| How many bookkeeping business owners track their | | | | many new clients I can take on, and the value of my |
| own time when doing business related tasks? Are you | | | | unpaid time. |
| one of the many bookkeeping service providers using | | | | If you are an individual bookkeeper, you can enable the |
| QuickBooks to record your time? Can you see your | | | | time sheets in QuickBooks and use them to keep |
| customer gross profit? Do you put a value to the time | | | | track of your time and run reports. If you have more |
| you spend on your own business? | | | | than one person in the office, as in my firm, use the |
| As a bookkeeping business coach, I tell my clients: | | | | QuickBooks Time Tracker, which comes on your |
| "Tracking your time is the first thing you need to do to | | | | QuickBooks Installation CD. |
| become a more successful bookkeeping business | | | | Although highly effective for businesses with more |
| owner." It is also one of the hardest tasks on which to | | | | than one employee, QuickBooks Time Tracker is a |
| keep current, and one that can be often overlooked. | | | | little more involved to maintain, and could be well worth |
| When you start tracking all of your daily time - and | | | | the effort for a more detailed account of where time |
| detailing what you did in the "note" section of the time | | | | is spent. For example, before you start you will need to |
| sheet - you begin to realize where you spend the | | | | get licenses to load the software on each computer |
| majority of your time every day. This will show where | | | | for every employee that needs access. Once loaded, |
| your most productive hours are spent, as well as | | | | you will also set up a timer file for each individual |
| those that are not yielding much benefit leaving room | | | | employee and export your customer list into the timer |
| for adjustment. | | | | files. And, lastly, you will need one person to export the |
| In my own QuickBooks file, I set up own company as | | | | time out of the timer and import into your QuickBooks |
| a customer with sub-accounts. Some of those | | | | file on a weekly/bi-weekly basis depending on where |
| sub-accounts related to how I run my business are | | | | your billing or payroll falls. |
| Marketing, Paid Time Off, Education, Administration | | | | In future articles I will go into depth on how to further |
| Time, Letters/Contracts and Bookkeeping, for when I | | | | utilize the recording of your time to ensure a more |
| work on my own company's bookkeeping. Breaking it | | | | productive bookkeeping business. Watch for "How to |
| out this way has helped me with my hiring process by | | | | Put Value to Your Time with Zero Dollar Checks" as a |
| providing a tool for calculating the administrative cost to | | | | bookkeeper owner. |
| run my company. It has helped me determine how | | | | |