Productivity – Amanda Leigh

Toggl vs Time Doctor vs RescueTime: Which Time Tracking App is Right For You?

Time tracking.

It’s not the most exciting or glamorous part of running a business, but it’s oh so important!

Time tracking is not only important when you’re charging by the hour, but it’s important to know how long tasks take you to complete for two main reasons:

You can plan your day more effectively. If you’re planning your day or week, it’s difficult to know how much you can do during those timeframes if you don’t know how long anything takes you to complete. This can result in putting too much on your schedule, which will force you to fall behind schedule and can lead to stress and overwhelm.
You can give more accurate quotes to your customers. When you give a quote to a customer, many entrepreneurs figure out how long it will take to complete and multiply that by your hourly billable rate. You can’t do this accurately if you’re not sure how long it takes you to complete a task! Knowing how long the task will take will also allow you to give an accurate date of when a customer can expect the deliverable! This accurate time and money quote result in a win-win for you and your customer.

There are a lot of different time tracking programs available, but it can be a little overwhelming and time-consuming to try to decide which is right for you and your needs.

Toggl, Time Doctor, and RescueTime are the ones that I have seen recommended the most often, so I decided to compare them!

	Toggl	Time Doctor	RescueTime
Pricing	Free Starter: $9/user/month Premium: $18/user/month Enterprise: $49/user/month	$9.99/user/month	Lite: Free Premium: $9/month
Adding manual time	Yes	Yes; can require manager’s approval	Yes
Offline mode	Yes	Yes	Yes
Reporting	Yes	Yes	Yes
Billable rates	With all paid versions	Yes	N/A
Rounding time	With all paid versions	N/A	N/A
Project time estimates	With all paid versions	N/A	N/A
Projects/Clients	Unlimited	Unlimited	N/A
Team size	1 with free version Unlimited with all paid versions	Unlimited	N/A
Integrations	iCal, Asana, Basecamp, Freshbooks, Github, Teamweek	Asana, Basecamp, Citrix, FreshBooks, FreshDesk, GitHub, Google Apps, Intellitnote, Jira, LiquidPlanner, MavenLink, Microsoft Project, Payroll Hero, Pivitol Tracker, Podio, ProjectManager.com, QuickBooks, RedMine, SalesForce, SharePoint, Slack, VisualStudio, TeamWork, todoist, Trello, unfuddle, Workflow Max, Wrike, Yammer, ZenDesk, Zoho	N/A
Apps	Mobile (iOS and Android) Desktop (Win, Mac, and Lotus) Chrome Extension	Mobile (iOS and Android) Desktop (Win, Mac, and Lotus)	Desktop
Screenshots	No	Yes, optional setting	No
Website and Application Monitoring	No	Yes	Yes; this is the main feature
Client Login	No	Yes	No
Payroll	No	Yes, optional setting	No

Toggl

I believe that Toggl is the easiest to use of the three options. You don’t have to download anything and it can be used right in your browser.

You can easily navigate around the system by using the left menu. Here, you can view your client list, teams, project lists, workspaces, and tags as well as the timer, reports, and insights. (Insights are only available to Premium and Enterprise users.)

To track time, I simply go to the website, select the client and project, and press the start button! You really can’t get any easier!

If you’re looking for an easy application to track your time for different clients and projects, Toggl is perfect for you.

Time Doctor

With Time Doctor, you can fully customize the projects for you and your team. You can turn on/off the following settings:

Screenshots
Work schedules
Payroll
Client payments
Website/application tracking
Project/permanent tasks (including a user’s default project and requiring the selection of projects)
Add clients
GPS tracking
API

Time Doctor is a pretty robust system. You have the ability to do many different things. This includes:

Tracking time for yourself to increase productivity
Tracking billable time from you and your team to invoice your clients directly
Tracking your employee’s time so that you can pay them through the system

It took me a little bit of time to comfortably maneuver around within Time Doctor just because I was immediately looking for a place to easily add clients and projects (similar to Toggl) to get started. Once I got used to how the system is laid out, it was much easier to navigate.

There’s a 14-day free trial, so I’d definitely recommend taking a look at Time Doctor if you’re trying to decide on a system.

