How to Use a Time Tracker to Manage Your Time and Productivity4 min read

Being a freelancer, time is your most precious resource. Unless you have productized your services, you’re literally selling your time. It’s a scarce resource worth monitoring closely.
The more aware you are about what you are spending time on, the more efficiently you can manage your time and boost your productivity.
Read on to find out how time tracking can help you make more informed business decisions, become a more powerful negotiator, and build better client relationships. Plus, how you can use AND CO’s time tracking app to your advantage.

How time tracking can improve your freelance business

Smarter freelance business decisions.

Proper and consistent time tracking enables you to make informed business decisions. It allows you to come up with more accurate estimates, budgets and deadlines. Setting the right expectations before starting a project potentially saves you a lot of frustration and painful discussions about exceeded budgets and missed deadlines along the way. If you can identify tasks that eat up a bunch of your time, you can focus on optimizing or eliminating those. Or put a bigger price tag on them.

Time tracking makes freelancers happier. Seriously.

Believe me. It does. Time tracking forces you to reflect on your day’s work and look at what you have achieved. Constantly tracking your progress and celebrating the small wins on a daily or weekly basis is key to maintaining a healthy mind, staying self-motivated and relieving stress. That is especially important for freelancers who work remotely and naturally lack frequent performance reviews. And as a positive side effect, you’ll become a more confident negotiator when it’s time to talk money.
Ever thought about how #TimeTracking could help you become a more confident negotiator when it comes time for performance reviews? Find out here. #Freelance Click To Tweet

Build more successful freelance business relationships.

If you are working on demand, time tracking seems like a no-brainer. Your client needs to know what you are charging for. But no matter if your clients require you to report time or not, successful freelancers know that being transparent about the activities you are charging for builds trust and helps you establish long lasting, prospering relationships with your clients.

Monitoring your performance.

Even if you don’t want to share your timesheets with clients, time tracking is a great tool to monitor your performance. Think a certain task is super quick and easy to do? Now you’ll know for sure how long it usually takes. Did some task take you 2 hours last week but 5 this week? You can begin to analyze why and make plans to increase your efficiency. 
Related: 5 Ways Time Tracking Can Make You a More Productive Freelancer

Free time tracking for everyone

AND CO’s free time tracking feature gives you all the utility of a common standalone app, but seamlessly integrates with your invoicing and projects.

Time tracking every second

Our built-in timer lets you track hours in real time and easily add them to your timesheet.

Designed for busy freelance professionals

Timers are automatically created for each of your running or upcoming projects. This way you can start tracking time immediately without having to set timers up.
All timers are grouped by client. If you have multiple milestones set up, each milestone will have an individual time sheet so you can track how much time you spent on each.

Multi-device tracking

Start tracking on your mobile phone, continue on your desktop. Use our desktop app for Mac or Chrome to make time tracking even easier—switch between tasks with just a couple of clicks.

Catch up effortlessly

We know that there are a lot of moments where you are too busy to remember to time track, so we made it easy to catch up whenever you’re ready. Just open any timesheet within your projects and start adding activities. As easy as 1:23.

Generate detailed invoices automagically

With time tracking, it’s even more convenient to create detailed invoices for your clients. Your activities show directly on the invoice and add that extra touch of transparency. Clients like that.
Depending on the project you are working on, it’s always up to you if you would like these hours to show on the invoice or not.

Keep track of your progress

By setting a budget you will be able to track time in parallel with a goal. At a glimpse, you’ll know how much time you’ve already spent. This allows you to give your client a quick heads up that you might exceed the estimated scope.

Share a timesheet with your client

Share your live timesheet with your client to allow your client to view your time tracked and activities at any time by accessing the link you share with them. 

View time reports

Review how you’re spending your time by viewing your hours by week or downloading a CSV of your time tracking reports.

Smarter time tracking

Because your time tracker is totally integrated with the rest of AND CO’s software, it comes along with other smart tools you can use to run your business better.
Freelance smarter. Start today.
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