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wlyonsatl
Community Member

TimeTracker needs to be more accurate

Based on my many years working on Elance and now Upwork, I have a pretty good understanding of how TimeTracker works and the weaknesses of its functionality. Kudos to everyone who contributed to this thread:

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/TIME-TRACKING-NOT-SYNCHRONIZED/m-p/407763

 

Today I was working on an urgent, short-term project and needed to keep close track of my time so as not to go over the budget I had agreed with the client.

 

I regularly work with two monitors, so I can easily refer to or work on information on one monitor while referring to or working on information on the other monitor. Using only one monitor would make me a lot less efficient, raising the price of my services to clients and in some cases making some common elements of my projects all but impossible to do efficiently.

 

One of the windows I always keep open is TimeTracker on my smaller monitor. Today I looked at TimeTracker and, in the instant I looked the total billed time for the day for that project went from 2:20 to 2:40, skipping 2:30 entirely. (I also always track time using an external timer, and 2:40 was the right number.)

 

This is inexcusable. I shouldn't have to worry about the accuracy of my time booked on my clients' projects. Close is OK in horseshoes; it's not OK when money is involved.

 

TimeTracker needs to be brought into the 21st century and tracking time accurately in real time, so both clients and freelancers know that a minute worked is a minute paid, not 20 minutes worked is zero minutes paid (which is what would have happened if I had closed TimeTracker a few seconds before it turned from 2:20 to 2:40.)

17 REPLIES 17
varungs
Community Member

The time tracker is intrusive and not a normal way to work, but it certainly makes things a lot safer for clients.

Now, since the client is already watching what I do at 10 minute intervals, why doesn't Upwork start taking screenshots at 1 minute intervals too? It would greatly improve billing accuracy and would make the whole time tracking process a lot less confusing. There's no room for an argument like "that's too intrusive" because the time tracker is already inherently intrusive. Why not take it to the next level and make it as granular as possible (without disrupting CPU processes)? 

I'd much rather bill a client for the work I do, rather than billing them for less than what I did or billing them for more than what I did because of the weird 10 minute segment thing.

lizablau
Community Member


Varun G wrote:

Now, since the client is already watching what I do at 10 minute intervals, why doesn't Upwork start taking screenshots at 1 minute intervals too? 

 

Oh gawd no!  That's the worst idea I've ever heard. 


 

varungs
Community Member


Lisa B wrote:

Varun G wrote:

Now, since the client is already watching what I do at 10 minute intervals, why doesn't Upwork start taking screenshots at 1 minute intervals too? 

 

Oh gawd no!  That's the worst idea I've ever heard. 


 


Care to elaborate? They're already doing it every 10 minutes and it messes up billing for small clients, small freelancers, and small projects. Why not make it more granular?

There would be degrees of how intrusive something is. And taking screenshots of your screen every min would not only be that but could also come with some proffessional risk. What If one of your imatre friends sends you something and notifications are on. Those dont disturb me when I work but if they get caught on a screengrab that could cause problems. 


Christian U wrote:

There would be degrees of how intrusive something is. And taking screenshots of your screen every min would not only be that but could also come with some proffessional risk. What If one of your imatre friends sends you something and notifications are on. Those dont disturb me when I work but if they get caught on a screengrab that could cause problems. 


Personally, when I work, I close all of my messaging apps so that I can focus entirely on the client's project. I guess you're right in that people who do other stuff in between won't be happy with higher levels of scrutiny. To each their own.

petra_r
Community Member


Varun G wrote:

Lisa B wrote:

Varun G wrote:

Now, since the client is already watching what I do at 10 minute intervals, why doesn't Upwork start taking screenshots at 1 minute intervals too? 

 

Oh gawd no!  That's the worst idea I've ever heard. 


 


Care to elaborate? They're already doing it every 10 minutes and it messes up billing for small clients, small freelancers, and small projects. Why not make it more granular?


Can you imagine what it would do to Upwork's servers if suddenly 10 times as many screenshots along with their associated data had to be processed? 

Hi Will. I'm not sure about this, but it seems to me that the total time for today figure in the tracker isn't necessarily an accurate reflection of what's been clocked up. So, while that figure may have gone up by 20 minutes in one leap, that probably doesn't mean that the tracker actually clocked up two segments at once. I never take much notice of that figure.

