Our own system: project management

Where did the day go? Now we know, and billing takes care of itself.

We built a project management system for our own work. It started as a way to stop losing billable time. It turned into the way we plan our days. Here's how it came together, including the first version we had to rethink.

Try the Before demo See the After demo

Before

Finish a task, start the next one, forget the first.

On a full day of project work, one task leads straight into the next. That's good for getting things done. It's bad for remembering, a few weeks later, what the day actually went to.

Month-end billing meant piecing the month back together:

Digging through emails to see which client asked for what, and when
Reading through check-in history to see what work was saved and on which day
Guessing how long each piece of work had taken

The research took hours of its own, so invoices went out late. Sometimes a small job never got billed at all, because working out the time would have taken longer than the job itself. And on fixed-price projects, there was no reliable record of how long the work had really taken.

Version one, and what we learned

The first design was too careful for how we really work.

The first version gave every task its own timer. You started the task, the system walked you through it, and you marked it complete. On paper, it was precise.

In practice, it was cumbersome. We often work on several related tasks at once, and stopping to start and stop a timer for each one got in the way of the work.

After the first month, we did a lessons-learned review and redesigned it around how the day actually goes:

Each morning, pick the tasks we want to accomplish today from the backlog
Log time in blocks against the project, not against each task
Record which tasks were done inside each block

We may not know that one task took exactly 30 minutes. We do know that in a two-hour block on a project, we finished three tasks. That's what billing needs, and it's what tells us whether time is going into the right work.

What it does now

A planned day, a full record, and invoices ready at month end.

Every task in a backlog

Each project's work is broken down into tasks, so nothing depends on someone remembering it. Projects don't stall because they slipped out of sight.

Days planned, not just reacted to

Choosing the day's tasks up front means we schedule the work instead of spending the day putting out fires. Urgent things still come up, but they don't run the whole day.

The whole day accounted for

Project time, internal time, and everything in between is logged in blocks. At the end of the day, the hours add up.

Billing builds itself

Hourly invoices come straight from the time blocks. No digging through emails at month end, and no small jobs left unbilled because they weren't worth the research.

Which projects make money

Some work is billed by the hour and some by the project. Either way, the time is tracked, so we can see which projects paid off and which ones we underbid.

Better bids next time

Knowing what similar work really took makes the next estimate more honest, for us and for the client.

The financial case

A lost hour a week adds up fast.

For us, the return was obvious within the first month. Every billable hour that went untracked was money we'd earned and never asked for, and working out what to bill took hours of its own.

Try it with your own numbers. It's a rough estimate, not a promise, but it shows how small weekly gaps turn into a yearly cost.

Billable hours a week that go untracked Your hourly rate ($) Hours a month spent working out what to bill

$5,200billing missed a year
$2,400a year of time spent researching
$7,600total a year

Hours a week × rate × 52, plus research hours a month × rate × 12. It doesn't count late invoices or the small jobs that never got billed at all.

The planning side is harder to put a number on, but we notice it every week: fewer fires, better schedules, and fewer projects quietly waiting on us.

Where we stopped

It could grow forever. We add what makes a difference.

A system that runs your own business never really runs out of ideas. There's always another report, another automation, another screen we could build.

We hold our own system to the same standard we hold client work: impact over more technology. A new feature has to earn its place, including the upkeep it brings. The redesign after the first month is a good example. The more detailed version wasn't the better one.

Try it yourself

Bill the same month both ways.

Both demos are simplified and use sample data. The names and numbers are made up. They show the business case, not the full system.

Before: rebuilding the month

It's month end. Piece together one client's invoice from an inbox, check-in history, and a calendar, and see how many hours you can't account for.

Try the Before demo →

After: planned and logged

Plan a day from the backlog, log a block of time against a project, and find the month's invoice and project profits already done.

Try the After demo →

Start with a conversation

Is time or work slipping through the cracks in your business?

Tell us how work gets tracked and billed today, in your own words. It's a 20-minute call with no technical requirements and no pressure. We'll tell you honestly whether we can help.

Book a 20-minute call