Time tracking without theater

Drafting, design, review, client calls, scheduling, community, reporting, admin. If your categories are clever, people will miscategorize them. Use words from the scope.

A category called "misc" will become the biggest one. Ban it.

Ask people to record the real hour, including the third revision and the waiting. Underreporting makes the retainer look profitable and the team look tired for "no reason."

Do not punish a long entry in public. Punish a fake one. The point is the fee, not the leaderboard.

A daily interrogation of timers creates fiction. A monthly look at totals by client creates a conversation. Did this brand take twice the hours you sold? That is the question.

Bring the totals to renewal. Memory will recall the dramatic week and forget the heavy ordinary ones.

Unless you sold hours, do not put the raw log in the portal. It invites line-item haggling over a retainer. Use the log inside the agency.

If a client asks for hours, ask what decision they are making. Sometimes they are anxious. Sometimes the commercial model is actually time and materials and you should invoice that way.