If you’re providing any type of service that involves you exchanging your time for money, you’ll want to make sure that you:
- are recording the time spent on service provision, a task, a project
- charge your client the correct amount for the service, task, project
Tracking your chargeable time is vital to the ongoing viability of your small business. It’s also very important to your clients that they can trust you to charge them accurately.
Time Tracking Air App
To help you do that, this videos features a free Air Application you can download to your desktop ready for use as and when you need it. [ Adobe Air Overview ]
Whilst there are numerous pieces of software ‘out there’ to help you manage your time, record and bill your chargeable time etc., some of those options may contain features that you don’t need for your small business, for now at least. Or they could be too expensive to invest in, particularly when you are first getting started.
This free little application is a great start up option.
You can download TimeLoc directly from Adobe.
Time Management
Time management tools can keep you organised and focused, plus keep your business on track. Tracking your time can help you analyse and measure a variety of elements. You can’t manage what you don’t measure!
If you don’t manage and measure your time, you can soon find yourself either:
- under invoicing your client which reduces your hourly or project rate!
- or overcharging your client which could damage your longer term client relationship or potential for repeat business!
Chargeable Increments
In the video, you’ll spot my note about the rounding up of recorded time.
Depending on your individual business or services, you’ll need to agree your chargeable time increments with your client(s) and set that accordingly within the app settings.
For example: If you set the increments at 15 minutes, you may take 15 minutes and 10 seconds to complete a task, yet the app will round up to 30 minutes! Choose your settings wisely.
You can of course make amendments to your recorded time in the saved spreadsheet(s). Your spreadsheets then provide you with a full breakdown of your managed chargeable time which you can use for invoicing and ongoing measurement and analysis.
Overall a simple helpful time management and tracking tool.
