Time tracking blog

We often hear that “time is a precious commodity”, and we shouldn’t waste it.  Sometimes I think it’s taken for granted just how much one can accomplish in a short period of time.  Take a look at what can be accomplished in just 38 seconds:

• A 6 year old can completely solve a Rubiks cube
• A marijuana user gets arrested every 38 seconds in America
• Spice Girls’ London Tickets Sell Out in 38 seconds
• It takes Wal-Mart less than 38 seconds to earn $470,000 dollars.
• Tyson won a fight in 38 seconds
• A full pitcher of water can be filtered in 38 seconds
• You can completely beat MineSweeper in 38 seconds

Time is definitely precious, but I don’t believe I would consider it a commodity.  I wish it were – I’d be first in line to find someone who could sell me more of it!  Unfortunately, there is no way you can gain more than 86,400 seconds in a day.  The only thing you can do is make different decisions concerning how you spend it.  One of the most effective means of improving how you spend time is by simply being more conscious of how you’re using it.  Each time you punch out on your timeclock, try taking just 38 seconds to reflect on what you accomplished that day.  You might be surprised at what this little exercise will do to improve your next day’s work.

The past couple of weeks have been very busy for the TSheets development crew.  From updates to Paid Time Off, to redesigning the blog, we’ve been busy rolling out new and improved features, with the TGadget being the latest.

What is the TGadget?

The TGadget is a slimmer, faster flavor of the original TSheets that you’ve grown to love.  It takes up less precious desktop real estate and provides a very quick and streamlined workflow, enabling you to track your time quickly and efficiently.  PLUS, it also functions as a Google Gadget and can be added to your iGoogle homepage.

How do I use it?

There are a couple of different ways to get started using the TGadget:

• From your main login screen (https://your_url.tsheets.com), you’ll see a box and screen shot that talks about the TGadget and how to use it.
• If you’re using an IPhone, you’ll be automatically redirected to the TGadget.  We’ve optimized it to work perfectly with the IPhone.
• You can follow this link to add the TGadget to your iGoogle homepage.

What’s next for the TGadget?

We’ll continue to refine and polish the TGadget, but most importantly this feature provides an ideal stepping stone for a desktop version of TSheets — making all of TSheets’ great features available to you without ever having to open a web browser window.

So take it for a spin, and let us know what you think.

Over the last six months our blog has had several new people making posts, which has added a lot of additional content to the News Box seen on the Login page.  We recently decided to limit the posts seen on the Login page to information that’s pertinent to your TSheets account, rather than everything in our blog.

Where did all the posts go? None of the posts have been removed from our blog, they just won’t show up by default on the Login page news feed.  They are still all there, easily accessible at http://blog.tsheets.com/. If you like reading our blog we’ve made it easier to stay up-to-date by adding a subscribe feature.  Just go to the TSheets Blog, enter your email address, and click “Subscribe”.

What will the news feed on the Login page have now? Any post that’s pertinent to you as a TSheets account holder: Feature enhancements, product information, upcoming events, support information, etc.

We hope this helps you stay up-to-date with the important information you need, while still having all the just-for-fun posts only a few clicks away.

My friend is driving along a highway in Wyoming and sees a huge bull elk standing off the road about 100 yards with his head down.  Thinking of the photo opp, he quickly pulls over, gets the camera out and starts walking towards the elk.  Then, the elk lifted his head – with a cougar attached to his neck!

After shooting these photos, my friend waved his hands and got the attention of the cougar.  He then let go of the elk.  Paused.  Glared and pinned his ears back at my friend, who dirtied his shorts. But then the cougar took off.

The elk, slowly meandered away thankful to see another day:

A lot of companies are outsourcing these days.  Whether it be an accountant, marketer, web developer or lawyer, the odds are that you have someone that you pay on a regular basis who isn’t part of your organization.  The Illinois Department of Transportation is no different.  Just like you, they trusted in another organization to take care of a task that they didn’t have the resources to accomplish internally.  However, the people that they trusted ended up cheating them out of more than $1 Million dollars by falsifying timesheets.

Kamleshwar Gupta, the owner of the Elgin-based engineering consulting firm being used, directed a bookkeeper to falsify employee timesheets.  (Conveniently it was company policy to write out the paper timesheets in pencil, so they could easily be editted.)  He then signed off on the fraudulent invoices before sending them to the Department of Transportation.  Luckily, a routine audit caught the fraudulent activity.

Is this kind of thing happening to you, certainly not.  However, how accurate are your vendors keeping track of their “billable time?”  Do you know the method they use to keep track of the hours they spend on your projects?  Do they even have a method, or do they just sit down at the end of the day and make an estimate on how much time they spent?

Don’t be afraid to ask vendors how they track their time.  Keep in mind that if they’re using a manually entered timesheet then it’s probably “padded” in their own favor.  If their method makes you nervous, don’t be afraid to ask them to use an automated system like TSheets or any other real time tracker.  After all you are paying them for the actual time that they work for you, not just what hours they think they spent.

Most spiders don’t hunt.  They hang out where the flies are and build a web.

When it comes to marketing a web-based business application like TSheets, this means several thing:

• You have to invest in search engine marketing (i.e. Google AdWords) and search engine optimization.
• You have to understand where your audience gets their information.  In our case, where do they go to learn about time clocks or time keeping?
• You have to be subtle and patient.
• It helps to get there first … and if you don’t get there first, build the best web.  Thus our investment in things like the “Time Slider” tool for editing time sheets.

