How long does it take you to research and write a 500-word article? What about a piece of copy for a website? Knowing how long it takes you to complete a particular piece of project can make it much easier to increase your income:

• You can tell quickly if you’re charging enough for a project.
• You can focus on those projects that you can complete quickly in order to bring in more money, faster.
• You can tell if a particular client is using more of your time.
• You can tell what you’re really making per hour and decide whether you can cut back or need to work harder.

My tracking system is simple enough: I have a timer and a spreadsheet. I keep track of how long it takes me to write each article or otherwise handle a project and record that number on my spreadsheet, along with the name of the project, the pay and the client. I’ve played around with Excel enough that I can get my spreadsheet to compute how much I’m making per hour, per client and other useful information.

There are also quite a few pieces of software that take my simple spreadsheet to the next level. Harvest is particularly useful: it tracks time and expenses, as well as handles invoices and estimates and analyzes just how you’re spending your time for clients. It’s just a matter of clicking a button when you stop and start work on a particular project. You don’t have to record any numbers or otherwise handle information — and if you have an iPhone, there’s actually an iPhone application that lets you track your time when you aren’t at your computer. Harvest offers a plan geared towards freelancers that is priced at $12 per month, with a 30-day free trial.

Such a system definitely makes processing the all the information that comes out of tracking your time much easier. And the easier your time-tracking system is to use, the more likely you’ll be able to just get into the habit of using it.

Do you use a different system to track your time? If so, it would be great if you could mention it in the comments and tell us what you particularly like about it.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Increasing Income. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.