Most studios don’t lose money on big projects. They lose it in small pieces: a quick call that ran for forty minutes, a round of revisions nobody logged, an afternoon of emails. Here’s a simple routine that keeps those hours on the invoice.
Why hours go missing
Time goes missing when people rebuild their week from memory. By Friday, Tuesday’s short calls and small fixes are gone. The answer is to make tracking part of the work, not a job for the end of the week.
Start the timer before you start the work
Open the timer as you open the file. It takes two seconds, and it is the single habit that saves the most hours.
Track in blocks, not minutes
Nobody needs to log every two minutes. Agree on blocks (for example 15 minutes) and log the block when it ends.
Log the small stuff
Calls, emails, revisions and client meetings are work. If they are part of the project, they belong on the timesheet, even if you later decide not to bill them.
Review timesheets every Friday
Ten minutes at the end of the week catches the gaps while people still remember. A missing Tuesday is easy to fix on Friday and impossible to fix next month.
Agree a rounding rule, and write it down
Decide how you round (to the nearest 6, 15 or 30 minutes) and put it in your contract. Then apply it the same way on every invoice.
Track non-billable time too
Pitches, admin and internal meetings don’t go on the invoice, but they cost you. Seeing them in a report is how you find out which clients really pay.
In Larkbill, every hour lands on a client and a project, and the Friday review is one page for the whole team.