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How workplace time is spent

Today’s knowledge workers, such as accountants, lawyers, digital consultants and product developers, are masters of multitasking. Even if they’re working on just a single project or account, they’re likely to be jumping from one desktop task to another over the typical workday. Websites. Word documents.

Spreadsheets. Emails. PDFs. PowerPoints and more. And chances are good they’re working on more than one project or account at a time.

The time-tracking challenge

That makes it hard to track every minute spent on every task. But not tracking time isn’t an option, especially in businesses where work is billed by the hour or even the minute. And organizations that don’t bill in this way still need to keep an eye on time to understand how different departments, sites and project teams are working.

Ideally, that means finding a way to track time that’s easy, smart and autonomous, that doesn’t require manual starts and stops. Ideal solutions, though, are hard to come by. While there are hundreds upon hundreds of timekeeping systems on the market, most don’t meet all of these needs.

What makes WiseTime unique

What’s different about WiseTime is that it’s easy because it integrates with most of the workflow software found in your typical office. It’s smart, with analytics that provide valuable insights into your most important projects and clients.

It’s also autonomous, which means it works unobtrusively in the background as you work, without you ever having to remember to click ‘start’ or ‘stop’. And it gives you flexibility and control, so you can add tasks manually when needed and avoid sharing data around private activities not related to work.

What benefits does WiseTime deliver?

What does that mean for you? It means you no longer have to worry about how many billable hours you might be missing because you don’t always remember to track them. It means you have a way to see how efficient and productive different parts of the organisation are. It also means you can focus on your work without interrupting your flow for timekeeping. And it means you can understand better than ever exactly how time use contributes to your bottom line.

Time management challenges – changing concepts of work and work time

In today’s ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ work is dramatically different from what it was in the past. Technology has played a major role in this revolution: computers, the Internet, wireless communication, mobile computing, digitalization, advances in artificial intelligence and more. So too have globalisation and new concepts about how to work.

For today’s workers, especially those in professional services and knowledge-based industries, these changes have brought new ways of measuring productivity. Businesses want to understand what they’re spending time on, and how those tasks contribute to the bottom line. And business customers, particularly those billed by the hour, want to know they’re getting the services they paid for.

This means tracking the time spent on myriad tasks each day, across many different applications and for many different clients. But as the work itself grows ever more complex, so does the challenge of tracking it as accurately, easily and unobtrusively as possible. Finding a solution that does all of these things isn’t easy.

Manual time tracking

One way to track time involves trying to remember later how many minutes and hours were spent on each task, and writing that down. While that seems both easy and unobtrusive, it’s usually far from accurate.

The longer the span between completing work and noting the time spent on it, the less accurate the record is likely to be. Your recollection of how long you spent on each project might not be bad at the end of one day, but after a week or a month, your memory might be little better than pure guesswork.

The problem? Workers are likely to end up undercounting the time spent on work. And that means your business ends up under-billing for the amount of work actually done. Or you don’t get a clear picture of how productive/efficient your workforce is. And if you don’t understand how much time has been spent on different projects, it’s hard to plan properly for the future or prepare accurate financial forecasts.

Time-tracking software

The alternative for many organisations today is time-tracking software. The concept is simple enough: workers hit the software’s ‘start’ button whenever they begin a task, then click ‘stop’ when they’re finished or need to take a break.

Accuracy is typically not an issue with this approach. But ease of use and obtrusiveness are.

Imagine, for example, that you’re about to wrap up three big projects and need to keep track of how much time you spend on each during the final day. You start by reading, writing and sending several emails for Client A, remembering to click ‘start’ before opening your email client. While going through messages, though, you see that Client B has an urgent question that needs answering, and Client C has emailed some last-minute additions for a report due by the end of the day.

Suddenly, your time-tracking efforts have become a lot more complicated. Do you continue on to the next task for Client A, ignoring the emails from Clients B and C for now? Or do you click ‘stop’ for one client, start a new time-tracking session for Client B’s emails and then, once you’ve finished with those, stop and start a third time for Client C?

Faced with this conundrum, some people might decide to forego time tracking for Client B’s and C’s emails altogether. While that might seem easiest, the result again is undercounted time and under- billed work.

