Timesheets
A prosaic start to the new site. But timesheets have been bugging me for a while now.
This is a subject that many creative firms try to avoid because, frankly, timesheets are boring.
But, timesheets are not unproductive.
The main purpose they fulfil is a record of working hours for different activities.
This record is a discipline that few people enjoy.
Here are some hints and tips to make it easiser for yu and your staff to complete timesheets:
- Do it daily - make it the last thing you do before going home and leaving the office
- Make it easy to record minutes by decimalising them so each 6 minutes = 0.1 of an hour. And so 0.4 hours is 4 x 6 minutes = 24 minutes.
- Set up the timesheet so the layout is easy to read and uses tick boxes where possible. Use a spreadsheet so it automatically adds up columns and points out shortfalls in red.
If you are still aving difficulties getting everyone to fill in timesheets
- Don’t pay expenses claims / salaries until timesheets are submitted
- Appoint a “Time Sheet Bulldog”. A person who is tasked with collecting them weekly
- Lead by example. Senior team have to do it first
- Be very clear with new hires that this is expected as normal behaviour
So having talked about how to get timesheets, what can you learn from timesheets?
- Job Profitability
- Individual Profitability
- Time spent on non fee earning work
These are the main things timesheets are used for. If you don’t do these analyses as a matter of course, I recommend taking some jobs that you have done recently and running the numbers. Use one job for your largest client and one for a smaller one. What time did you speand? What did the client pay - less expenses? What was your profit? In £ and as % of the fee? Are those profit figures normal or abnormal? If they are low, what will or can yo do….. if they are high what can you do?
Advanced Timesheets - other things to do
- Set up spreadsheet so once completed and submitted they cannot be altered except by an administrator.