By Tina Hilton of Clerical Advantage 

Time tracking is an important component in the virtual assistance industry.  Because clients are only billed for time actually spent on their tasks, it is vital that a virtual assistant have some sort of system in place to track time.  Some clients are going to demand to see the exact breakdown of time, while others will be the type that aren’t concerned with it all that much.  I think it’s a good business practice to have (and use) a time tracker that allows you to send every client the breakdown regardless.

As I’ve mentioned before, I started my little business on a non-existent budget, so finding free applications to use was of utmost importance. There were several free options available at the time, so I chose one called Time Tracker.  It was a download-able stand alone that allowed me to personalize by client and tasks.  But in the free version, I had to export the information into excel and toy around with it by adding the name of my business, etc. before it was ready to send to a client. Then I started doing research for my post here at HOW last week.

It was eye opening, even for an established virtual assistant like myself, to see all of the options out there.  I decided that it was time for me to see if I could find something…still free…that gave me a little more than my current program was offering.  I decided to try MyHours.  It was a bit different since it was web-based and not a stand alone, so at first I was skeptical.  After spending just a few minutes inputting information on tasks and projects I notice that there was a ‘lite’ version that opens a little pop up window, which gave me the feeling of my old stand-alone.  I liked that feature.  I also liked the fact that I could generate reports by project, task, client or category and those time-sheets could be printed, exported to excel or e-mailed directly to the client.  This might seem like a small thing, but the added convenience is nice.  The time-sheets are also extremely detailed, allowing my clients to see just how their time was spent.  I can also look at my hours in a daily view, giving me just the tasks and time for the day I choose; or by month.  I can also input clients, work categories, projects and individual tasks which lets me literally account for every minute spent on client time. ( an example of a timesheet can be seen by clicking the image at the top of this post)

I can also access MyHours from my nifty new Blackberry Pearl, which makes it handy on those occasions when I need to make post office runs for mailings, etc.

In conclusion, after a weeks trial, I really like MyHours and will continue to use it.  However, I haven’t deleted my old standby Time Tracker from my system yet, mostly because I want to have a back-up in case of Internet connection issues. Honestly, I think it’s a personal preference like anything else, but for those of you looking for a really good, no-cost time tracking application, you might want to check out MyHours.