you get paid faster. These two benefits alone will help any consultant increase and maintain a steady cash flow.
It’s most likely that your consultancy business is already in full swing, and adding one more responsibility may seem overwhelming. Don’t try to transition your entire day-to-day operations to a time tracking platform all at once. Take it slow and learn as you go.
I recommend tracking your time on just one of your next projects. You want to ease into the software and fine tune it to fit your workflow. As you get started think about the types of reports you’ll want to pull for you and your clients. Having a clear idea of what you want to get out of the time tracking experience will guide how you manage your work.
Don’t wait until the project is over to start analyzing your billable consulting hours. Start running reports the same day you start tracking your time. Checking in with the project periodically will give you a clearer picture of where your billable time is going, so you can keep the project on time and under budget.
Your weekly timesheet will reveal how much you worked each week, which is important for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. However, it’s the reports that will be most useful for analyzing how your consulting business is performing overall.
The more you track time the more data you will accumulate, and the more meaningful your reports will become. Analyzing your time will reveal indispensable insights into your best (and worst) clients. This trove of historical data will also make you better at estimating future work.
The time tracking process will get easier and more financially rewarding with each consulting project you complete. But it does require patience and diligence. That’s why I recommend starting with one project and then growing into it. Before you know it, keeping track of your billable hours will seem second nature.
The post Time Tracking Tips for Consultants first appeared on Intervals.]]>