Description

Tracking time on a freelance project is useful whether you charge by the hour or not. For day-rate and fixed-price work, it tells you how profitable a project was, whether your estimates were accurate, and where your time actually goes. That information makes your next quote better.

How to use this

Log time at the end of each day, not at the end of the project. The discipline of daily logging takes about five minutes and produces much more accurate data than trying to reconstruct where your time went at the end of a project.

Use the task categories to group time by type of activity: strategy, writing, design management, client communication, admin, review. Over several projects, this shows you which types of work take longer than you typically estimate, and those are usually the same types every time.

The project summary tab calculates total hours by category and compares time spent to the hours you budgeted when you quoted. Review this before writing your next proposal for a similar project.

What’s included

• Editable Excel workbook (.xlsx) with daily log and project summary tabs
• PDF reference version

Who it’s for

Freelance freelance consultants and in-house teams who want to understand where their time goes and price future work more accurately.

Before you download

• The value of time tracking compounds over time. A few projects of data is moderately useful; a year of data is genuinely valuable for estimating and pricing.
• After downloading, you will find both files in your account.
• You are getting a licence to use this and adapt it for your own work. You cannot sell, redistribute, or share it with others.