Insights gained… or lost

With more accurately tracked data about time spent on different projects, businesses can also gain new insights into things beyond billing alone. For instance, knowing which clients are most time- intensive – and whether that time is worth the revenue generated – can help companies make better decisions about future marketing, contracts and hires. Understanding how time relates to costs and earnings can also help a business create smarter budgets and project schedules.

Workers themselves can benefit as well. More detailed data about who does what, for example, can prove that the one telecommuter on a key project team contributes just as much as – if not more than – the in-house staffers. More accurate information about work done and projects accomplished can also provide validation for workers seeking better feedback on the job.

Seamless operation

Any business looking for timekeeping software will find hundreds of different solutions to choose from, with a mind-boggling array of options and capabilities. However, WiseTime is unlike any other solution on the market.

First, it’s seamless and autonomous. There’s no need to remember to hit ‘start’ or ‘stop’: WiseTime simply works in the background while you work, tracking desktop apps and activities. Whatever you’re doing, WiseTime auto-tags tasks either automatically or according to user-specified rules. Tags can describe tasks by keywords, matter IDs, document IDs or purpose (for example, “sales” or “marketing”), allowing users to see later how much time they’ve spent on specific tasks, projects or clients.

There’s also room to add in offline activities manually, ensuring no worktime goes unrecorded. A pop-up prompt in the WiseTime app offers regular reminders to include offline activities.

Easy integration

Second, WiseTime integrates easily into your existing workflow and connects to the systems that you are already using. It also works across all of the leading operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

Installing the WiseTime desktop application is simple and straightforward. As soon as it is installed, it starts collating your time for activities and sends that data to the WiseTime Console. Your time information is analysed instantaneously in the WiseTime Console, and you can then view the time entries and analytics via the Console.

WiseTime identifies a user’s different activities by taking key information from the applications a user actively works in during a work session. For example, in Microsoft Word, the software will use the document name, while for an email the subject line is used to identify the activity. WiseTime does this across all programs including Excel, Adobe, PowerPoint, video conferencing, web browsers and others.

In addition, WiseTime Enterprise users can integrate WiseTime with some of the world’s most popular project, finance or software management programs they might be using. Large organisations can also simplify deployment across departments or the entire business by connecting up their user directories (Active Directory or LDAP). The WiseTime Agent allows the system to be run in a virtualised enterprise environment.

Insights through auto-tagging, analytics

Finally, users can fine-tune how WiseTime works to gain even more detailed insights into the time spent on different tasks and projects. Tags can be added manually to describe each recorded activity by business function—such as marketing, development, recruitment, office management, etc.—or by project, team or location. Users can also set keywords to enable WiseTime to auto-tag activities when certain they are mentioned. For example, a user could specify a tag for all activities that mention “xero” or mark any activity with the word “invoice” with the tag “accounting.”

For organisations using the WiseTime Enterprise Plan that have connected WiseTime with a practice management system, auto-tagging takes place in the background almost magically when case references are identified. For instance, whenever a user works on a document that refers to a client or project matter number, the activity is auto-tagged with the project or client code, and can later be synced to the appropriate program. Such auto-tagging eliminates the need to manually organise recorded tasks later. Users can set up tags and rules to specify what should be tagged and how and can also manually tag tasks with specific project names, numbers, etc.

It’s important to note that users always retain full control over the privacy of their tasks and activities. For instance, they can select which specific items reflect work activities before submitting data for timesheets, so recorded time for personal tasks goes no further than their own desktop.

WiseTime’s analytics capabilities also make it simple to sort and graph recorded activities in a number of ways, allowing users to view how they work by hour, by day, by tag or by application. Such graphs help provide a visual sense of how they spend their time. This can help identify which tasks and activities are most time-intensive – or lucrative – opening up opportunities for improved business decisions down the road. These analytics tools work for individuals as well as for managers looking at activities across an entire workforce.

WiseTime in action

So how do all of these capabilities translate into real-world business benefits? A large Australian law firm specialising in intellectual property rights recently put WiseTime to the test, putting it through a two-phase trial over the course of seven months.

