How to Track Your Time as a Freelancer
Why you should keep a time-tracking spreadsheet even when you have software like Quickbooks
As a freelancer, time is your inventory.
If you’re not tracking your time, you’re missing out on valuable data about your productivity, your workload, and your profitability.
When I started freelancing, I often gave clients more of my time than they’d paid for. The problem wasn’t necessarily that I’d logged unbillable time, but that it was unintentional — and by that, I mean, I didn’t keep track of the hours I’d put toward the project and spent more time than I was willing to give.
So I began using a spreadsheet to track my time for client projects. For one of my clients, the summary of hours revealed that I was spending on average twice as many hours per week than I was paid for. It was a wake-up call. It didn’t seem like a big deal to give this client an extra 10 minutes here and there until then. But it adds up, and I was losing both time and money (neither of which I could afford to lose).
Even if you don’t bill your clients hourly, tracking your time will refine your estimates for determining project rates. Sometimes, we leave money on the table because we think we know how long it takes to complete a task when it…
