PSA: I was tracking my team's hours wrong for a whole year

I only looked at billable time and ignored all the internal meetings and admin work. A contractor's invoice last week showed they charged for a 30-minute strategy call I'd booked as non-billable. How do you actually categorize internal vs client time without making a huge spreadsheet?

3 comments

3 Comments

green.jenny1mo ago

Oof, that's a classic move. I did the same thing and my "profit" was just me forgetting to pay myself for all the internal junk. Piper's method is the only way, you gotta tag it right when you log it or it's a lost cause.

pipergonzalez1mo ago

Honestly, I just ask my team to tag every single thing in our time tracker as either 'client' or 'internal' from the start.

vera_roberts11d ago

This is exactly why I call myself a "recovering optimist" when it comes to tracking. @green.jenny knows the pain of realizing your "profit" was just unpaid labor in disguise. I still catch myself logging internal stuff as "admin" and then wondering why my billable hours look so sad.