Ruby Freelancers had a great discussion on time tracking. As a freelance developer tracking and billing time is how you make money. If you don’t bill enough time you don’t pay bills.
I’m always wondering if I could bill more time so hearing them talk about how much time they bill each week on average.
I shoot for 4 – 6 hours a day, of billable time, 4 days a week. Some days aren’t quite that good. Typically a bad day means I was estimating all day, not billable work but stuff that needed to get done. It’s work but not billing clients.
2 responses to “Talking about Time Tracking”
I shoot for 4.5 hours of quality work out of an 8 hour day. That gives me room for email, communication, marketing, and breaks. Somedays when I’m deep in code I’ll get in 6-7 hours in an 8 hour day but that usually kills my energy for the rest of the night.
Email, marketing and Admin are all things I totally didn’t account for when I got started. I know few people that do remember to include time for that in their day.
The last company I worked for on a full time contract was expecting 8 hours of coding in an 8 hour day. Totally not sustainable but they were upset that it wasn’t happening.