I charge clients fixed fees, like many, but I believe it is good practice to internally record and monitor the time spent working on jobs. The problem is, I often move from one task to another and (particularly when working under pressure) I forget to clock the time when starting and finishing a task.
When I was employed many years ago, I was a hard worker but was terrible at logging my time. It just doesn't come naturally to me.
In spite of this, I do however recognise the need to know how long I'm spending on particular clients, which clients I'm losing money on etc. I first of all tried Toggl, which lets you start a timer when you begin a task. Great, I thought, until I was started receiving emails telling me that my timer has been running for 7 hours 50 minutes - I was hopeless at remembering to start the timer and even worse at ending it when the phone rang and I moved onto something else, or had to go out.
Anyway, always on the lookout for new software, I came across Timely App. It is time tracking software that memorises what you are doing on the computer and logs it. It doesn't miss a trick!
It even connects to my email (so it tracks emails I send from my phone) and can also track your location using GPS.
Now, I have set up each client and have colour coded tasks for each client, and I click on each task it has picked up and tag it to a client and project.
It will even create draft time entries using AI and I can then confirm the draft entry, delete it, or tag it to a different client / project.
It does have a subscription but I'm still on the 14 day trial. I have done a full week of tracking and can now see every single minute spent.
Most people no doubt are quite capable of recording their own time, but for those like myself who are not, who procrastinate far too much, and who would like to see where they are spending too much time, I highly recommend this software.
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I’m very much like you, so thank you for the tip.
A question: you say you’ve “set up the clients” is this a manual process or have you downloaded a list from somewhere?
I’m firm has around 2,500 clients so if it’s a manual set up, this bit of kit won’t work for me
I've been using Timely for a good while - it's a great piece of kit, but does have a few flaws. It can't always "see" what clients your working on within an app - desktop CT or AP software, for example.
It does have an open API so if you have the skills you can integrate client details and jobs/projects. If not, it's a manual process.
Thank you for the tip. I've tried something else last year - can't remember the name - and that irritated me too much.
I can see you've got to get the set up right to begin with.
I will have a go.
Interesting. For us, an issue with timesheets is often it's not a case of a day being 3 hours here, 4 hours there. With a relatively large number of relatively small clients, it's more like 5 mins here, 5 mins there. This is a key reason why we hadn't bothered to date, as felt it would be more trouble than it's worth. Intrigued how this would work for a firm like us, may give it a go...
Thanks that’s a great tip and I love your in depth description. Anybody told you that you are in the right job? :)
Going to check it out now as I believe we have similar sized businesses / structure re fixed fees and time.
We’re fixed fee and I especially have an issue with jumping between 20 client things in an hr or 2.
I did look at Timely and was impressed with its claims, but decided the set-up would be horrendous and it wouldn’t track what we do on TaxCalc anyway.
I decided to go back to Harvest (after a 12 month stint with the Glide timesheet module, which was a waste of 12 months data) as we liked the reporting and ease of use. Also you get a little time-related quote each day! I use Harvest Forecast for our job planner and it integrates to give projected budget over/under spends, taking into account actual time & planned time. I have each billable work set up as a project (eg ABC Ltd is on a monthly retainer, then 2019 is one project, 2020 a second etc, to include all payroll, VAT, YE etc relating to that year.) that integration is really useful.
Downside of Forecast is that it’s not built for having lots of clients/projects on the go - you see a separate line for each project each person will be working on in the next 13 weeks. So 50 VAT clients = 50 separate rows on the VAT person’s planner, no matter how they are spread QE-wise. Harvest set-up is a little manual, but sounds like a little less than Timely. Clients & Projects auto-integrate with Forecast, it takes a few minutes to put, say, a years worth of payroll, bkpg, VAT, YE time into the planner - unfortunately whilst ‘weekly occurring’ is an option, monthly isn’t! Pain in the [***].
From a practical point of view, the iPhone app for Harvest is great - I tend to do my timesheet on the tram home. Appreciate that doesn’t make it as accurate as Timely ...
The import issue is massive disincentive. I've tinkered with so many crm and timekeeping software that the thoughts of spending hours setting up client list is too much time and energy that I don't have.
Digita has introduced something similar in its latest practice management suite.
Obviously the Accs Pro module is [***] and Digita isn't exactly cheap once you get the full package going. And Onvio is still only a document management system despite having been launched as if it was a full product about four years ago. But if you can overlook those 'minor' details then job's a goodun.
Is that in Practice Manager Advanced? I saw it a few years ago and was really impressed but the powers that be didn't commit due to cost.
I'm a reticent Digita user - CT and IT are good, APA and Co Sec are average at best, Practice Manager nothing more than a database with minimal value. Onvio not even looked at as better solutions out there.
Digita's audit product is apparently good, but never used or demoed.
We're thinking of moving away as I think best of breed solutions are now coming back to the fore. The problem is we're a big practice and AP needs are complex.