Company challenges

Like many businesses, the law firm didn’t have a firm grasp before starting the trial on how much billable time it might have been missing due to its timekeeping limitations. And its attorneys often found themselves spending far too much time and energy manually logging each work-related activity or writing off small-time increments spent on responding to client emails. This not only interrupted their workflow, it meant less time spent on actual client-related tasks.

From small pilot to wider implementation

Because the law firm wanted to ensure that the WiseTime integration would be as user-friendly and intuitive as possible, it started small. The solution was trialed with five attorneys, allowing them to take the system for a test run over the course of four months during live product development. The initial goal was to see how WiseTime would fit into the firm’s daily work routines, with a focus on how easy and intuitive it was for attorneys to use.

After that, the law firm expanded into a second phase, during which 15 lawyers tried out WiseTime for three months. In this part of the trial, the business was looking for signs of more concrete benefits, such as increases in billable times or productivity.

Results and benefits

After seven months of testing, the results showed a clear benefit to the law firm’s bottom line. On average, attorneys using WiseTime each submitted 1.5 hours more per week to billing compared to previous months in which they had recorded time in traditional ways. While that amount of time might at first seem insignificant, the long-term return for a large firm is considerable.

For instance, just one extra hour of billable time per lawyer each week could – over the course of one year – mean increased revenues of up to $2 million or more for a law firm with 100 lawyers.

For the attorneys in Australia who tested WiseTime, the intangible benefits were also meaningful. One attorney noted that the WiseTime statistics showing time spent on each program made it much easier to understand how much work went into simply responding to client emails every day. And he was astounded to see how a few more billable minutes for each email amounted to a substantial increase of billable time, enabling him to better hit targets by the end of the month.

Conclusion

There are many timekeeping tools available, but WiseTime comes to this market with unique capabilities in big data, analytics, and machine learning. Its guiding philosophy since it was founded in 2010 is to build software that makes people’s lives easier.

Timekeeping is an area where, until now, many solutions have been accurate and efficient, but not necessarily easy, smart, automatic and fair. WiseTime’s ability to work seamlessly and automatically in the background makes it different from numerous alternatives.

Unlike many other timekeeping systems, WiseTime provides users with privacy and control: it doesn’t ‘spy’ on workers or indiscriminately grab every bit of task and activity data. For example, if you just quickly checked the status of your eBay auction, or Googled a recipe, your employer doesn’t need to know.

At the same time, employers and clients gain a new level of transparency into the time spent on the work they’re paying for. They can also gain new insights to help them improve processes, minimise pain points and increase revenues into the future. Such capabilities are critical in today’s business world when existing competitors and start-up rivals alike are continually looking for new strategies and digital technologies to give them an advantage.

Want to learn more about what WiseTime can do for you? Whether you’re an individual freelancer, a small business or a large global enterprise, we’re ready to answer your questions and help you get started with a WiseTime plan that’s right for you.

WiseTime Pilot with Spruson Ferguson

Leading intellectual property (IP) firm Spruson & Ferguson was the first IP services team to complete a pilot of WiseTime, proving the benefits of the autonomous timekeeping tool. The results of the pilot were incredibly favourable. Using WiseTime, attorneys captured more than double the amount of work time than they were able to account for with their manual timekeeping methods. Additionally, they were also able to reduce their timekeeping administration on average by one hour per week.

Employing more than 400 people across 10 offices in Asia-Pacific, Spruson & Ferguson is one of the leading IP firms in the region. Their principal practice management system is Inprotech, by CPA Global.

When we approached Spruson & Ferguson with our proposal to pilot WiseTime, they were interested to see whether the system could increase the efficiency and reduce the administrative burden of timekeeping.

The requirements of the pilot

One of the key considerations of the pilot was the amount of work required from Spruson & Ferguson‘s internal resources to configure WiseTime and whether it would have any effect on their existing platforms or processes. It was important that any new system was complementary to, and compatible with, their existing set up.

WiseTime is designed to connect easily to existing systems. Therefore, there were no larger implications for existing systems or procedures at Spruson & Ferguson. The WiseTime Connector is easily configured by our team and then works alongside Inprotech and in conjunction with the existing timekeeping method.

