Tools of the Trade – Timesheet

Whether you charge for your time or have to track it for your employer, tracking the time you spend each day will make a huge difference in how you manage your time.

There are countless applications out there (for your PC or mac or your phone,) but for me, I have found good ‘ole Microsoft Excel does the trick.

Again, you may have different needs, but here is the basic layout I use, and as an ADD adult, finds works me:

I set up 12 worksheets labeled for each month of the year (Jan, Feb, etc) within a single workbook. 

I have six columns (A-F): Date, Client, Task, Cycles (I track by half hour), Billable, Hours (calculated column)

Each day is put in the Date column, and I allow each date to have their own line. 

On the following lines, I enter the client the work was done for, the particular task I was working on, the number of cycles I spent on that task, whether or not it is billable, and then the hours are calculated automatically.

As I am working, whenever the timer I have set goes off (we’ll discuss timers in another blog entry,) I enter the client (if I don’t already have them entered,) the task (again, if not already entered), and I add the number 1 to the number of cycles (if it is blank, then I just put in the 1, if I have already worked a cycle on this task, I add the 1 to make 2, etc.)

Boom, I have a complete record of how I spent my day, what was billable and what wasn’t and how much time I spent on each task.

If you would like a template copy of this spreadsheet, you can download it by clicking here: time sheet template