RescueTime

RescueTime is a little different than the other two. It seems to be more focused on your own productivity and not tracking your time for certain clients and projects. It keeps track of different websites you’re on and how much time you’re spending on each while you are working.

You can categorize these websites and create goals for how productive you want to be each day. For example, a certain number of hours of productive work. You can then run different reports to see how productive you were and how much time you spent in various applications.

I did have to download the application onto my desktop but once it was downloaded, it is easy to start!

If you’re looking for something to do a self-audit to see how you’re spending your time in order to become a more productive worker, RescueTime could definitely help you.

In summary, I’d recommend:

Toggl if you’re looking for a simple platform to track your time for clients and projects.
Time Doctor if you’re looking for a more robust system to track and bill your clients
Rescue Time if you’re looking to track your own habits to increase your productivity

What do you use to track your time? What do you like/dislike about it?

Amanda Leigh, with her business savvy tools and upbeat attitude, helps entrepreneurs develop systems that work for, not against them. By setting up project management systems and email management protocols curated specifically for each business, Amanda’s dedication to helping others thrive means making sure nothing is forgotten.

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a FREE Discovery Call here

Calendar Scheduling Tool Comparison: Calendly VS Acuity VS 10to8

We have all been there. You and your potential client (or colleague) agreed to have a meeting.

That’s awesome.

Well, it was awesome before that dreaded conversation starts.

You know the one. You go back and forth several times determining a time that’s convenient for the both of you.

Then you realize you’re in different time zones. Whomp Whomp.

It’s so much easier to just send a link and say “find a time that works for you!”.

There are so many online scheduling tools out there. It’s hard to determine which works best for you and your business.

They all have their pros and cons, but to figure those out can also be time-consuming, so I’ve done that for you!

I’ve chosen to take a deeper look at 10to8, Calendly, Acuity.

	10to8.com	Calendly	Acuity
Pricing	Small Business: Free Basic: $9.30/month Grow: $20/month Bigger Business: $40/month	Basic: Free Premium: $8/user/month Pro: $12/user/month	Freebie: Free Emerging Entrepreneur: $15 Growing Business: $25 Powerhouse Player: $50
Automatically syncs to an online calendar	Yes	Yes	With Paid Accounts
Multiple Appointment Types	Unlimited	1 for Free Account Unlimited to Paid Accounts	Unlimited
Time Zone Conversions	Yes	Yes	With Paid Accounts
Number of Events Per Month	Small/Basic: 100 appointments/month Grow: 300/month Bigger business: 600/month	Unlimited	Unlimited
Event Notifications	Yes	Yes	Yes
Customizable email notifications and reminders	Yes	With paid	With paid
Integrates with your website	Yes	Yes	With paid
Collect Payments	Yes. Paypal, Stripe, Sage	With Paid. Stripe and Paypal	With paid. Stripe, Square, Braintree, Paypal, Authorize.net

All three of these online calendar scheduling tools are pretty easy to use. They have similar features in that:

You can set your office hours and when you’re available to your clients
You’ll get a custom URL to give to your clients to find a time that works for them
They all have amazing integrations with paid versions
- They all integrate with Zapier, allowing countless automations
You can create multiple meeting types and durations for both 1:1 and group bookings.

10to8

10to8’s interface is so easy to use for both user’s point of view.

From the client’s perspective, it is very simple and clean. The URL is only customizable with a paid account. I love that I can create my own header, image, and copy to greet the users, who can easily click on an appointment and select a date and time that works for them.

From my perspective, it’s very easy to use but the design and the colors are a bit antiquated in my opinion. It’s a tad clunky, but I think that everything is really easy to find. There is a side menu where you can navigate to the page you’re looking for.

You’re able to speak directly with the meeting coordinator through 10to8 via email or text, which is very convenient when there is a follow up needed.

You can add questions for the attendee, which is really nice for me since I like to gather birthdays!

Calendly

From both user’s point of view, Calendly’s interface is very simple and clean, which I love.

From the client’s perspective, they can see my custom URL and my public meetings. You click on my 30-minute meeting and my client can select the date and time that works best for them.

From my perspective, setting up events and availability is very easy to do.

