Second Wind - BE a Better Agency

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Time After Timesheet

Second Wind

5/13/2026

For many agency employees, timesheets are the bane of existence. "We are talented, well-educated professionals, not hourly workers punching a clock. Why should we have to post time?" they grouse ...

Three Things You Need to Live Long and Prosper in Advertising

Second Wind

5/12/2026

There has been a lot of talk about the sweeping changes moving through the advertising and marketing space. It is all true. Few industries have been reshaped as fundamentally or ...

Surviving a Sudden Storm: Best Practices Prepare Your Agency for Crisis

Second Wind

5/11/2026

People seldom like to think about the impact of a disaster or crisis on their business. It is human nature to optimistically ignore that possibility until it hits square in ...

A strategic planning session in progress at an independent advertising agency

What Does Integrating Account Planning Really Mean?

Second Wind

5/6/2026

As advertising and marketing professionals, we know all about "interesting times." The business is changing so rapidly that the average agency owner ends the day with their head spinning from ...

Who Says A Prospect Is A Prospect?

Second Wind

5/1/2026

With thousands of companies to choose from, and so little time to choose them, your agency needs to define who qualifies to be a prospect or client. Not every company ...

The Break-in Period: Giving New Hires Time to Learn

Second Wind

4/29/2026

Finding, recruiting, and hiring new people is expensive. Failing to train and mentor them through their first months means wasting every dollar and hour spent getting them in the door ...

Pure Design or Design Thinking? Pick One

Second Wind

4/22/2026

Over the past two decades, there has been an enormous shift in defining the work and the role of agencies and design studios. Years ago, the two entities did similar ...

A Short History of the Advertising World

Second Wind

4/15/2026

Advertising is still big business in America. Total U.S. advertising revenues have surpassed $300 billion annually in recent years, placing the industry alongside transportation and health care, and ahead ...

The Problem With Procrasti…

Second Wind

4/15/2026

NATION. The not-quite-complete word above illustrates the confusion, annoyance, and distraction that occur when someone begins a job and then fails to finish it at the right time. Procrastination becomes ...

Does Your Agency Have a Core Competency?

Second Wind

4/8/2026

To succeed in today's market, and perhaps even to survive it, a generalist advertising agency faces a harder path than ever before. This is not a comfortable thing to ...

The Power of Consistency: Thirteen Weeks to New Business Success

Second Wind

1/13/2026

Talking about new business in an agency is easy. Committing to it is rare. Building it in a way that actually works requires something most agencies avoid: a system.

Agencies ...

Where Do You Get Stories for Advertising?

Second Wind

12/31/2025

Writers, and advertising writers in general, sometimes say they've run out of story ideas. The question comes up constantly: "Where can I get the seeds for wonderful tales that ...

Do Programs, Not Projects

Second Wind

12/19/2025

We speak constantly of the need for agencies to become strategic marketing partners with their clients and not just suppliers of projects. Fine, you say, couldn't agree with you ...

Brand and Corporate Identity

Second Wind

12/15/2025

The company logo, its application, and its relationship to the brand positioning statement and strategy are very important facets of the overall brand effort. Even among audiences that profess to ...

Periodically, we speak with agency owners and managers who are struggling with the issue of time tracking. Many agencies still bill by employee hours, but the trend has been shifting steadily toward an estimate-based process. Pricing on what you know to be typical of certain project types rather than on actual hours logged. Call it experience estimating. The question is whether time sheets still earn their keep. The answer, as with most things in agency management, depends on where your agency actually is. The case for keeping time sheets Time tracking does something no estimate can do on its own: it tells you whether your estimates are accurate. If jobs consistently run over budget, the data will show it. That gives you something to act on. You can approach the client, document scope changes, and adjust the estimate accordingly. Without time tracking, you are flying blind on whether the agency is actually making money on any given job. There is also a margin reality worth remembering. The gap between what you pay a designer hourly and what you bill the client is significant. A designer has to genuinely blow past the estimate before the agency starts losing money on a job. Time tracking surfaces that before it becomes a problem. For agencies taking on new project types, time data is particularly valuable. You may not need to track obsessively once a project type becomes familiar, but the first several times through, that data builds the foundation for accurate future estimates. Scope changes mid-project are another trigger. When a client alters direction, tracking resumes so overages can be documented and billed. The broader point: you can always decide how much to bill or write off if you end up over budget. You cannot make that call intelligently without knowing what actually happened. When no time sheets makes sense Agencies who have successfully converted to a no-time-sheets culture have a few things in common. Management is less concerned with employees logging hours than with accomplishing assigned tasks at a high level of quality. If your culture is driven by micro-managing every moment of the day, or if leadership is uncomfortable with employees using their own judgment about how many hours is too many, abandoning time sheets may not work for you. If the agency's leaders are not committed to the model, no process will work efficiently. Production has a good-to-excellent track record for tight estimating and solid internal time management. If your creative and production people reliably bring projects in on time and on budget, and your estimators know how to build in enough range to give the agency some room, you can do fine without daily time sheets. If your estimating is inconsistent and you routinely need to adjust final bills, it is too soon to stop tracking. Fix the estimating first. Your clients perceive you as a strategic partner and willingly pay your flat invoices because they reflect your value, not your cost. If you are a vendor in the eyes of your clients, you will probably be tracking time for the foreseeable future. Strategic partners have more leeway. Accountability is built into your proposals and processes, and clients trust you to estimate accurately and deliver consistently. Your team focuses on what each person contributes rather than how many hours they log. If your people get along well, support each other, and are genuinely engaged in the work, removing time sheets can give the culture more freedom to be creative and collaborative. Time sheets make some employees very conscious of others' long lunches, late arrivals, and early departures. That friction is real and it costs something. There is also the simple reality that time sheets create a punching-the-clock mentality that runs counter to how most creative people think about their work. Most agency staff today operate with an always-on mentality, integrating work across hours and devices in ways that don't map neatly onto quarter-hour increments. Removing time sheets reduces administrative load and daily friction, which can make the agency a better place to work. The bottom line Understand how your agency culture actually works, and whether you have the right people and processes in place, before attempting to move away from time tracking. In the end, the devotion to the clock may be a matter of operational maturity more than necessity. The agencies that drop time sheets successfully have usually earned the right to do so.

Are Time Sheets Passé?

Second Wind

12/13/2025

Periodically, we speak with agency owners and managers who are struggling with the issue of time tracking. Many agencies still bill by employee hours, but the trend has been shifting ...

Five Ways to Inspire Teamwork Among the Troops

Second Wind

12/12/2025

Looking out for No. 1. It is an adage that many people keep close to their hearts in their personal and professional lives.

But all successful advertising agency businesses are ...

You Gotta Have That Old Creative Flow

Second Wind

12/11/2025

Agency principals often sense a gap in their creative department before they can name it. Is it another art director or designer they need? An idea person? Some combination of ...

Be an Exhibitionist: The Agency Portfolio

Second Wind

12/5/2025

We are what we do. It is our book, more than anything else, that attracts new business leads, enhances recruiting of talented creative employees, and encourages clients to trust us ...

A Sound Design: Aural Branding Best Practices

Second Wind

12/3/2025

You have convinced your client that aural branding is an important tool in building their product's or service's brand recognition. Now, how do you go about creating a ...

The Ancient Secret of Great Creative

Second Wind

12/3/2025

Bill Bernbach, the founder of Doyle Dane Bernbach, once said that for advertising to work, it has to leave the recipient of the message a little happier. In other words ...