In a world where it often seems “every person for themselves” reigns supreme, Marcia Sheehan has taken that notion and turned it on its head with Charmed Cardinals- a women’s empowerment society that focuses on providing quality and thoughtful in person “me time” for overextended women. They offer a variety of events for members, and focus on helping women delve into practices that help them to reconnect with their inner selves. Charmed Cardinals also provides educational opportunities for learning and growth.

As a woman and a business owner, Marcia often found herself networking with other female entrepreneurs. She describes these early meetings as feeling “sacred” to her-even if they were just gathering in a Panera, surrounded by “bagels, joggers, and families.” Marcia was “enlightened and empowered,” and realized that she wanted “every woman around [her] to feel what [she] was feeling. But on a personal level, not simply a business level.” These meetings led her see the importance of being “surrounded by positive and supportive women.” So Charmed Cardinals was born-and like all good things, Marcia wanted to be able to devote her time to it.

Organization For The Creative Mind 

Identifying herself as a “right brained-entrepreneur” Marcia has traditionally loved the creative aspects of owning a business, but struggled with-and even avoided tasks like tracking time. She says, “I didn’t see the value in it, and it seemed too system-y/left brained for me. Time IQ is allowing me to take my business to the next level by accurately keeping track of what I’m doing, when I’m doing it, how long it takes, and how it can be tweaked for more efficiency in the future…” Time IQ gives Marcia the freedom to focus on design and building relationships with people, while still being able to grow her brand.

Keep Track Of Your Top Performers 

By “being able to accurately indicate a minimum of how much time per month they will spend”, Marcia is able to see who is up to the task of running a chapter of Charmed Cardinals, and who is falling behind. For businesses that rely heavily on independent consultants and contractors, it is essential to be able to monitor project budgets in real time. Knowing exactly how you spend your time helps you to accurately predict the areas in which you are ready to grow. It also helps your independent employees to better predict the hours they will spend on projects from week to week.

Improve Your Efficiency And Budget

“I am able to see how much time each [task] takes and then budget how much I can expect to pay someone else to complete it. In addition to running Charmed Cardinals I also have multiple freelance projects I’m working on for other small businesses. Prior to Time IQ I was literally tracking my time in an email draft (gasp!). Being able to easily; log hours for different projects, add new projects (and even set time requirements) and run detailed reports has improved my efficiency when billing clients immensely”

Increase Productivity Without Sacrificing Passion

Like many creative types, when she’s working on something, time can get away from her. Marcia has found that by tracking her projects in Time IQ, she “can look daily at how much time [she’s] spending on each project and then plan accordingly.” This has helped her increase her productivity, and given her more time for the things she’s passionate about.

Are you and your team ready to try Time IQ? Click Here to start your free 30 day trial.

 

Here at Time IQ we’ve been busy coming up with ways to make your lives easier. Here are a few new helpful things we’re putting in place; keep an eye out for these updates that will be rolling out to Time IQ in the next few weeks!

Updates To Reports

Our Reports page has changed to give you all of the data you want in one simple place.

We will be updating our reports pages to make it easier for you to find reports for specific Clients, Projects, or People. A new “sticky” header will help you see what data you are viewing, and switch between items more quickly.

You will now be able to choose between the Overview Report, Client Report, Project Report, Person Report, Service Report, and new Missing Time Report from a drop-down menu.  When you are in a detailed report you will be able to switch between things like Clients, Projects, or People by selecting the item you want to look at from a secondary drop down menu.

Several customers have asked for a way to view all active items (projects, people, etc.) even when no time has been logged to them, so there will be an option to filter in those items on reports moving forward.

 

New “Missing Time” Report

For customers who are using the Required Time feature, we are adding a new report type that will help give Administrators and Managers a better way to keep track of who is behind on their required hours each week.

The new Missing Time report will be available by accessing the Reports section of Time IQ, and choosing the “Missing Time Report” from the report selection menu.

In addition to viewing missing time for the selected time period, you will be able to send reminder emails to employees as well as dismiss any required time that is no longer necessary (due to vacation, holiday, or sick leave).