I feel like Calendly is a little too simple. I want to be able to set my office hours, then go to each type of event and adjust accordingly. But instead, I had to go to each event and set the office hours. This seems like a really silly downfall, but it took me a little bit of extra time to figure it out.

I really like that you can easily add questions to the attendee. For example, it automatically asks for their name and email, but you could add phone number and birthday.

With the paid version, the person scheduling the time can automatically book another appointment as well as other custom links such as a thank you page.

Calendly also has some direct integrations (integrations without having to use Zapier). These integrations include:

Acuity

Acuity’s interface is visually appealing and easy to use for both you and your meeting attendees.

From the client’s perspective, I like Acuity’s interface the best. You can view multiple days and times at once and it looks really nice. You can do a lot of customizations on this page, which is really awesome.

With Acuity, there are so many customizations – it’s really amazing.

With the client’s view you can:

Use monthly or daily calendar view (the below screenshot is daily)
Allow/disallow recurring appointments
Allow/disallow client login and registration. This will save the client’s information for future scheduling.

When you schedule your availability, you can set a regular availability or select particular days. You can create a client intake form.

Acuity also has approximately 1 billion direct integrations. I’m kidding, but there really are a lot of integrations such as:

Accounting and Invoicing
CRM
- Google Contacts
- Salesforce
- Infusionsoft
- Pipedrive
- Google Sheets
- WuFoo
- Zoho CRM
Video Conferences
- GoToMeeting
- Zoom
- Join.me
Web Builders
- GoDaddy
- SquareSpace
- WordPress
- Facebook
- Weebly
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Webs
- Wix
- Zenfolio
Email Marketing
- MailChimp
- Aweber
- ActiveCampaign
- ConvertKit
- ConstantContact
- Drip
- MadMimi
- Simplero

Are you ready to see my recommendations?

Calendly is super clean and easy to use but is a little basic. It’s great for someone you simply wants an online calendar scheduler, without all the extra uses.
10to8 has an amazing free option with a great interface for your clients. There are many great options in the free version but the interface for the original user is a little clunky.
Acuity’s free version is very limited. It does not sync with your calendar or automatically convert time zone. The free version also doesn’t have event reminders or website integrations but the paid version is amazing. With the paid version you have so many different options available.

I would recommend…

Calendly for a free very quick and basic setup
10to8 for free, more customized setup
Acuity when you’re ready to pay for an upgraded version

So, what online scheduling tool do you use? Why did you choose it?

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a FREE Discovery Call here

Use Asana to Get to Inbox Zero

Working for yourself is the most amazing experience, but it can be so overwhelming.

Do you have an inbox full of unread emails, sticky notes covering your desk, and a whole list of tasks that should have been done already?

The stress tends to either lead to all day/night working episodes, or completely ignoring all of your responsibilities because starting is just too overwhelming.

I’m all about getting to inbox zero, but it’s nearly impossible to do without a proper project management system in place.

I’ve told you about my dear friend followupthen! This is great when you want to remind yourself of an email at a later point in time, but what about all the other stuff?

You know, the email that you think is a great resource, the information about a project, client information, and all the other things that should be on your to-do list. (Your inbox should not be your to-do list!)

Enter Asana. Now, there are two major ways that you can use Asana to help you get to inbox zero.

Forward or Copy & Paste Emails into Asana

There are some emails that come in that I just want to save. Can you relate? They are either full of information or have links/passwords included.

If this happens, you simply either forward the email directly to Asana or simply copy and paste the important information into an Asana project.

This way, you always have the information and it isn’t taking up valuable retail space in your inbox.

To find the email for an individual project, go to the project. Click the down arrow > Add Tasks via > email.

The email address for that specific project will pop up.

Asana Screenshot

When you forward the email, the subject will become the task name and the body of the email will become the task description. If there is an attachment, that will stay.

You can put multiple projects in as contacts in your email, but I like to create a separate project that says “add to projects” and simply sort the information from there.

Communicate within Asana

Do you ever get the “what’s the status of….” email? What about the “I can’t find that x you sent me, can you resend”? Or even better, “I didn’t get that or it went to spam”.

Well, you can communicate with your clients and employees right in Asana.

You can see what has been done and what hasn’t been done.

