How to Win at Time Tracking Politics

Tracking your time spent working for clients or on projects is common and helps justify how employees are spending their time on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

At the same time, there are certain challenges that come with time tracking. Having records of the amount of time employees spend working each week is one thing, but having records about what they specifically work on is another.

No one who uses time tracking software wants to have their work questioned. Here are a few obstacles that come with having to use time tracking along with suggestions to overcome them.

You have to spend (what feels like) all day updating what you’re working on.

If you use time tracking software, you’re probably used to switching tracks several times throughout any given day to meet deadlines and put out fires for multiple clients.

You have two options to track your time. Either log each job for a client in real-time or go back and do it all at once at the end of the day. Most people will agree that it’s difficult to remember all the projects you worked on if you log them all at once.

If you think that entering your time on-the-go is your best bet, commit to a minimum billable timeframe that you can enter into the time tracking system. For example, if all of your entries for client/project work area minimum of 30 minutes, this will help limit the amount of updates you need to make.

For those who enter all their time at once, check your sent emails from that day to help validate the time you charge to each project/client.

You’re frequently interrupted after starting a new job.

There you are, just about to enter the zone of being productive when your coworker pops up behind you and effectively vacuums the next 20 minutes of your work day.

This scenario presents a variety of questions in the time tracking department.

What project were you working on before the interruption? What project did your colleague talk to you about? How should you charge this time?

If you have a good relationship with the person who interrupts you then you’ll likely find a way to help them sooner than later.

At the same time, if a coworker you don’t know as well continues interrupting you for help with their own projects you should enter your time working on those same projects. If you don’t have permission to use a cost code or accounting code for the project or client you helped, then charge the time to the most generic category available.

Effective time tracking is an art and science.

When it comes to the details of tracking time spent on client or company projects, you obviously want to be as accurate as possible. But, hypothetically, what if you waited until the end of the week to enter all of your time or you ran out of billable hours for a client who still needed more work done on a campaign? Those are purely hypothetical scenarios, of course.

In truth, sometimes the way employees track their time is wildly inconsistent across the board. Other times, the process is working fine, but the numbers just won’t work out the way you or your boss or management or the client would like them to.

Learning to be comfortable recording approximations instead of exact figures is an acquired skill and one you should feel ok about if you believe you’re doing a good job.

Think of the way you handle time tracking as a balancing act between different interests, where some are considered more important than others.

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