For the most part, we don’t track our time. We handle our cases on a fixed-fee basis and have for many years. However, sometimes we do track our time, and we should probably do it more often. Tracking time has value that goes way beyond billing.

Many of you bill for your time, so, of course, you keep time records on a daily basis. Unfortunately, you’re mostly using your time records just to bill your time to your clients. You aren’t garnering any of the potential benefits of time recording other than dealing with your bills. You should think about other uses for the data.

Here are some reasons to track your time that go beyond billing that will provide value for you whether you bill by the hour, on a fixed fee basis, or by using some other approach.

1. Pricing. Keeping time helps you figure out what you should be charging if you’re using an alternative billing approach, and it better prepares you for providing clients with estimates. It gives you some sense of the cost of delivering the service so you can evaluate the profitability of your various service offerings. It helps you determine what work is profitable and what work isn’t. It allows you, on a matter-by-matter basis, to determine which clients are worth your effort and which ones you should terminate (figuratively, not literally). When you couple your time records with your revenue records, you start to really understand what work is valuable and what is a waste of precious time.

2. Scheduling. The more you understand the time required to achieve particular results, the more efficient you become. Suddenly, you’re able to block big chunks of time for a particular task, and you’ll know how much to block. More importantly, you’ll be able to allocate sufficient time to get the job done before the deadline. Once you know how long something takes, you won’t find yourself cramming it in at the last second and cutting corners because you haven’t given yourself sufficient time to get the work done properly.

3. Self-Management. Most of us feel busy. We end the day without having accomplished as much as we wish, and we aren’t entirely sure where the time went. Tracking your time minute by minute will answer your questions about what happened to your day. Taking many days worth of data (Peter Drucker suggested three weeks at a minimum) and crunching some numbers will give you a macro sense of what’s happening with the most precious resource in your life.

A self-management by-product of keeping a record of your time is that you automatically become more efficient. By keeping the record, you’re reminding yourself that you’re “on the clock.” Just knowing that you’re recording the time keeps you on track, and you’ll find yourself having accomplished more at the end of the day.

There are more than enough time-tracking tools on the market. You can easily find something that will allow you to record your time as the day progresses. Of course, you shouldn’t spend too much time sorting through the tools. Just pick one and get started. If software isn’t right for you, or if it’s more trouble to pick a solution that you like, then just resort to a pad and paper to track your time. That approach has worked for lawyers for a long time, and it will work for you now. Just do it.

Of course, simply gathering the time data won’t get you anywhere. It’s only when you take the data, couple it with your revenue and expense data, and start analyzing that you get real insights into what’s happening in your practice. It’s worth getting some help doing the analysis if you’re not a math geek. This is a great project for some graduate student looking for part-time work. A bit of analysis could lead to some major insights that cause you to change the nature of your practice or the way you allocate your time within your current practice. It’s time to start tracking your time.