Comments on: Where Does Your Time Go?

By: cody

cody — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:10:54 +0000

this is a good site

By: truculent charly

truculent charly — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:31:25 +0000

journyx.com has free timesheet software for this

By: SableFlat

SableFlat — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:01:34 +0000

Regarding time tracking:

I like TraxTime. It uses a punch-in, punch-out interface and does all the calculations for you. I have it set up for every client. For clients with multiple projects, I have it further divided. There is a “Memo” capability which lets you indicate exactly what you are doing on the project, with as much detail as you want.

When ready to create an invoice, you create a Report (any combination of projects, dates, and subtotaling) and export as a csv file to open in Excel and further manipulate (combine projects, subtotal, etc.).

I find that I can do much more accurate billing. Previously, I had written down what I was doing in a calendar the divided up the day into 15-minute blocks. And, it also nicely accomodates interruptions! Just punch out of the current project, punch in to the crisis project, and then punch out and get back to the previous project.

The price is very reasonable to get more accurate billing!

By: okeee

okeee — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:34:46 +0000

Wow, arithmetic. I agree that more per hour is a good thing. Hey, I should write for SP!

By: webdevsince1995

webdevsince1995 — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:20:07 +0000

For the past 8 months or so I've been using complete time tracking to track my time. Great tool. You can track your time in a spreadsheet (which I was doing previously) but it gets quite tedious. Since using a software tool I've been recording my time to a finer level. I found that for most small to medium projects I spend about 20% of the time discussing things with the customer, 30% on the design and layout and 50% coding functionality (PHP). Another bonus of tracking your time is that you learn to quote more accurately.

By: kungfukenny

kungfukenny — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:48:56 +0000

Just a slight twist on an interesting topic, as I’m sure theres quite a few people here who are in my position where they work within a non web design company dedicating lots of time to the company website.

At my day job I track the whole working day on excel this enables me to spot where my ‘black holes’ are, as most of the time I have to work to deadlines on the website and if these deadlines aren’t met I need to show the partners why, this also helps if I find something that keeps cropping up in my working day that either I can streamline or delegate to someone else within the company.

I also use ‘Lean’ to manage my time better, this started as a manufacturing tool but I now use it for website work, basically this is a way of working where you eliminate re-occuring problems and manage your time better. Lean can get quite deep but it’s well worth looking into as I now use it for private web projects and well, if you can deliver to a client on time or ahead of schedule without any problems thats one happy client.

By: efarmboy

efarmboy — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:07:51 +0000

This also assumes, you have back to back smaller projects and no beach time betweeen projects. Generally, you will also consider larger projects at lower hourly/daily rate since it is contiguous time.

Other considerations are:
> Cost of pre-sales and if the work is for a larger client, you are far more profitable if there is little pre-sales
> The larger project may have included new features/modules that will be re-used later and thus you spent more time then initially scoped but will pay dividents later.

By: shmookler

shmookler — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:04:28 +0000

It’s interesting how many web developers lack professional process models in their work. Not tracking time and managing time poorly are just some examples of this.

By: dhecker

dhecker — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:13:48 +0000

That’s definitely correct, which is why the example assumes an unlimited stream of like projects. Of course, until you have a ‘full plate’ this kind of example doesn’t apply.

By: gostats

gostats — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 18:45:08 +0000

I just keep a log of my time in my head… let’s see over the past week it looked like this:
work, eat, work, sleep, work,… etc.
:P

*on a more serious note*
I should point out to everyone: a common incorrect idea with regards to effective per hour rate is that it is only worth being the only factor if you have other things to do with your time. For example, doing a 1 hour project for $88 and twidling your thumbs for another 9 hours is worse than doing a 10 hours project for $800.