Below is the DEFINITIVE GUIDE to creating good time records for your work at DesignStudio in order to help ensure that our clients will always understand the value of the work we do for them.

Time | It’s What We Sell

As an agency, we are selling our expertise, but, in the form of units of time. We package our time and expertise in all sorts of ways but at the end of the day, everything breaks down into either billable or unbilled hours.

Creating good time records is a quick and easy process but it does require care, thoughtfulness, and attentiveness to detail.

It is critically important to understand that these time records are the foundation of our billing to clients. They are also used for measuring profits or losses on every single project or agency retainer. In most cases, they are also used for evaluating employee performance and efficiency. Therefore, these times records must be done correctly.

The most important part of any time record entered into ActiveCollab is making sure that the value of the time spent is clear. If clients do not understand the value of what we are doing for them, then we cannot expect to keep those clients for long. The guidelines in this document will help all staff and DS Network freelancers to create good time records which build “layers of trust” with our clients day after day.

We provide full transparency to our clients with our time records. Many agencies do not do this or do not do it well. So our diligence and transparency with these records is actually one of our strongest selling points to new prospective clients.

Key Points About Time Records

• Our minimum billing increment is 15 minutes (examples below)
  • Tasks that take 5 or 10 minutes are billed as .25 hours
  • Tasks that take 20 or 25 minutes are billed as .5 hours
  • A task that takes exactly 68 minutes would be 1.25 hours
• An 8 hour workday should usually produce 4 to 5 time records
  • Try to avoid creating time records longer than 3 hours
  • Break your time into smaller chunks when appropriate
• The ideal length for a time record description is 20 to 30 words
  • All time records must be written in layman’s terms
  • Understand how to write good value statements

Best Practices for Good Time Records

• DON’T PROCRASTINATE!
  It is absolutely critical to create time records on the same day that the work is performed. We use these time records to track our internal job costs for every project. So delays in getting your time records into the system will cause serious problems for our Project Managers with job costing. Best Practice: Use the AC Timer.
• USE PROPER GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION
  We all learned the basics of proper grammar in grade school. This is where you use those skills. These time records are important business communications that reflect on our professional reputation.
• SPELL CHECK YOUR TIME RECORDS
  Be sure that everything is spelled correctly. Proper nouns must always start with capital letters. It can create great embarrassment for our Project Managers when they have to present sloppy time records.
• KNOW WHAT IS BILLABLE VS UNBILLED
  Understand the difference between “billable” and “unbilled” work in order to mark each time record accordingly. If you have any questions about whether or not the work should be marked as billed or unbilled, please bring it to a manager right away.
• WRITE RECORDS USING VALUE STATEMENTS
  Every time record that is put into ActiveCollab must have a clearly understandable value statement. When writing these records, pretend you are the client reading the record and paying for that time. Does the description of your work seem like it would be worth the money?

Introduction to ActiveCollab

To keep track of all time records for the business, we use powerful but easy-to-use Project Management software called ActiveCollab.

ActiveCollab is accessible through our website at:

• http://ac.DesignStudio.com/