Tracking Your Time Efficiently
January 13, 2007
In your business you should be tracking the time you spend on client work.
I just have to share with you this new tool a fellow VA shared with me . It’s called MyHours and it simply is the greatest software to track your billable hours. I signed up for a free MyHours account (which they state will be going to a paid system at some point… I’m kind of keeping my fingers crossed that they’ll forget about that little note they’ve made on their website…) and I started using it immediately.
Once you sign up, the first place you need to go to is the Projects tab so you can set up your clients and the various projects you may do for each client. The next place you should go is the Tasks tab and set up a few of the regular tasks that you do. For myself, I used this area to put in things like “Transcriptionâ€, “Web Maintenance†and “Administrative Support.â€
Once you have those two areas filled out, you can begin using MyHours (I told you it was easy!) in one of two ways – regular daily view entry or entry through the MHlite interface. The difference is that the regular daily view entry uses up the whole screen and you have to manually put in your start and stop times. With MHlite, it works much like a punch clock. You hit “Start Work†to begin and “Finish Work†to end and it calculates the time you’ve spent on that project / task.
One thing I want to note is that whether you are using the daily view or the lite version, there is one row in the data entry that says “Notes.†I would highly recommend using these and getting into the habit of putting data in there from the time you start. I add a more detailed note so that my client knows exactly what it was I worked on. It also allows me to look back and see precisely where my time was spent.
The reporting function of MyHours is also excellent. You can pull reports that are sorted by client, by project or by task. It automatically adds up the hours spent in each area which makes invoicing your clients a breeze!
I also think it is neat to use the software to track how much time I am spending on the various areas of my own business. Writing e-zine submissions or blog entries for example. You can see how much of your time is spent ON your business instead of IN your business.
Regardless of your own primary use of this software program, we give it two giant thumbs up. The ease of set up and use is extraordinary and I love that you can access it from anywhere. Enjoy!
Erin Blaskie is The VA Coach, a virtual assistant coach who assists individuals wanting to become a virtual assistant get their businesses launched successfully and efficiently. Erin is also the Owner of Business Services, ETC (A Virtual Assistance Company) that serves business owners around the world. You can visit her on the web at http://www.thevacoach.com or http://www.bsetc.ca.
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