“Time is money” goes the old adage – and that’s never more true than in creative service industries.

Recording how you and your team spend time – and how much of that time is chargeable to clients – is essential to any healthy business.

Periscope’s Timesheet area is where you record how many hours have been spent on the project and by whom.

This button reveals a dropdown list of all of your Projects. Select the one you’ve been working on and click Submit. The job will appear in the Timesheet panel below. On a Monday you could add all the jobs you’re likely to be working on throughout the week – or just add them as you go.

Periscope’s 7 day calendar is displayed adjacent to the Project’s unique reference and title. Today’s date is highlighted and you’re free to record time spent (in hours or fractions of hours) by typing into the boxes supplied.

You can move to previous weeks using the ‘View week commencing’ dropdown list and delete a project from your timesheet when you’re no longer working on it.

N.B. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Timesheet’ button before leaving this screen!

Here’s a cracking piece of functionality…

Wondering where all your time goes? Wondering how much of your week is chargeable and how much is spent chasing your tail? Want to work out why you’re working all the hours that God sends and not making a bean? Want to know how many chargeable hours you or a member of your team worked the week before last?

Select the week and the team member in the drop down list and take a look at the stats.

Top tip: Create a few internal jobs where you are the client e.g. internal admin, workflow planning, personal development and finance. That way you’ll be able to analyze your non-chargeable time too.

N.B. A Periscope ‘Metrics’ module is currently under development. Periscope Metrics will interpret the numbers for you and display them in a graphical easy to read form.

Wouldn’t it be great to know in any month who your top 5 clients are, which jobs have made you the most profit, which members of your team are most productive, which services have been bought most by your clients?

Periscope Metrics will do all that and more. Watch this space!