Time Is (Lost) Money

It's time to keep better time.

No matter what fate awaits us -- fiscal Armageddon or the slow struggle working off our national debt -- for my money, staying in this little small-business thing of ours will be about exactly one thing: fundamentals. Be darn sure you have great product. Keep the good clients happy. And most of all, be efficient. And if there is one glaring agglomeration of inefficiency here on planet small biz, it is the tracking and managing of billable hours.

Think about it. Do you really know how much time you or your people spend on a given job? Because, despite almost 100 years of industrial development and a wave of new digital time-tracking tools, I doubt very much you do. ...