[smallbeer]

At work we're trying to sort out how work is assigned to individuals and how the time/work is tracked.

Would anyone mind sharing their own processes? How is work currently assigned to you? Do you have weekly planners or are you just assigned to projects and then given tasks within the project as and when? Do you complete timesheets?

Much appreciated.

[mx]

The project managers assign us to projects and plan out our time in advance i.e. job bags
Big projects are specifically assigned to a person to lead at the beginning of a project, where as small work such as amends and general housekeeping is shared around depending who is available at the time.
We complete Clicktime-sheets at the end of each week.
It works pretty well, but thats cos we're a small team working in open plan, so everyone pretty much who's what everyone else is doing.
No idea if thats of any use!

[Do Gooder]

come in of a morning. panic. firefight. shout at suppliers and the studio.

edit: seriously now. we keep a job number/bag system for artwork. if it's busy we have Monday meetings and produce studio sheets detailing what's needed for when - it always changes as clients move the goal posts but helps us to keep on top of the workflow.

thankfully, we don't do timesheets.

[cocknose]

given jobs and deadlines... miss deadlines... work all night.... guess time taken and put on job bag!!!.... table football!!!

[Limbo]

We have an all encompassing spreadsheet - logs all jobs, assigns job numbers, sortable by client or staff member etc - corresponding job bag for job Number.

It works until the shit hits the fan and no-one has time to update it...

[steveb]

Manual timesheets are best - A4s with the day marked out horizontally in 15 minutes sectors. One A4 for each day. About five to ten rows to mark with each customer's name. This works correctly only if employees are serious about correct billing - in a smallish agency it can work because everyone probably knows the customers personally and doesn't want to fuck them around. All computerised systems are as open to misuse as hand-filled timesheets. It's easiest to draw a 3mm line on a sheet of paper rather than open a computerised time-keeping scheduling program. As I warned my previous employer when they instituted some high-falutin' billing program. I was meticulous about filling mine in correctly (or at least credibly) and all the other employees were regularly berated for not getting theirs done in time, or correctly, or in full etc. At the weekly house meeting/bitching session, I'd nod knowingly at the accounts cunt, woman I mean, as if to say "I told you so". I did, too. Christ, how they hated me.
Hand-filled timesheets are simply the way agency customers are billed. No better system has yet evolved!

[Do Gooder]

we dumped time sheets and per hour billing because 99% of the time our clients want jobs to be quoted and the costs fully settled before work commences.

so we have ended up working on a win some - lose most basis.

use time tracker software rather than time sheets for freelance stuff.. but don't do much of that any more.

[cjgraphix]

I use Omni Plan to sort out all projects, freelancers, timelines, deadlines. Then we use timeEdition to track time. While projects are quoted and documented prior to start and time doesn't really matter it's good to be able to review what we quoted (guessed) and what the final numbers really were. As we get better at guessing, our projects are having a higher profit margin, so has been a good choice for us.

Both OmniPlan and timeEdition are Mac Applications.

[Herr Kurm]

badly

[pgo]

I don't work in an agency, but we are a small team.

I built a PHP/MySQL project management system for us.

Projects are created and can be assigned to anyone in the department. Sub-tasks can be created for each project and each sub-task can be assigned to anyone to whom the project is assigned.

Anyone involved in a project can add tasks and manage them. Only project managers can assign tasks and projects at will.

[greenworld]

Forget manual timeshees and paper. We need to save time and trees
There are many task and project manager softwares that can help you streamline your tasks and set up priorities for each project, per-week, per month, per person, and so forth.
We have been using Intervals (myintervals.com) a web-hosted app. for years and it helps a lot, specially because our team is spread out in 2 continents, so we manage to converge in this sandbox like environment and accomplish it all.

Instead of trying to explain to you how everything works, which will take me a while, feel free to take a tour and you'll get the picture. (myintervals.com/tour.php)
Hope you find it helpful

[Limbo]

Just signed op for basecamp - not been doing it long enough to make proper judgement but it looks the part.

Projects, assign taks, monitor timings and print reports + the major benfit of having all your clients access project revisons from one point - will hopefully stem the flood of client e-mails... maybe.

[Accurate]

I can never get this right.