You can assign tasks to each other with due dates, and you can communicate within the tasks.

You can add comments, tag a team members using the @ symbol, and keep project communication out of your inbox.

Attach documents right in the project, so it won’t get lost. Attach links to Google docs for easy access.

The options are endless.

Did I mention that Asana was free? You and up to 14 team members can be on your workspace for free. Now, there is an upgrade available that has some pretty cool features, but the free version works amazingly!

Do you use Asana to help organize your tasks get to inbox zero?

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a
FREE Discovery Call here

How To Use Asana To Achieve Inbox Zero #productivity #automation AmandaLeighVA.com 1

Don’t be Perfect

I know what it’s like to have a business. I have so many things that I want to do.

I want all of it to be perfect.

In fact, I could spend an hour making a single social media graphic. I could spend an entire 40 hour work week perfecting my website. I could spend 5 hours writing a blog post.

All in the sake of being perfect.

But you know what? Perfect isn’t always the best way to go.

Perfect can be your downfall.

You should just finish it. Your graphics should look great, but they don’t have to be perfect. Your website should look great, but I’m not sure those are ever perfect. Blog posts should be helpful to your readers, but it doesn’t have to be award winning.

Don’t use perfection as an excuse.

Don’t delay creating a blog because you can’t write perfect posts every week. Don’t delay launching that e-book because it isn’t perfect yet. Just do it!

You can always edit it at a later time, but don’t let perfection be an excuse.

In fact, launching a product that isn’t perfect is absolutely ideal. You’re going to get feedback from users and you can adjust the product to suit their needs!

If you wait on everything being perfect, you’re going to lose out on sales, spend tons of valuable time doing tasks that should be used elsewhere, and you may never actually launch it!

Do you find yourself coming up with amazing plans, research it, start this amazing product, only to never actually finish it? You begin getting bored and discouraged because it isn’t perfect?

Stop doing that!

You’re probably your own worst critic. Do you ever think your own work is ever perfect? I feel I can always tweak and improve nearly every aspect of my business.

You should always be proud of your product, but perfect is a nearly impossible goal to reach. Don’t let that get in the way of you putting out an amazing product.

So, are you pushing back starting/finishing anything in your business because you’re concerned it won’t be perfect?

Stay Productive by Planning

Plan to have a productive week in your business and an entrepreneur — How to have a productive week even when you’re an overwhelmed entrepreneur. AmandaLeighVA.com

Staying productive can seem like such an impossible task, but it is completely doable with a plan.

Set out a time every week for a plan. I like to plan on Sundays, but first thing Monday morning or last thing on Friday works as well.

Bonus tip: while planning out your week, make sure you schedule time for batch processing!

Ideally, the planning would include several aspects.

What is your biggest priority for this upcoming week and how are you going to accomplish that goal? (Examples: Write your blog posts, course creation, follow up with x number of leads, big client projects, etc.)
What activities do you do daily? (Examples: Check emails, social media interaction, other client work, etc.)
What appointments do you have set up?

First, look at your biggest goal for the week. What do you have to do every day to complete that goal? For example, if your goal is to write blog posts for next month, start every day dedicating an hour to writing blog posts. If you batch process your blog writing, take one hour on Monday and Tuesday to write your posts, one hour Wednesday and Thursday to edit them, and one hour on Friday to make graphics, format, and schedule them to post.

(Note that I didn’t say to do this after you check your emails and social media, those take too long and can be way too distracting)

Next, schedule blocks of time to work on your business and your client work. Don’t worry about the details just yet!

For example, maybe your week will look like this:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal
Business admin/marketing	Business admin/marketing	Business admin/marketing	Meetings	Business admin/marketing
Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
Client work	Client work	Meetings	Client work	Client work

Everyone’s list is going to look differently. Because much of my work is other entrepreneur’s “business admin/marketing”, I group my email, social media, and Asana updates with my clients, so my weeks look more like this:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal	Work on week’s goal
Check and respond to emails	Check and respond to emails	Check and respond to emails	Check and respond to emails	Check and respond to emails
Social media posting	Amanda Leigh Marketing	Client work	Client work	Client work
Update Asana	Update Asana	Update Asana	Update Asana	Update Asana

After the days are somewhat grouped and batched, it’s time to plan out the details. Try to batch as much as possible together. Do you have multiple clients that you need to create graphics for? Are you creating multiple brand boards or logos? Try to batch like projects together.