 

If I want to see how much time I've clocked up, I look in the work diary. Even then, I wouldn't assume that the work diary is always up to date. It might take some time to be updated. I don't think you can expect to be able to stop after you've clocked up exactly 3 hours, say. I think you will have to accept that you might go a little over, and then have to delete a segment to get the exact time you want.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Will, 

I'm trying to understand your concern better, and would like to clarify if you meant you didn't see that the Dekstop App displayed 2:30, and instead, 2:20 jumped to 2:40? If you check your Work Diary, is there any screengrab noted for the time between 2:20 and 2:40? 

I can also check this for you, and if you would like me to do so, please share the Contract ID so that I can look into this further.


~ Avery
Upwork
wlyonsatl
Community Member

Hi, Avery.

 

Thank you for the quick response.

 

The contract ID is 23552015.

 

This was a rush job that started at 7:54 PM Saturday (GMT - Upwork time), though no time should have logged other than five tracked sessions Sunday (yesterday) totaling just a bit over the project’s four hour limit (which the client upped from its original three hour limit).

 

Looking at the logs, all five sessions are contiguous 10-minute intervals. I didn’t write down my local time when the TimeTracker clocked from 2:20 to 2:40 (skipping over 2:30), but it must have been on or around the time of the 4:50 PM screen shot in the log.

Hi Will,

 

Just to be on the safe side, could you please submit a ticket directly from the Desktop app with the details you`ve shared here? Our team will be able to investigate your logs further and share more details about what your tracked time and your contract. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork

Will do, Goran.

Today I had another dose of serious inaccuracy from TimeTracker.

 

With TimeTracker running during a short client phone call, I heard and saw TimeTracker take a log photo about 2 minutes in and then another during minute 8. The call ended and I logged off at the turn of minute 9.

 

Wondering why two screen shots were made during one 9-minute period, I checked to see how much time TimeTracker logged for this 9 minute session, only to see the client is being billed for 20 minutes!

 

When clients call me, I can't tell them, "Would you mind if I call you back at exactly 10 minutes (or 20 minutes or 30 minutes, etc) after the hour? That's the only way Upwork can accurately log my time spent talking with you."

 

And neither I nor my clients should have to  constantly double-check that TimeTracker is accurate. Considering that I regularly have short conversations with the 10 - 15 clients I may have at any one time, I wouldn't want them to think I am double-billing them for time spent on their projects. 

 

C'mon, Upwork. Fix this system. It needs to track real time, not some loose collection of random chunks of time that we have to all hope averages out to about the correct total time spent over the course of time for each project.

 

I expect my clients to pay me exactly what they owe me, not an amount rounded to the nearest $10. They should have similar expectations for the time I log on their projects.

Will, something very similar happened to me yesterday. I even took a screenshot of it:



This was my first billable of the day. Granted, I worked for a few hours after that which evened it out, but if I hadn't, the client would've been billed for 5 minutes of work at the price of 20 minutes of work. That's extortionate. Not a huge deal for longer projects, but quite problematic whilst dealing with small chunks of work.

Hi Will,

 

The app tracks time in 10-minute segments and a screenshot is taken at a random moment during each 10-minute segment. So it is possible by design that if you started tracking at the end of one segment, it will take one screenshot, then take one more at the beginning of the next segment right before you stop tracking. Then the app will record two 10-minute segment for the session. As Varun pointed out, it usually evens out over longer periods of time and freelancers are also able to delete segments with lower activity levels from their Work Diary.

Upwork time-tracking, billing, reporting and dispute system for hourly contracts is based on recording 10-minute segments and I'm not aware of any immediate plans to change that. I do appreciate your feedback though and will share it with the team.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Hi, Valeria.

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

I didn't expect Upwork would make any changes to this system - management has much bigger fish to fry.

petra_r
Community Member


Will L wrote:

 

One of the windows I always keep open is TimeTracker on my smaller monitor. Today I looked at TimeTracker and, in the instant I looked the total billed time for the day for that project went from 2:20 to 2:40, skipping 2:30 entirely. (I also always track time using an external timer, and 2:40 was the right number.)


 

 If 2:40 was billed, as you say, then you get paid for 2:40 - which you say is the correct amount of time that should be billed? What is the issue? 

 

In general, when you use two monitors on the same device, you want to make sure the tracker is set to capture activity on all monitors, not just the one the tracker is active on.

 

Note that by default it is set to only capture activity on one.

Screenshot at Jan 20 08-43-06.png

 

 

 


petra_r
Community Member

deleted as weird duplicate post. Sorry

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