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WORKING SMARTER EVERY DAY

6 REPORTS THAT KEEP
TIME IN CHECK

Because time seems to slip away, here are a six of the favorites reports to help you keep track of where those hours are going.

Team Productivity by Staff — See how many hours each staffer is recording, and how many of those hours are billable. The report prints for a customizable time period and shows year-to-date totals.

Missing Time — If you set up your staffers in Clients & Profits to require accountability for weekly hours, then this is the report for you. It shows planned hours and hours to account for, so you’ll always know who turned in their time, and who didn’t.

Unbillable Time Analysis — See how many hours each staffer worked, what the cost was, and what percent was unbillable. It’s an unbeatable report to help rein in unbillable hours!

Time by Task — Want to know how many hours are worked by task? Then the Time by Task report is for you! Find out what jobs, staffers, costs, and billings went into each task. Similar—but equally useful reports—include Time by Staff, Time by Client, and Time by Client. Pick the ones that are best for you!

Monthly Client Time Summary — A great report to analyze the total hours worked by client, including the cost and billable totals, as well as the billable and overtime percentages. You’ll see how many hours were allocated to each client, and who put in the hours, totalled by task.

Profit Center/Client Productivity — A partner report for the Monthly Client Time Summary, this report looks at total hours assigned to and billed by client, and percent of staff hour utilization. Like the Monthly Client Time Summary, this report helps you ID your best (and most profitable) clients.

By Mindy Williams

Why in the heck can’t you get those wonderful creatives to add a time card? It’s simple: they’re boring. Think about what makes a great creative mind great: They’re constantly exploring and experimenting. A time card just isn’t interesting.

So the trick, is to motivate creatives to make them want to enter time. Here are a few tried-and-true tips from Clients & Profits users:

Money matters. If you pay by the hour, you’ve got a built-in motivator: no time card = no paycheck. But if your staffers are salaried, you might need to try make things uncomfortable for them. For example, Elaine Ucciferri, president of Harpell, turns off direct deposit, sending slackers to the COO for their paycheck. Another strategy is to incrementally ding staffers’ year-end bonus for on-going delinquencies.

Teamwork. Once staffers know they are an integral part of the bottom line, they’ll start pulling harder—especially when profit sharing is involved. “Our creative staff knows that if their time isn’t input regularly, we can’t bill for their work,” says Lucia Mumm, controller at Full Circle! Creative

Bruised egos. Enable the Time Cop in Clients & Profits, which sends automatic email to staffers (and their boss) when time cards go undone. Marry Beth Harris, the controller for Interactive Marketing Group, find that this creates enough embarrassment to keep missing time cards at bay.

Rewards. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Try monthly drawings (every time card turned in becomes an entry) for a gift certificate for a great lunch or a massage. “In the course of a year, a couple hundred dollars spent—and the increased morale—are worth it,” says Jim Morris of Horton Lantz & Low.

Peer pressure. Many shops have found time card success through corporate culture. Set the standard by having everyone, from the president down, complete a daily time card. Marketing Specifics requires their staffers to complete their daily time cards before leaving for the day. “Maybe I need to knock on wood or something,” says Joan Barnes, the shop’s controller, “but we require time cards to be filled out daily... and it works.”

Mindy is a senior member of the Clients & Profits Helpdesk.

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