I would also suggest not giving yourself exact times to work on these. It just seems like once you start running behind, it’s easy to get stressed and less motivated.

Side note, I can’t talk about planning a productive week without touching on emails and other incoming notifications. You can schedule time open and check your emails/social media, if that’s what you’d like to do. It is known to be best practice to only check your emails at certain times, but I understand how difficult that can be. I do, however, believe that you should schedule a chunk of time to check emails and then perhaps just glance at it throughout the day to satisfy the need to stay at inbox zero.

Instead, provide yourself with a list of tasks from most to least important that you’d like to get done each day, and in each category.

The next day, look at what you didn’t complete the day before and repeat!

How do you plan for your week?

Amanda Leigh, with her business savvy tools and upbeat attitude, helps entrepreneurs develop systems that work for, not against them. By setting up project management systems and email management protocols curated specifically for each business, Amanda’s dedication to helping others thrive means making sure nothing is forgotten.

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a FREE Discovery Call here

Get out of the overwhelm

Solopreneur Overwhelm - AmandaLeighVA.com

We all do it. We have a to-do list with exactly 1,382,401 items on it. It’s overwhelming. How in the world are you going to complete all of these tasks!?

You aren’t.

I hate to break it to you, but you just aren’t going to complete 1,382,401 tasks. Well, not without doing just one task first.

When I get overwhelmed, I go get myself a cup of hot tea (I’m not really a coffee drinker, does this make me less trustworthy 🙂 ). I sit down and come up with one goal.

I’ll look through my Asana projects and determine what I’d like to get done TODAY? Not tomorrow, not at some point, but today.

Maybe it’s to be more active in a certain Facebook group or write 4 blog posts. Maybe it’s to finish a project with a client. Now I determine what I can do to complete that one goal.

Then do the first step! Check it off the list!

Now you are one task down! Then do another and check it off!

How are you feeling now that you’re rolling?

You see, you can’t do everything at once. It’s impossible, I promise. But you can do one thing at a time.

So, what are you going to complete today?

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a
FREE Discovery Call here

How to Organize Your Digital Files

Organize your digital files 2 - AmandaLeighVA.com

Do you have documents, images, and all of your digital information everywhere? I know it can get out of hand really quickly.

I like to keep everything I can on my Google Drive so that I can access it wherever I am and allow others to have access.

Keeping everything organized is essential and can save you a ton of time (and aggravation).

First, determine your high level folders. Examples are shown below such as Admin Docs, Blogging, and Clients.

After you’ve determined your high level folders, start creating your subfolders. I like to add numbers in front of my folders so that they stay in a logical order. Examples of subfolders for Admin Docs could be website copy, finances, and freebies.

You can create as many subfolders as you’d like, but make sure it makes sense to you. For example, don’t make a folder 5 deep if you know you’ll never search that far for something. My rule of thumb is to refrain from making subfolders until I feel I have too many documents in one folder, or if I begin to feel overwhelmed. I used to only have my blogging folder, but I found I was confused by the blog posts I was working on and the ones that were finished, so I separated them! Then I realized that I had too many graphics for each completed post, so I added more subfolders for each blog post.

Here is an example of what my digital filing system looks like:

Admin Docs – Contains all miscellaneous documents and some subfolders when I see there is a lot of one subject.
- Website copy
- Freebies
- Finances
Blogging
- Blog posts – Completed
  - Subfolders for each post to include all images for different platforms
- Blog posts – Not completed
Clients
- 0000 – Templates (contains things like contract and proposal templates, questionnaires, welcome packet)
- 0001 – Almost Client
  - I create a folder for someone as soon as I have a discovery call. This is where their info goes while I’m waiting on the contract (then dragged and renamed to the client folder)
- 0002 – Past Clients
  - Move all past client folders here
- 1000 – Client 1
- 1001 – Client 2

What does your digital file system look like?

If you could use an extra set of hands in your business, Schedule a
FREE Discovery Call here