Testing WiseTime against the start-stop time clock

Spruson & Ferguson’s existing method of time capture utilised the built-in timekeeping system that is included as part of their current practice management system. This includes a start-stop timer, as well as the option to manually add activity. For both options, the attorney must look up the case matter and then manually input the information about the task to add it to the client file for billing.

When using the start-stop timer, attorneys must start a new timer whenever their attention is diverted to anything outside of that specific case matter, such as when receiving a phone call, or on receipt of an urgent email. They must either stop the timer on the first matter and switch to paper notes for later entry, or they must look up the new matter that their attention has shifted to before beginning.

This method is not highly efficient. Further, many attorneys resort to a paper-ledger as a backup, in case they forget to stop or start the timer on a given matter, creating a subsequent manual task of transcribing the paper notes.

During the pilot, Spruson & Ferguson attorneys used WiseTime to autonomously capture their work time in the background, while still continuing to use their existing start-stop and manual method. This enabled us to get an accurate comparison of the time captured and the time spent on administration for each method. 

Easy connection to your practice management system

Spruson & Ferguson used the WiseTime Connector to connect to Inprotech. Once connected, WiseTime can detect the matter references from Inprotech and will automatically tag activities when a keyword match for each matter reference is identified. This means that any work performed on a document containing the reference number in the subject line, window title or document title is captured and seamlessly assigned to the correct case and client.

Connecting to your existing systems might sound like a large project with a lengthy timeline – this is not the case with WiseTime Connector. We’ve designed WiseTime to connect in a lightweight and non-intrusive manner, relying on read-only access for the majority of its functionality.

There are only two things WiseTime requires to fully connect:

1. Detect when a new case is added to your system
2. Know where to send your WiseTime data when users post it

Once the connector is enabled, the time information will flow directly into the relevant fields of your existing system.

The pilot group

The Spruson & Ferguson pilot consisted of a small group of users over a period of two weeks. Users kept WiseTime running in the background but continued to use their current timekeeping system as per usual. WiseTime was autonomously recording the time the attorneys worked on their cases while the attorneys also recorded their time manually so that an accurate analysis was possible. 

To calculate the average amount of time spent curating and posting the time data from WiseTime, we used later data from users after they had switched to solely using WiseTime.

The pilot results speak for themselves

The per week averages of the pilot group were as follows:

While the results were stronger than anticipated, it is important to note that the above hourly figures do not necessarily represent billed hours, but rather the number of hours of time and attention information that were submitted to case-related matters. The pilot group perform a variety of fixed-fee work items, which in the past had not been recorded with their manual timekeeping method. With WiseTime, the team was also able to effortlessly capture the time spent on fixed-fee work. This additional information was captured with no extra burden on the user and could be used as supporting information for billing reports or as internal record keeping for fixed-fee work.

In summary, using WiseTime, the pilot team doubled the hours they documented, captured and accounted for in half the time it would take to manually do so. 

Increased efficiency and transparency

The Spruson & Ferguson pilot demonstrates the increased efficiencies that can be gained with WiseTime. As well as reducing the administrative burden of timekeeping, WiseTime increases the level of detail captured for tasks throughout the day with no additional effort from the user. 

By sharing additional time and attention data, your clients can gain a deeper understanding of the effort you have directed to their matter, and a greater appreciation as to the value of the service provided. In addition, you may decide to utilise the additional information to provide more detailed invoices to clients.

One of the key advantages of WiseTime is its flexible implementation options. Spruson & Ferguson gave their attorneys the option to use both time-keeping tools.

Spruson & Ferguson was very pleased with the results from the pilot and is now planning to expand its use of WiseTime. As the firm expands its use, it expects to see considerable reductions in timekeeping administration work, paired with the increased efficiencies and timekeeping accuracy that the platform provides.

Innovation required

Driving innovation is critical to just about every business today – and it’s not just for tech companies. Any industry that makes incremental improvements to products and processes based on expert research and insight actively engages in research and development (R&D). Nevertheless, hiring trained, skilled researchers and supporting them with the time, information and supplies they need can really add up. That’s why it’s an exciting development that recent legislation worldwide has expanded tax credits and advantages for qualified R&D expenditures.

