After organising, filtering and sorting my stream of Information and structuring my day through task management I usually get down to business.
Some days are still messy and unorganised, as little requests keep on coming in: phone calls, email, things I remember I wanted to check but didn’t bother putting into my task manager. These things happen. My goal is to react to client requests within an hour. Even if it’s just a quick reply, telling that I will be looking into the requested matter within a certain time frame. For me this is one of the most important ways of building a good relationship to my customers.
I also found out over time that it is me messing up my days, because I want to. This happens mostly, when I am tired, unfocused and bored with the stuff I should be doing. It’s not the others, it’s 80% me.
So when I actually get down to do some “real” work I need to track the time I spend on a project and client. I use to different approaches:
Kimai
www.kimai.de – Kimai is an Open Source Time Tracking Tool, which is pretty simple to set up on one of your servers/sub domains, such as e.g. timetracking.yourdomain.com, it needs a database and php but is set up within minutes. Kimai is able to manage different users, so it’s handy if you are working in a team. You can organise your users in groups and grant permission these group-based permissions to certain projects or clients.
First You set up your Clients, that you add Projects per Client, you also have the possibility of setting up different kinds of activities, such as “programming”, “design” or “phone”. These are not directly connected to projects as they can come up in all your projects. So to use the Time-tracking you just choose a Client:Project and an activity and hit the start button. When your done you click on stop. Afterwards you can (with sufficient rights) edit the entry or ad a comment. I usually write what I have been doing in detail.
There are some plug ins/extensions, one of which is an interface, to check the tracked activities on a date-client-project-user base. It also shows the comments, so I use this functionality when I write my invoices.
Spreadsheet
Yes, I admit, I am a spreadsheet addict. I use Open Office Calc to do my over-all planning
I log the times, I start and finish working, duration of breaks and duration of time I spend on a certain client or internal task-group. The spreadsheet calculates average duration of working days, which allow me to plan until what date I will be working on a project. I use these projections to give deadlines and to tell my clients how much notice I need for new jobs.
The spreadsheet has a lot of individual functionality, which I have been building, optimising and customising to my needs over the last two or three years. It is very individual, so I won’t get into this in more detail. I you want to know more or see a copy, let me know.
Unfortunately I have not found a tool that combines the task and time-tracking functionality in I way I need it and plugs into gmail. So if anybody has an idea, I am open to suggestions.