Molly Beyer addresses the importance of time tracking in today’s episode. While there are many metrics that can be used to track progress, set targets, or measure success, time tracking is both crucial and often overlooked. Find out why time tracking is a fundamental pillar of every successful business as Molly walks us through ideal tracking methods and how they help.

Molly has divided time tracking into seven important steps to both understand time tracking and set your system up for maximum effectiveness. She talks in detail about each of the seven: tracking all business-related time, utilizing digital tools, dividing tasks into key business buckets, color coding, breaking tasks down to the granular level in tracking, and determining when and how the best work is done.

Why bother time tracking if you have sales metrics? Why is time tracking necessary if targets are being hit? Those are exactly the kinds of questions Molly answers in this episode and her experience, advice, and step-by-step breakdowns of how tracking time benefits a business will convince anyone of its importance. Join Molly, then, to reassess existing time tracking methods or create efficient new ones based on her knowledge.

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Contact Molly Beyer:

• MKBeyerBooks.com
• MKBeyerConsults.com
• Facebook: MK Beyer Books
  
  

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Transcript

Molly Beyer: [00:00:08] Hello, hello, I am Molly Beyer, host of The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, a podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. There are so many ands that impact being your own boss. Join us as we explore all these ands and more. Like, subscribe, or follow wherever you get your podcasts and let's explore these ambiguous ands.

Molly Beyer: [00:00:39] Hello and welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I am your host, Molly Beyer, and I am here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. We all know that in business, there are all sorts of metrics we can use to track progress, to set targets, and to measure success. Marketing, financial, human resources, and customer are the main categories for metrics to measure in business, but one crucial one often overlooked, especially by small businesses and solopreneurs, is time. Time tracking is a fundamental pillar of every successful business, and plays a major role in determining the pricing of your products or services, as well as being a primary informant in business decision-making. Part of my recovering from being a control freak is also recovering from being a workaholic. So when I started my business with a specific boundary of how much time I would spend in it, I knew I needed to make sure that I stuck to it. This started me tracking my time from day one, and helped me to not only stay within my goal, but also helped make sure I was pricing my services correctly as I knew exactly how much time I was spending on each task.

Molly Beyer: [00:01:49] As my business grew, I needed more streamlined ways to create pricing as each of my clients has a different pricing situation and their pricing reflects that. Through time tracking, we were able to create a pricing calculator that accurately predicts scope of work in relation to pricing so our clients are neither paying too much nor too little. While service-based businesses often only have time tracking to help in building pricing, it's also important in other business structures. In-house production or crafting businesses such as baking or manufacturing, often only include the cost of components into pricing, but the time it takes employees to handle production and everything involved in it is equally as important to add, and it really is the only way to control labor costs. For businesses with a large administrative component, those that are supporting the frontline product or service functions, it is especially important to know how much time is being spent on specific tasks to make sure output is aligned with hours.

Molly Beyer: [00:02:48] I need to step back one second here, though, to say that this is not an excuse for companies to take advantage of employees either by expecting output that is not being compensated for or by micromanaging. Metrics are necessary, but you always need to remember there are human beings behind all of those numbers. So back to the numbers. No matter the industry, it is very difficult to devise a pricing strategy without having a clear idea of how much time you are investing in it. A consideration when using time tracking for pricing is if it will be you or someone else performing the work. If there are multiple people completing the same task, a high average time is best used to complete this. There are some things I am super fast at, like reviewing large data sets for inconsistencies and patterns. In my bookkeeping business we complete many cleanups, which starts with data review and strategy to reorganize. My superpowers let me do this very quickly, even with very large accounts with many thousands of transactions. My staff have different superpowers, though, and do not always complete this task as quickly as I do. So if I price this at the time it would take me, but someone else completes the work, we're not going to make any money.

Molly Beyer: [00:04:12] I am also terribly slow with the monotony of things like bill pay, but my staff can get it done much quicker so I can price this lower, as long as it's not me who's actually doing it. Understanding the lowest amount you can charge per hour is important in maintaining business profitability as well. When you have the data, you can better institute strategies like intuitive pricing or discounting, because you're going to know how low you can go without losing money. So how do we go about this time tracking business? Well, first things first. Find a tracking software. Maybe you're using another software for managing projects or client interactions that also has a tracking function. If so, you just need to set yourself some non-billable buckets as well. And many of the time tracking apps have a free version. I've used a free version of Toggle for four years now, and many of these time tracking apps also have an upsell section where you can get a client and project management tool as well. This is great if you don't need a larger CRM or a project system, but maybe just a little more than time tracking. But no matter what you choose, find something with reports and analytics so you can quickly and easily review how you're spending your time.

Molly Beyer: [00:05:33] Next, we want to break down time into different types of work you're doing. One of the ways to make it easier to conceptualize it is sort of in the form of buckets. The idea is to identify 5 to 7 areas you're spending most of your time, and place those in different buckets. Some examples from my own buckets are administrative work, client work, leadership, HR management, professional development, and CEO visionary, or as I like to call it, my Rainmaker Space. I've also found that color coding my buckets helps me carry them through all of my organizational applications like email, to-do list, and calendar. Remember, especially for solopreneurs and business owners who are bootstrapping in the early stages of ...