A global snapshot

Companies in more than 40 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and many others, can take tax credits, super deductions, allowances, cash grants and credits for R&D expenditures.

The current US R&D tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar credit against owed or paid federal income taxes. From an IRS tax standpoint, nearly 10 percent of a company’s eligible costs can be applied directly against their federal income tax liability. It even works retroactively. If the company doesn’t pay taxes now, the credits it documents appropriately can be applied to future tax liabilities. On top of this, companies that are involved in R&D can also use these tax credits to increase the return on investment (ROI) they realize for their R&D expenses and increase their market value.

In Canada, where federal and provincial corporate statutory tax rates range from 17.5 to 31 percent, companies can receive a tax credit of 20 percent of their expenses related to R&D. Small, private Canadian corporations can get 35 percent credit on the first CAD $3 million in R&D expenses. Credits can be carried ahead for 20 years and back for three.

Corporate income in the UK is taxed at a statutory rate of as much as 23 percent. But now the government offers a refundable tax credit of 9.1 percent of all qualifying R&D expenses. It also allows for 100 percent tax depreciation of expenditures on assets used for R&D during the year they were acquired.

In Australia, for companies with an aggregated annual turnover of below $20 million, the refundable R&D tax offset will now be a premium of 13.5 percent above the applicant’s company tax rate. From 1 July 2018, for most taxpayers, with a turnover of less than $20 million, the corporate tax rate will be 27.5 percent and the refundable R&D tax offset rate will, therefore, become 41 percent. This is a decrease of 2.5 percent compared to the current refundable R&D tax offset rate for that applicant.

Worldwide, governments have significantly expanded permanent tax credits based on corporate revenues and spending on R&D. The potential for companies to reclaim can be in the millions.

So, how do I get my share?

Getting this money can be a real challenge. Any expenses you use to apply for R&D tax credits must typically be documented as qualified research expenses (QREs), which are defined as wages, supplies and/or contract research. This includes salaries, a portion of contractor payments, contract research, computer leasing, pay for first-line managers and direct support personnel – among other things.

Clear and accurate accounting for these expenditures is critical, but you’ll need to record them carefully. For example, in the US, as in many other jurisdictions, these expenses must also stand up to a four-part test to make sure they qualify for R&D.

The four requirements are:

Permitted purpose – The expense is used to develop or improve a product or process for functionality or performance, quality and reliability, or reduce its cost. It’s not permitted if it just improves aesthetics. Process of experimentation – The expense includes the cost of evaluating alternatives, along with testing and modeling and/or simulations to determine outcomes.

Process of experimentation – The expense includes the cost of evaluating alternatives, along with testing and modeling and/or simulations to determine outcomes.

Technical uncertainty – The expense is to test a capability or methodology, deals with an uncertainly in development, an improvement to a product or process, and/or, to determine how to reach specific goals.

Technological in nature – Finally, the expense must rely on practices based on solid principles from engineering, physical science, computer science or biological science. It can’t be based on social, economic, psychological sciences – or guesses – for its methodology or assumptions.

To pass these tests, accounting professionals must document R&D expenses in detail and provide validated tracking on who did the work along with their billable hours. The burden of proof for the tax credit is on the taxpaying company that applies for the rebates. So, you’ll need impeccable records that trace each expense back to its R&D purpose and process.  Of course, you’ll also need a way to repeat this process year after year, so that it becomes a part of your overall business operations – not a painful and troublesome distraction.

The devil in the details

While corporate accounting firms worldwide see these new tax developments for R&D as good for business, they also pose enormous challenges to the corporations and tax experts who work with them. To qualify R&D expenses, the data collected on them must be accurate, complete and completely audit-proof.

At first, it seems inevitable that the process will take a lot of manual effort, but, even that’s not enough. Spreadsheets and self-administered timesheets do not provide sufficient evidence of R&D expenditures to qualify for tax credits. Insufficient or even slightly inaccurate backup data exposes your company to audits, and your accountants to questions about their reputation.

