Today's post is short and sweet, and it's about software we love that makes our lives easier. After kissing a few software frogs, we went with a dear colleague's suggestion and started using Toggl to keep track of hours worked. We charge more and more clients by the hour, and needed a simple and reliable way to keep track of our hours. Toggl does the trick. There's nothing to download and no learning curve. While some features are fee-based, we have not used them and just use the free version. Paid features include invoicing options, which we don't need because we already have a very solid accounting system.
We started using Toggl within five minutes of visiting the website, and it is user-friendly and intuitive. You create a free account in a few minutes, and you are off to track your time based on projects. The company's tag line is "Insanely simple time tracking," and that describes it well. We are actually quite addicted to the software now, as it lets us see very clearly exactly how we allocate our time. Of course you do have to get used to clicking the "start" button when you start working on a particular project, which took us a few days to remember. Just like lawyers, we only get paid when we have billable client hours and it's fascinating to see that some days we only bill four or five hours to clients and the rest is work that cannot be billed to any clients. These tasks include administrative work, answering e-mails, quotes, invoices, inquiries, blogging, social media, filing, organizational tasks, teaching (for which we get paid a fixed amount and do not bill hourly), pro bono work, etc. It really does put our work day in perspective! We also really like the easy reports that Toggl allows you to compile. If requested, these can be sent to the client.
What about you, dear colleagues? Do you use a time-tracking tool like Toggl? If yes, which one? We'd love to hear about other software options.
3 comments:
Thank you! I followed your advice and created an account - it really is unbelievable easy and helps a lot!
@Manu: Our pleasure! We use Toggl every day now and can't imagine our lives without that handy piece of software. Happy to hear that you like it, too!
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