Maybe it’s the cost accountant in me, but I love time tracking. It’s akin to tracking your weight when you’re losing those extra pounds. You need the data to know the results.

As a growing small business, it’s time to start thinking past paper-based or homegrown timesheet systems, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, or multiple installed time collection systems that produce inconsistent data. Without timesheet software, it is very difficult to understand project costs. via How Small Business Can Benefit from Time Tracking.

An even better analogy would be to consider time tracking a way of creating a recipe. To know how much sugar to put into the batch of cookie mix you need to know how much you put before. Sometimes the cookies were too sweet or not sweet enough. Once you get the right mix you can reproduce it on a regular basis.