To safely navigate the confusing waters of required documentation, companies and their accountants need an accurate, automated, easy-to-implement system that can properly document actual R&D expenses in a way that provides detailed results.

The WiseTime difference

While corporate accounting firms worldwide see these new tax developments for R&D as good for business, they also pose enormous challenges to the corporations and tax experts who work with them. To qualify R&D expenses, the data collected on them must be accurate, complete and completely audit-proof.

At first, it seems inevitable that the process will take a lot of manual effort, but, even that’s not enough. Spreadsheets and self-administered timesheets do not provide sufficient evidence of R&D expenditures to qualify for tax credits. Insufficient or even slightly inaccurate backup data exposes your company to audits and your accountants to questions about their reputation.

To safely navigate the confusing waters of required documentation, companies and their accountants need an accurate, automated, easy-to-implement system that can properly document actual R&D expenses in a way that provides detailed results.

How WiseTime works

No time for manual documentation? Automate!

WiseTime is the world’s first seamless and automatic time tracking software that’s designed to provide all the detail you need without the manual work. It effortlessly and meticulously tracks expenses with categories and annotations you need to properly document the work and expense of R&D without interrupting your current workflow.

Start quickly. Protect privacy. Eliminate audits.

WiseTime tracks across all leading operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Installing the software on your desktop is easy, too – just download it and run. As soon as it launches, WiseTime starts documenting time for activities. Users can then view time logs and analytics using the WiseTime Web Console. It works in any enterprise – including those with highly distributed resources and remote employees.

There’s no time clock to start or stop, and you will never have to fill out a timesheet again. For example, in Microsoft Word, the software records file names in active windows, while the email subject line is used to title activities in Outlook. WiseTime does this seamlessly and passively across all the programs your team uses, including Excel, Adobe tools, PowerPoint, video conferencing platforms, web browsers and many other applications.

While the software is designed to be transparent and automatic, users always have full control over the privacy of their tasks and activities. For instance, they can select which specific items reflect work activities before submitting data for timesheets, so recorded time for personal tasks goes no further than their own desktop. You can delete entries and add time logs manually and categorize them any way you like before they’re sent.

Nevertheless, even with this manual level of control, employees and users cannot change the time entries automatically collected by WiseTime, so the time and detail it records is always automatically accurate and audit-proof. It provides the right balance of security and privacy for your entire organization.

Auto-Tagging for R&D

Users can fine-tune how WiseTime works to provide detailed insights into the time spent on different tasks and projects using tags. Tags can be added manually to describe each recorded activity by business function – such as process improvement, product development or research testing. Or alternatively by project, team or location. Users can also easily configure WiseTime to auto-tag activities when certain keywords are mentioned in the material.

For instance, consider an organization is working on three research projects—one for product durability, another for ease of use, and another for testing a more economical production material. The product durability team is in one location, but the teams doing the other research are spread across five different facilities worldwide. Tracking their expenses with WiseTime is as easy as using a two-part keyword system wherever the research takes place. Just include a consistent reference to the location and type of research in the tags. WiseTime will do the rest.

This auto-tagging eliminates the need to manually organize any of these recorded tasks and means that you can categorize and account for expenses with granular detail and complete traceability without significant manual effort—even in complex, real-world situations.

Tagging also means that you can create audit-proof reports based on any tags or combination of tags or keywords you select, for any period you choose. You can output the data in a PDF format and/or as Excel raw data. In short, WiseTime provides all the flexibility you need to create a wide variety of detailed, audit-proof R&D reports automatically – with no changes necessary to the way you work now.

Conclusion

Tax laws have changed for R&D expenses across most of the world. Writing on CFO.com, Dean Zerbe, a former senior counsel to the US Senate Finance Committee, said: “Combined together, these modifications to the R&D tax credit have the potential to pump millions back into the economy and bring tremendous value back to small businesses and startups  –  the two most important groups when it comes to promoting job creation and economic growth.”

The drive for innovation is moving faster than ever. Don’t let another tax season go by without discovering how WiseTime can automatically help you recoup R&D dollars and build a better business. It’s your cash. Claim it!

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