The bottom line:  it is easier to join an existing conversation than to start a new one.  More on this later …

Paid Time Off (PTO) support has been available to employees for a while now.  But now, managers can enter PTO for their employees easily.  They can also make modifications to PTO that the employees have entered themselves.

How does it work?
Open up the PTO Editor normally.  Then, to edit another employee’s PTO, begin typing the name of the employee in the input field at the bottom left of the screen.  You’ll see a dynamically loading list of matching employee names to choose from.  Select one, and then click on ‘Switch User’.  Now you’re editing PTO for that user, as indicated in the top left of the window.

You can easily assign PTO codes to an employee by clicking on the employee’s name (in the top left of the PTO Editor) to bring up the Employee Editor.  From there you can create/modify/assign PTO codes to the employee.

We’ve also fixed a bug in the Report Generator which caused PTO to be included in overtime calculations.  It will no longer do that, and you’re still able to see a tally of PTO broken out by PTO code as you would expect.

Feedback.
We’d love to hear your feedback about what works and what doesn’t work and what we can do to make it better!

A Blogger’s version of American Idol ~

TSheets is looking for a “Rock Star” Copywriter – instead of reading a ridiculous number of resumes, I’d prefer to give you the chance to show your stuff!  Simply write a blog post about TSheets and the best written post will receive $500 and an opportunity to be a copywriter on the TSheets team!

Skill-set required:

• Solid perspective on Web 2.0 Technology
• Excellent English writing skills
• Marketing edge or flair to your writing

Here’s how to apply:

• Review our website and blog to learn about our product/services
• Submit your entry to me via email, matt@tsheets.com, or include a link to your post in the comments below.
• Rules:
  • Less than 500 words
  • Deadline is May 1, 2008
  • Judged solely at the TSheets review committee’s discretion

The best written posts will be featured on our blog and the writers will have the opportunity for an interview.

Good Luck!

Matt Rissell, CEO

As a Realtor, one of the most difficult aspects of your job is proving your worth.  Even once you’ve successfully completed the purchase or sell transaction there’s often questions of what you did for your client to earn your fee (aside from the obvious of getting the results they expected).

Since the real estate industry is mostly comprised of contractors (very few Realtors are employees), it’s not a requirement to track time spent working on tasks (as opposed to employees who have to clock-in and/or fill out timesheets). Without this time tracking task, it’s very difficult to provide your clients with a report showing them the time (and money) spent on getting their property sold or finding them a new one to purchase. This is often an overlooked task and if performed correctly would aid in justifying your fees.

To place emphasis on the importance of time tracking (from a client’s perspective) let’s imagine that your furnace quits working and you have a service man over for repairs.  He fixes your problem and hands you a bill for $500, but he doesn’t itemize how he spent his time.  Wouldn’t you question what he did for $500?  What if all he did was perform as simple a task as flipping a switch? You probably would be reluctant to pay without knowing what type of work was performed.  Right?  Now, imagine he handed you a detailed invoice outlining exactly what he did and how much time he spent on each task. You’d probably feel a little better about paying for the service at this point.  This same need is present in real estate transactions. Clients want to know how and where you spent your time, and more importantly, what you did to prove your worth.

By tracking your time using a timesheet or time clock system, you can effectively provide your clients with detailed information about how and what you spent your time on. This gives you ammo when the “What did you do for me to sell my home?” question arrises and in turn, helps you prove your worth.  And with over 1.3 million Realtors to compete against, any extra edge you can get is huge.

Track your time.  You’ll be more productive, provide better service and have happier (and more) clients.

Do you have a time clock like this in your office?

As the owner of a business, when it comes down to time keeping and accountability, you’re pretty much on your own.  You are the only one who really feels the pain of timesheet and time clock inaccuracies.  In fact, in a lot of organizations, employees are paid extra for adding 10-15 minutes to their time card.

When they come in the office at 8:09 they’re thinking, “I got here at 8am.” And when the clock strikes 4:45pm, it’s time to pack things up (yes, even the honest ones do this.) However, you, as the business owner, know that you pay for every 10-15 minutes your employee “fudges”.  In one shift this could be 20-30 minutes, and across the period of a month this could be 7-10 HOURS of extra payroll that you pay out PER employee.

So don’t be surprised when your employees have objections when you decide to incorporate a technology like TSheets or another honest and accurate time keeping system.  You’d have objections too if you were getting a pay cut of $1,560 a year, PLUS you had to consistently remember to clock in AND out.  (Boy, what a hassle. ;-) )

But with the $77,460.60 that you’ll save every year by bringing accuracy to your 50 employees’ time cards, surely you’ll be able to make it up to them.

The Math:

“20-30 minutes”
10 min. x 2(for clock in and out) = 20 min.
15 min. x 2(for clock in and out) = 30 min.

“7-10 HOURS”
20 min. x 5 (5 days in a working week) = 100 minutes
100 min. x 4 (4 weeks in a month) = 400 minutes
400 min. / 60 (60 minutes in an hour) = 6.667 hours

30 min. x 5 (5 days in a working week) = 150
150 min. x 4 (4 weeks in a month) = 600 minutes
600 min. / 60 (60 minutes in an hour) = 10 hours

 ”$1,560 a year”
10 hrs. x 13 (Wage Rate of $13/hr.) = 130 x 12 (12 months in a year) = $1560

“$77,460.60“
$1560 x 50 (50 employees) = $78,000
$44.95 (50 employee TSheets license) x 12 (12 months in a year) = $539.40
$78,000 – $539.40 = $77,460.60

*Photo courtesy of http://www.insightoutsight.co.uk