In your business, do you have to keep track of the billable hours of your clients? Do you find it absolutely annoying to constantly keep track of thirty different timesheets in Excel?
I just have to share with you this new tool that a fellow VA shared with me. It’s called MyHours and it’s simply the best software for keeping track of your billable hours. I signed up for a free MyHours account (which they claim will become a paid system at some point… I’m crossing my fingers they forget about that little note they made on their website…) and started using it immediately.
Once you sign up, the first place you go to is the Projects tab so you can set up your clients and the various projects you can do for each client. The next place you need to go is the Tasks tab and set up some of the regular tasks you perform. For me, I used this area to include things like “Transcript,” “Web Maintenance,” and “Administrative Support.”
Once you’ve completed those two areas, you can start using MyHours (I told you it was easy!) in one of two ways: regular daily view input, or input through the MHlite interface. The difference is that the regular daily view entry uses the entire screen and you must manually enter the start and end times. With MHlite, it works like a punch clock. Hit “Start Work” to start and “End Work” to finish and calculate the time you have spent on that project/task.
One thing I want to point out is that whether you are using the daily view or the lite version, there is a row in the data entry that says “Notes”. I would highly recommend using them and getting in the habit of entering data there from the moment you start. I am adding a more detailed note so my client knows exactly what I worked on. It also allows me to look back and see precisely where I spent my time.
MyHours’ reporting feature is also great. You can pull reports sorted by client, by project, or by task. It automatically adds up the hours spent in each area, making billing your clients a breeze!
I also think it’s good to use the software to keep track of how much time I spend in the various areas of my own business. Write ezine submissions or blog posts, for example. You can see how much of your time is spent IN your business instead of IN your business.
Regardless of your own primary use of this software program, we give it two giant thumbs up. The ease of setup and use is amazing and I love that you can access it from anywhere. Enjoy!
