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Track Time for Computer and Networks

My job is to maintain a computer network. Sometimes I get so frustrated with people breaking everything! But I love it and the network runs smoothly because I’m a rock star!

If it weren’t for me, and guys like me, there would be no network, except in research labs. We’re the guys that connect your servers to the web, connect your workstations to the servers, and install all your crazy apps. We make it happen.

And keep it all running.

We track our hours with Standard Time®. That’s where your client invoices come from. Those line items were tracked on an iPhone, sync’d with the cloud, verified on a desktop, and printed from the Web. I hooked all that up in an hour, and started tracking my time for you. ST has to be one of the best and easiest to use. Ask me about it some time. Maybe you can use it too.

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Web Developers Sling Code

My day yesterday:

  • 128 lines of CSS
  • 292 lines of PHP
  • 8 new files
  • 3 directories
  • and a little 302 redirect work in .htaccess

How do you remember all that? You can’t, because you can’t even remember what you ate last night for dinner.

That’s what a web developer’s time tracking app is for. Not only are you collecting enough information to bill your clients, you’re also collecting the various kinds of work you do. You’re documenting your work, which effectively creates a status report. Now your boss knows what you’re doing all night with your office light burning, and zillion red and blue LED’s glowing against dark office hallways. Pulling an all-nighter is the perfect reason for a good time tracking app. At least you’ll remember some of it the next afternoon when you wake up.

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How SEO Experts Track Time

SEO marketers, here’s a great way to track client billable hours. Use Standard Time®.

This little time tracking app will track client projects and write invoices. Try these steps:

  1. Set up a client, with their address and contact info
  2. Set up web seo projects you are doing for that client (as many unique projects as you want)
  3. Optionally add tasks you’ll complete while doing the projects
  4. Click or tap to start a timer
  5. Do the job
  6. Click or tap to stop the timer
  7. Collect up all your billable hours
  8. Invoice the client using date ranges or milestone billing

Do this for a few months and you’ll know exactly how much time you spend on each client. For some clients, you’ll be surprised. For others, you’ll just verify what you already believed.

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Freelancer Discovers Time Tracking

Discovering something helpful is very satisfying. Your world opens up a little wider, and new possibilities suddenly appear. The feeling is exhilarating. The logjam is broken, and suddenly there are new answers you never considered before.

That is what’s happening in this cute fictional cartoon.

But why can’t it happen to you too? In fact, it can… and probably has happened on multiple occasions. Let this be one of them. Discover the Standard Time® time tracking app. You might be a freelance consultant with just a few clients now. But you could own a complete consultancy with engineers and technicians working for you. It all starts with a discovery that changes your way of thinking.

Consultants are using this time tracking solution every day. Large organizations of consultants and engineers enter their time daily. Organizations run on ST. Yours could too.

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Tracking Time for IT Support

IT support is a beehive. It’s crazy fire-fighting day, everyday. You don’t have a minute to waste. Which is why you should consider spending some extra time tracking your hours.

What???  Spend more time on admin tasks? I don’t think so! (video below)

Consider this line of reasoning. A small amount of time finding out where your time is spent can be used as intel. Think of it as recon work. You sneak in with black tactical gear, snap a few pictures, and get out. Now you’re the hero at the strategic briefing. You’re the one standing up front with the laser pointer looking down on everybody. You’re not the idiot watching the MI-5 briefing; you’re the one conducting it. Your the one presenting your findings to others to consume.

And what did you find? You found that a slight change in daily schedule turns firefighting into routine maintenance. You found that some training courses for employees reduces help-desk calls. You found that you’re spending most of your time on secondary priorities with no strategic upside. Oops. Time for some change.

Now go back and track time for the new routine to find out if those changes really made a difference. Measure and improve.

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Bad Time Tracking Apps

Some time tracking apps just don’t cut it. The girls in this video are complaining about keeping track of their time with spreadsheets and paper time cards. But the manager can only think of new steam engines to make the machines go faster.

Ever think your boss is like that?

Or are you the boss?

Hey, it happens to everyone. We get stuck in older business paradigms, and can’t see new ways to do things. There are new apps for time tracking and employee timesheets. Don’t be like these managers; download one and give it a try.

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Track Time for Engineering Projects

Engineers undertake the biggest projects in modern times. Don’t be caught using a spreadsheet keeping track of your time.  Sure, spreadsheets are nice; they calculate and organize every kind of engineering data imaginable. But we have to draw the line when it comes to entering engineering hours against project. They just don’t work. Here’s why:

  1. When you track engineering time in a spreadsheet, it’s usually only one person. That person becomes a bottleneck. They get weary of the job and make mistakes. There are time tracking apps for this work, which decentralize and collect time where and when it actually occurs. That makes the hours more accurate and more granular
  2. When that one person enters employ hours, they have to find a spot to put them. If there isn’t an appropriate task for the work, they make things up. Why not let the actual employees create their own tasks and enter the correct hours for them. Making stuff up never helped anyone.
  3. Spreadsheets have some pretty cool graphs. But they can’t run complex routines that build the kinds of graphs you need in engineering project management. Instead, you just get summations and statistics. Those are helpful, but maybe not exactly what you’re looking for.

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Timesheet or Project Management

What if you had a time tracking and project management app you could run your whole business from? That would be pretty unique. A lot of people do it. Of course, you’ll need a lot of other software like browsers and word processors and spreadsheets, but ST can be used for the core processes. Here are those processes that can be run from a timesheet with PM.

  1. Collecting client hours
  2. Tracking tasks and projects
  3. Collecting time and expenses
  4. Handling PTO and time off accruals
  5. Approving timesheets and client billables
  6. Invoicing clients
  7. Receiving client payments
  8. Viewing future project revenue

That’s a lot of core business processes. You can run a lot of your business from this timesheet.

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How Consultants Track Time

Successful consultants track time a certain way. That’s probably one reason they are successful. The video below describes a few of those ways. Use this to inspire you. You may find something that works for you.

For instance, are you using a linked task list to define your projects? Or, do you just go at it with all your talents and efforts? Consider that a project task list help you remember everything that needs to be done. You don’t forget things and look incompetent in front of the client. Trust me… they notice.

If you are using project tasks, the next question is: how good are you at estimating hours? Have you ever compared the actual time your tasks took with your estimates? Doing that also makes you look good in front of the client. You can speak from authority, siting many other similar projects where certain tasks took X number of hours. Clients are more willing to pay extra when they know you’ve done your homework. Turns out comparing estimates with actuals is virtually free in ST. There’s a dashboard where you’ll see those numbers.

Watch the video and become inspired!

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Old-Timey: Time Tracking Apps

There are better ways to track project time than punch clocks, spreadsheets, and scraps of paper. (Scroll down to see how they do it in the modern world.)

The ladies in this video hope to get new timekeeping apps for their Android and iOS smartphones. But the boss is so stingy it may not happen for another hundred years. Problem is, he is wasting valuable human resources on standing in line and punching clocks. Couldn’t those human resources be used more efficiently for his core competencies?

Couldn’t they be contributing to the social media buzz around the company and it’s products? After all, these ladies have all proven to spin a good tale when in the company of prolific spinsters of their type.

Or couldn’t the ladies clean up the company website with those extra hours?  It is well known that the female constitution is best suited for cleaning and washing. Why not put the lady’s natural talents to good use?

In any case, the old methods of spreadsheets and hand-built timekeeping apps are out. Get a modern timesheet and the apps to support it.

Are we in deep doo-doo yet?  🙂