We often charge for our services on an hourly rate (and we genuinely like Excel). The one thing which helps us to quantify the hours spent on a project is a robust in-house timesheet software. Here are some tips when recording your hours.

1. 1. Classify hours into different stages.
   2. Have a sub-classification for items such as phone calls and correspondence, as well as using particular software or separate cost items (if required) so that you can later see the cost of particular actions.
   3. Make your timesheet easy to fill in. Our office template is a ‘copy and paste’ per time slot. This allows us to fill in the ‘known’ which helps us understand the gaps left and allows us to be fair in our time recording.
   4. Make it easy for staff to send you hours on a weekly or fortnightly basis. The last thing you want is to make timesheets a chore.
   5. Show metrics like efficiency, total pay and required company income so that employees are able to have an instant measure of their performance and what they should be aiming for.
   6. Make it easy to separate and modify data within your projects so that you can quantify and invoice appropriately and fairly. If there are disputes, you should be able to work out the risk before agreeing on any discount or negated invoices.

We like our timesheet template and it has also really helped with the architectural logbook required for registration. Feel free to Contact Us if you want to know more.