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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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Projectus Interruptus

Second Wind

10/7/2025

Clients are becoming more impertinent all the time. They are increasingly involved in the production of their projects beyond approvals, and it is not healthy for agencies. It costs agencies ...

Where (Or Who) Are Your Workflow Bottlenecks?

Deborah Budd

12/18/2024

An efficient workflow is a critical portion of the typical ad agency’s day. When things are running smoothly, the day can be a pleasure… but when the speed bumps ...

A Well-Oiled Machine: Using Agency Culture to Improve Workflow

Deborah Budd

5/3/2024

One of the biggest challenges a smaller agency faces is the transition between being small, agile and process-light, to having so many people, clients and projects that process becomes a ...

Clients Are Part of the Workflow Process

Second Wind

1/14/2024

One of the great challenges of the advertising agency business is working with clients whose workflow methods—and priorities—are often very different from our own. Many clients hand projects ...

How Much Process Is Enough? Workflow Management in a Modern Agency

Deborah Budd

7/6/2023

Of all the issues smaller and mid-sized ad agencies struggle with, workflow management is the issue we hear about most often. Every week we field queries from our members regarding ...

Step by Step: The Workflow Brainstorming Session

Tony Mikes

6/14/2023

One of the best ways to make sure your daily operating system is in good order is to conduct a workflow brainstorming session with all—or at least most—of ...

Why People Are the Key to Better Workflow

Dawn Travelstead

5/6/2023

Now more than ever, efficient workflow is critical to the success of an agency. Without it, even the most creative firm may find itself in a state of chaos.

You ...

Winning Over the Resistance: System Adoption

Second Wind

3/2/2023

You might think, in this era of streaming, smart phones, blogging, podcasting, and cloud computing, that the entire world has moved to the fabled paperless society. But agency owners across ...

Culture Eats System: Making Workflow Work Through Culture

Tony Mikes

2/8/2023

At Second Wind, we regularly work with members whose agencies need to have better daily operating and workflow systems. Over the years, we have been involved with very fast-growing agencies ...

The Lure of Lean Workflow: Decluttering Ad Agency Systems

Deborah Budd

1/26/2022

Decluttering is a certifiable trend. After decades of acquisition, Baby Boomers have embraced downsizing and clearing out, looking for the simpler lifestyle of their parents. Once upon a time, we ...

Agency Stress Test

Second Wind

1/10/2022

Let''s be honest, the past two years have been stressful. Stressful for agency owners, stressful for clients, stressful for employees, just plain stressful all around. From adapting to new ...

Keep the Morning Open for Meetings

Second Wind

1/6/2022

Make no mistake, business is tough these days. Many of us are on the go from morning ’til night, especially in service businesses. In today’s market, client’s demand ...

Evolving a More Agile Workflow

Deborah Budd

5/23/2018

We have written about “agility” in the agency sphere in the past. And with each new technological innovation, agility becomes ever more essential to daily workflow. Are you too wedded ...