Form For Keeping Track Of Weekly Hours, Expenditures, Etc

72chevy4x4

I have plastic bin mounted on my dash full of index cards and a few pencils. time for the day, week or project notes/reminders and shopping lists can be written out, stuck in my pocket or attached to my clipboard (the kind you open up for folder storage).

it's been working well for me, but with small volume it's ok. wondering if anyone has tips on how to keep track of daily/weekly notes. I created a weekly time sheet awhile back where I have a column for the project name and task (along w/ typcial columns) to my record keeping.

what are your tricks to keeping track of info?

Aggie67

I have 34 open inquiries and projects on my plate, 4 of which are active. The rest are either in the process of getting inspected or in "buy out" mode (ordering all materials).

There is no way I could expect myself to carry everything around with me to do track everything. My system is simple enough, but it requires a daily and weekly process, and time slots to assess and execute the tasks. Each job or inquiry gets its own unique number. Every note I take, every scrap of paper I generate, every drawing I receive, every material receipt that gets handing, everything gets the project number written on it in red ink in the lower left corner of the piece of paper. Each day, those pieces of paper get collected and either filed or processed. The foremen know to put the job number on every time ticket. Each week all of the materials receipts and purchasing docs get put together with the time tickets to track job hours and costs. My office has a shelf right behind my desk with every job file, in numerical order, for the last two years. Even jobs I lost the bid on. If it's insurance related or fuel or company-wide expense stuff, it gets an admin account number. And those get processed to their destinations.

I have a spiral bound notebook that acts as a diary/journal. I write a lot of stuff in there. Everything: notes, phone call transcripts, stuff I need to do, sketches from walk throughs. Same deal though. Every line or sketch block gets a number assigned to it. At the end of the week I photo copy the sheets and the copies go into the files with the pertinent info high-lighted.

Every project related e-mail starts with the job number the first thing in the subject line. Every word file, excel file, autocad, PDF, you name it, gets named with the job number first. Every buy sheet I put together gets faxed, with the job number on it.

Early on, I gave up on trying to have everything at my fingertips or in my head. I just let go of that need for control. Now, having a place to look is enough for me. If I know the job number, it's easy to find, and since everything that flows through the office has a number, it's all very easy to process and put in a place. As far as remembering everything that you have to do, I gave up on trying to memorize or keep it all in a pad. Just too much. I use a piece of software called i-Lore ProjectTrack for project set up and management. It acts as my task manager and task record keeper. I've been trying everything under the sun. There was an Outlook add-on called Action Project Manager that was awesome, but I think the guy that wrote it stopped supporting it a year ago and won't answer his phone, so I gave up on that.

So I walk around with my pad. I have my laptop at the very least inside my truck, but it goes with me everywhere my truck does. And I have the paper file system at the office.

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