If you're a lawyer , an accountant , perhaps an architect or work in a call center , then there is a good probability you or your staff collect time for the purposes of billing your clients for the work done. There is also a good probability that your choice of tool for this job will be a pen and paper time journal or a manual-entry electronic timesheet software product (which includes the latest time capture fad of using web based timesheets) to log your time .
However, what you may not know is just how inefficient and costly this type of productivity tool is to you, (in terms of wasting your time), and to your business (in terms of the dollars being wasted). Timesheets, even modern web enabled time sheets have, what's often called in the business, a two step flaw. You see timesheets are in essence a manual data logging system. I say manual because of course it's you or your staff that must manually key in what you've done for the day, for who, for how long and on what. As you make your entry, your time is tied into that particular part of the process, and is time you cannot use else where, for example on company work. But that's not the half of it, because we must also now factor in a key element of any apparatus used to collect, harvest or monitor time accuracy, and the relative costs of obtaining accurate timing data.
Consider you work in a busy law practice. Throughout the day you'll manage a hundred and one tasks, and yet you only complete your timesheets at the end of the day, or perhaps worse, at the end of the week. How accurate do you think your time entries will be? How many 3 minute phone calls to unrelated clients can you remember? What about when you took a tea break or were interrupted by a co-worker? Accuracy for billing is more than important it's essential for both the health of your business, and to ensure that your company gives good value to the client and also follows the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Okay, you reason, if collecting time at the end of the day or week gives lousy accuracy, let's just collect the data more often say at the end of each 15 minute period. How does this change the accuracy landscape for both you and your clients? At first glance, pretty well might be an educated response but wait there's an even bigger problem hiding in the wings. Think about it if you spend just 2 minutes for each data entry, then at the end of an 8 hour day, you'll have wasted 1 full hour of your life doing nothing but collecting data. This then is a serious hole in your billing process, and is part 2 of the two step flaw.
So what can be done about this problem inaccurate worthless data that costs very little to collect or actual meaningful data that costs you 1/8 of your working day?
Actually the solution to this dilemma is more simple than this the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is fully automated hands-free time tracking software.
Fully automated time tracking and time logging software started to appear on the market in early 2000. The reason for this apparent jump from all manual to offering a viable alternative arose because of advancements in the Window's operating system that allowed software vendors to explore the possibility of changes to the current environment, facilitating alternatives that would provide a more tangible replacement to the humble timesheet (see also Time Sheet Cost Calculator)
One of the key exponents and developers in the field of automated time tracking was a company called MetriQ , who the first to offer both true pre-emptive and permissive timing modes as standard with their professional time captures series. The software offered a new paradigm to the bloated timesheet market, and allowed businesses of any size to quickly realize instant improvements in productivity, profitability and staff morale. The use of software like MetriQ and other such products that have also started to emerge on the market today, give businesses and instant boost on their bottom line as staff are freed forever from the need to complete timesheets, giving more time to the work at hand, and freeing staff from the obligation of having to remember or make notes on what they've been doing throughout the day. And its not just for billing. Accurate time capture means businesses can start to really examine their internal processes and with process improvement further streamline their working practices. Project Management is another key area that benefits from this approach, helping businesses get more out of each working day.
Today accurate time tracking software has less than 1% of the global timesheet market. In 15 years time, this figure will be 100%, as no business can afford to throw money away collecting time, when the entire process can be automated for a fraction of the cost.
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