How to avoid time leaks (and why avoiding them is so important)

The terrible time leak and why you must face it

Time leaks can be a major problem for tech businesses and can be difficult to prevent, or even fix. When we talk about “time leaks”, we’re referring to what happens when potentially billable time goes untracked, or missing. This is an important issue to address because missed billable hours result in less invoicing, less revenue, and less profit for your business.

If you’re noticing that time hasn’t been logged or billed by your team, then it’s difficult to know exactly what they’re doing with their time. And if you’re not clear on that, you could end up overcommitting your employees (which can lead to reduced employee satisfaction and burnout) or hiring additional team members when the real issue is lack of efficiency from current staff. In the end, high turnover and inefficiency both cost your business money.

We get it – time leaks happen. However, it’s a new year and we believe that this could be your most profitable one yet. When you utilize the tips we’re about to cover, you can keep better track of your time and make the most of your billable hours. Additionally, when you use ConnectWise PSA™ (formerly Manage) to help keep track of your company’s time and billing, it isn’t long before time leaks become a problem of the past.

How to keep your tracked-time from disappearing into thin air

Thankfully, time leaks don’t have to cripple your business. Below are five time-management tips and tools you can use to avoid time leaks at your tech company:

• Training: Regular training sessions are crucial for improvement in every area of life, and especially for businesses. During these training sessions, highlight how techs should enter their time and how time entry affects the company’s overall profitability, as well as their personal efficiency. You can even use training to reinforce the importance of time management tools and to discuss the different tracking options your techs have.
• Time nags: In the member setup for ConnectWise PSA, you can go to the “billing info” section and enable a reminder email to ensure your techs track their time each day. If one of your techs fails to meet the minimum daily number of daily hours, they will receive an email prompting them to record their time. Think of it as a friendly personal assistant that makes sure your most important tasks get logged.
• Mobile app: ConnectWise PSA allows your workers to log notes about time worked while on a job in real time, lessening the chance of time leaks occurring. Your workers simply open their calendar, click the relevant ticket number, save their notes, and then log time in the time field. By pressing the “Now” button, your staff will immediately end the time spent working on that ticket. The mobile app also has a stopwatch feature that allows you to keep track of your time even while you’re driving, ensuring that no minute is lost. This feature automatically helps safeguard against billable time leaks – helping improve billing accuracy and ultimately, your profit.
• Quick time-keeping tip: In order to log hours properly, make sure the time logged is when work actually begins and ends – try not to round numbers. This will help guarantee that billable hours are as accurately recorded as possible.
• Look for billable time Without an agreement: By clicking on the “View” button in the Time Entry Search screen, you can create a filtered view of time entries that do not have an agreement tied to them. The ConnectWise PSA Marketplace has predefined Views you can download and apply onto your instance of Manage. This helps you discover whether time was entered correctly and allows you to easily correct any mistakes.
• ConnectWise reports: This allows you to maximize utilization since all time tracked in the ConnectWise PSA system can be reported on. Reports can be automatically scheduled to generate. It’s an easy way for you to only receive the information that is relevant to you. As you create tailored reports, you can even see a breakdown of the different types of work that your staff is recording and determine whether the work is billable or non-billable. When the billing period arrives, you can easily transfer the notes and billable information stored within the system, making it easy to distribute your invoices.

A new year to put time leaks behind us

When all your billable time is accounted for, it ensures you are accurately forecasting and reporting your revenue. This leads to accurate billing and invoicing, which helps improve customer relationships, client satisfaction, and employee retention. Essentially, we believe that billable resources should bring in at least 2.5 times what you are paying them and if they’re not – then you may have a time leak issue on your hands. That’s where ConnectWise PSA comes in, allowing you to put “time leak scares” behind you.

To discover all the ways ConnectWise PSA helps your business run better, be sure to click on the link below.