(Image from www.trackthetime.com)

I’m sure all of us have experienced one of those days where you wonder, ‘What exactly did I do today?’ This question is even harder to answer when you’re trying to remember a week’s worth of time when entering your hours for work. When it comes to logging hours for multiple projects, it can be a daunting task if you don’t have a good system in place. (Especially when you need to measure your life in .25 increments.)

As tedious a task as this may seem, to a Project Manager it’s one of the most important aspects to a job. Not only is entering accurate time vital to keeping the assignment on budget, it’s also important for estimating hours in upcoming/new work. Many times, projects can have similar deliverables and timing; knowing how long a past project took (and if you were close to your hours estimate or over) will help to better scope the new job in the future. Even if you’re working on a fixed bid project, as opposed to Time-and-Materials, it’s important your team members enter accurate hours since this will also aid in providing realistic estimates in the future.

Is it fun to enter hours? No. Is it necessary? Absolutely. No one really enjoys entering time, but I’ve found a few helpful ways of making the process less painful:

1. Enter Time on a Daily Basis

This is definitely the preferred way to enter your hours (and the most accurate). When things are crazy-busy, I know the last thing you think of doing is entering time. However, if you make it a habit before you leave work for the night, then you don’t need to try to remember what you did for an entire week. Also, if you enter the hours right after an internal or client meeting (before you begin other work), then you don’t need to worry about it later since it will already be done.

A past co-worker of mine was awesome at entering his time on a daily basis. You could always count on him to enter hours everyday, which immensely helped with monitoring his time and estimating similar projects in the future. He told me that it took him years to figure out that the best way to enter his time was to do it immediately after meetings/presentations and before he left for the night. (Thanks, Rich!)

2. Write it Down!

That’s right—get out the old pen and paper and keep track of your hours in a notebook. If you’re unable to enter time in the tracking tool right away, keeping a written account of your hours will help once you enter them into the system.

Another helpful account that you can reference is your emails. If you’re having a hard time remembering what you did on a certain day, take a look through your messages because they can help trigger tasks you completed (and then forgot about).

3. Setup Alerts to Enter Time

I know what you’re thinking: I can’t even remember to enter hours; how am I going to remember to setup the alerts to enter my time? If you enter in the daily (or weekly) alerts all at once, then you just need to wait for these helpful reminders to pop up on your desktop. Of course, you’ll also be receiving the ‘friendly’ ‘ENTER-YOUR-TIME’ reminders from your Project Manager, so it’ll just act as one more ping.

4. Use a Time Tracking Widget

I’ve spoken with co-workers who have successfully kept track of their hours with a desktop widget. It’s as easy as entering the project details and then hitting ‘Record’. That’s it. (Now you just need to remember to ‘punch in and out’.) Below are a few examples:

• Time Tracker This is a widget that one of my co-workers, Vince, uses. He said that it takes a little getting use to setting up projects and tasks, but the sessions within each task is where the program shines. It ‘auto-magically’ logs new sessions every time you start and stop a timer. You can also manually edit the session times, as well as add notes and comments. Best of all–it’s free!
• Basecamp Add-ons/widgets If you use Basecamp, these add-on widgets are a great addition and very easy to use. Some are even more than widgets and offer invoicing options, as well.
• Timetrek Free for both Windows and Mac users and easy to use, with the ability to print out ‘invoice’ reports.

4.25. Use Time Tracking Software

This ‘tip’ is really just an extension of #4 above. Many times, the widgets are integrated into the time tracking software, which is especially helpful if you’re looking for the ability to create invoices directly from the tool. There are quite a few free options available to freelancers (or one user), but just remember to read the fine print, as certain limitations may apply.

If you’re looking for time-tracking systems/tools, below are just a few of the more popular providers I’ve found in my Internet hunt (my comments only relate to general pricing info, incase that’s a deciding factor for you):

• Harvest (seems to be one of the most popular options, but it ain’t free–even for you solo users it’s $12/month)
• Toggl (free for the basics, but you gotta pay for the Pro version (which isn’t much, depending on the number of users))
• Timr (free for one user (with limitations), but then it gets a little pricey)
• Paymo (free (for up to 2 users and three invoices/month) or only $3.99/user/month)

While none of these tips are necessarily groundbreaking, I hope they at least provide you with a few alternatives to try. I’ve used all of them myself, so it’s just a matter of finding what works for you.  As Project Managers, we can send out all the reminders in the world, and point people in the direction of useful tools, but it requires effort on everyone’s part to enter the time.

Give one of these tips/tools a try, and tell me what you think! Also, feel free to post any that I may have missed and tell everyone why you like it/why it works for you.

Now go enter the time you spent reading this blog post.