Time tracking is a necessary evil when dealing with client work. It helps us estimate things like project costs and completion status. It also helps us stay organized and allocate time wisely. As a designer, I am constantly working on multiple projects at once. On any given day I may track time for 5 different clients for 10-20 different tasks! Throughout the years I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to track my time effectively. I found that most online solutions were not flexible enough or over-complicated. So I decided to take matters into my own hand and create something that allowed me to track time manually, by hand!
I created a simple time tracking sheet that keeps track of the date, time at the office, client, and project start & end times, that’s it! This way I can keep track of things at any time increment and at the end of the day compile all of the times and tasks and enter them to our project management software, liquid planner. It sounds stupid adding 5 minutes here for an email, 10 minutes there for a quick chat. But at the end of the day, those chunks of time can add up to hours.
I am including a pdf of my time tracking sheet so it is available for download.
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Comments (3 comments)
i prefer a post-it note and super tiny writing.
matt mcinvale / August 19th, 2009, 2:00 pm / #
That is very cool. We designed a PDF for time tracking as well. You can find it in this blog post:
http://www.myintervals.com/blog/2008/07/10/three-ways-to-track-your-time/
It’s cool to see how other designers have tackled the paper timesheet.
John / August 21st, 2009, 11:54 am / #
If you need a automatic time tracker with a desktop widget, with alerts and strong reports you will find it at http://www.tracking-time.com, you can track live from the widget then add your time in you pdf timesheet. Check it out it may help you!
Time tracking / August 25th, 2009, 5:46 am / #
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