3rd Party Integration

We have had a number of customers looking for ways to integrate Time IQ with their existing accounting and project management systems.  After talking with a number of customers about integration solutions, we have started working on building integrations for Time IQ within the Zapier integration platform.

Zapier is a bridge platform that helps keep cloud software solutions in sync with each other.  For example–if you want to add a new employee to Time IQ when you add them to your accounting platform–you can automate that behavior with If This, Then That style configurations within Zapier.  Time IQ will be able to create new People, Clients, Projects, and Services when requested by other applications.  Time IQ will also notify your applications when new People are added to the system, and new time entries have been logged to a project.  The great thing about Zapier is that it is pretty easy for anybody to accomplish basic integrations like this, so you don’t need an IT department to make things happen.

We have customers in beta who are integrating with Quickbooks, Slack, and Basecamp to keep their data and accounts in sync.  If your other software platforms integrate with Zapier and you would like to get access to our private beta, please email our support team at support@timeiq.com.

We hope to have all of these updates live for existing customers before the end of the month. Feel free to reach out with any questions!

Time Tracking For Lawyers

Timekeeping for lawyers is essential for tracking billable hours. There are three main factors at play when it comes to time tracking for attorneys.

1. Accuracy

Keeping an accurate record of your time will save you a lot of headaches down the road. The increments you record in will largely be up to how you and/or the firm your work for decides to breakdown billable hours. (Typically, every 6 minutes or tenth of an hour.) Whether recorded in minutes or decimals, meticulous records are vital.

2. Details

Time-keeping for attorneys means detailed notes about each time entry. These are essential for your personal records, and these notes will only help you in the event of a billing dispute.

3. Confidentiality

Make sure your clients’ information stays protected when you’re tracking the time you spend on them.

Whether your firm is you, or you and 100 others-accurate, detailed, and confidential time tracking is essential.

 

 Time IQ can help.

 

 1. Accuracy

By keeping Time IQ open on your tablet, phone, or desktop, timers will give to-the-minute accuracy. Your current timer will automatically pause when you start another, which makes switching back and forth between projects seamless.

2. Details

The note portion for each entry allows you to keep a detailed record of what was done, as you’re doing it. These fields can also be filled retroactively at the end of a busy day.

3. Confidentiality

Unlike server-based software, Time IQ is cloud-based. This ensures each of your clients will have their own individual database that guarantees confidentiality.

Time IQ also offers three different user levels, perfect for larger firms with more employees and plethora of sensitive information.

 

In addition to these features:

To make billing easier, Time IQ allows you to run a variety of reports, allowing you to see a detailed account of exactly where your time was spent, and on what services per client.

You will also have the ability to enter in all your legal billing codes as services to save you time when creating invoices.

 

For more information on Time IQ, or to start a 30 day free trial, click here.

Delay in implementation of new overtime rule means extra time to comply.

An injunction issued earlier this month has caused the implementation of a new overtime law to be delayed. For those of you just joining us, December 1st, 2016 was supposed to usher in a mandatory overtime law for salaried employees making less than $47,476 annually. Though currently stayed, it appears the Department of Labor has no plans to halt overtime reform.

So what is the next step?

A change is coming, we just don’t know when. Time IQ is monitoring the changing situation with the paused overtime law closely, so our clients don’t have to. The best way to be prepared for the stayed overtime law is to have an accurate method for tracking hours. A time tracking software like Time IQ (unlike time-clock systems and the paper based method) provides up to the minute reports about current staff hours.

Beyond staff hours, you could also keep better track of:

·       Project Billings
·       Billable and Non-Billable Hours
·       Holiday and Vacation Time
·       Paid Time Off and Comp Time
·       Profit and Loss

Time IQ Can help.

Web based time tracking can be used by your employees on any number of devices: computers, tablets, phones, etc. and will allow you to avoid the hassle of maintaining software installations on staff computers.

If you have a web browser and Internet access, you are good to go.

Time IQ can provide all of the above time tracking features, and is a great solution for companies of any size that need to implement a new time tracking protocol within their organization.

For more information on Time IQ, or to start a free 30 day trial, click here. 

 

Additionally, these are two articles we found to be helpful:

The National Law Review
Chicago Tribune