Why track time?
Tracking our time is an important aspect of our world. While a lot of our work is contracted at a set price, our efficiency is still rooted in the finite world of time. It’s how we know what projects are profitable, where we are on remaining budgets, and so we learn from mistakes to better estimate or bill for projects in the future.
Time tracking is not an optional thing. It’s required.
For time-keeping tools we use Harvest.
Without time tracking, many businesses don’t realize some of their projects are actually unprofitable.
Some guiding principles for Harvest.
- Always make sure there is the right project that matches your task (Client name: Project name)
- Track your time to the appropriate category
- The time entry description should be detailed enough to know what you did a month from now, but doesnt need any comments or discussion like a task comment in our PM tool would require.
- Project not set up yet? Ask the PM to check.
- Run your timer live while working.
- Adding time manually after the fact is not ideal and a worst-case backup if you forgot.
- Manual time entry is statistically inaccurate (in either over- or underestimating time spent).
- Use the Harvest App. It works great.
