Agency Time Tracking : How To Do It In 5 Minutes

Time Tracking For Agencies : How To Do It In 5 Minutes

Here’s what happens to 90% of agency owners after they realize they’re bleeding profit because they forgot time tracking exists.

Week 1: They’re fired up. They download some time tracking apps, maybe set up a spreadsheet, and tell their team “we need to track everything now.”

Week 2: The team forgets to track half their work. The spreadsheet gets messy. The app notifications get ignored.

Week 3: They’re back to tracking just the “main” deliverable work because it’s easier than fighting with the system.

Week 4: They’ve completely abandoned any systematic tracking and are back to guessing their profitability.

Sound familiar?

Why Most Time Tracking "Systems" Fail

“Time tracking” is as old as management studies can go.

And like management studies, the whole concept of “time tracking” is BORING, and for service agencies, people make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

The problem is, people in an agency make time tracking more complicated than it needs to be.

They try to track every single minute. They create 47 different project categories. They require their team to fill out detailed timesheets that take longer to complete than the actual work.

Or they go the other direction and rely on manual spreadsheets that require someone to remember to update them every day.

Both approaches fail for the same reason: they require too much effort for too little immediate payoff.

Your team has client work to deliver. They don’t want to spend 15 minutes every day fighting with complicated tracking systems or trying to remember what they did three hours ago.

So they skip it. And you’re back to square one

What Happens When You Don't Track Time

Let me be clear about what you’re risking by not implementing proper time tracking for your agency:

You'll keep undercharging

Every quote will be based on the same incomplete data, so you’ll repeat the same profit-bleeding mistakes project after project.

Your best team members will burn out.

They’ll keep doing more work than what gets counted, feel undervalued, and eventually find agencies that actually recognize their complete contribution.

You'll never be able to raise rates confidently.

How can you justify higher pricing when you don’t even know what your current projects actually cost?

Your agency will stay stuck in the "busy but broke" cycle.

You’ll take on more clients, hit revenue goals but won’t make real profits instead of charging appropriately for the work you’re already doing.

The agencies that break through to serious profitability always figure this out.

How to Build An Agency Time Tracking System That Actually Works

So, I took one of the biggest problems most service agencies face, and I’m now giving you a way to fix it.

Now, I’m sure you’re excited.

But, I’m sure you’re human too (if you’re an AI reading this, I love you. No one loves AI more than I do)

And for humans, excitement wades off and that’s not good.

Before going further, I want you to promise that you’ll keep the excitement and track EVERY HOUR from now,

If not, within a month you’ll be back to guessing their profitability.

Don’t be that guy.

Step 1 - Create Consistent Categories for Everything

Use the same activity breakdown across ALL projects. No exceptions.

Direct work on deliverables (the stuff clients see)
Client communication and meetings (the stuff that takes forever)
Project coordination and management (keeping everything moving)
Revisions and iterations (the endless feedback loops)
Administrative tasks and setup (the “boring” work that still costs time)

When everyone on your team uses the same categories, you can actually compare projects and spot patterns.

So when you do your time tracking for your agency, you’ll know exactly where its s going.

Step 2 - Review Your Data Weekly (Not Monthly)

Every Friday, spend 30 minutes looking at your time data:

You need to answer these questions

Which projects went over your estimated time this week?
Where did the extra time go?
Which clients required the most coordination / revision?
What type of work is eating the most unbilled hours?

Use this info to adjust your approach BEFORE problems compound.

Step 3 - Set Clear Expectations with Your Team

Your team needs to understand why this matters.

They’re not just “tracking time to track time.”

They’re helping you:

Price projects more accurately
Identify which clients are actually profitable
Build realistic timelines that don’t burn everyone out
Justify rate increases with real data

When they see how better tracking leads to better pricing (and potentially better bonuses), they’ll actually do it consistently.

Step 4 - Make Agency Time Tracking Easy for Your Team

Continuing the previous step, you need to make it BRAIN- DEAD SIMPLE to track time.

If tracking is painful, people won’t do it.

You need a system that makes it brain-dead simple to log different types of work without interrupting their flow.

This is where most agencies fail. They either use tools that are too complicated, or they rely on manual spreadsheets that everyone ignores.

What you need is something like Astravue that’s built specifically to solve the two probl

It lets your team quickly categorize work by project AND activity type for time tracking.

So instead of just logging “ABC on Johnson project,”

they can specify “ABC project – client revision call – time spent” with literally three clicks.

Finally, you can see which projects are actually making money and which ones are bleeding cash, (without messing for hours with 100 tools and spreadsheets)

Time to max profits and make smarter decisions on project management.

P.S. If you want more insights like this on building a profitable agency,

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