Were you one of those holdouts on acquiring a cell phone around the turn of the 21st century? I was. My first fling with a mobile phone brought frustration (not always remembering how to use it), humiliation (when I forgot to turn it off in a public place) and downright abhorrence (when I felt so all alone with this dreadful creature that was complicating my life, like a baby that wouldn’t stop crying). So it was with great relief (to me, not to my 20’s something kids) when the phone inadvertently took a cycle through the washer. Fast forward 10 years, I now feel entirely different about my cell phone. One daughter has an iPhone, the other has a Blackberry and mine, well, I love to text both of them. And interestingly enough, we three were all primed and ready when we installed a web-based, cloud-competing mobile time tracking app into our phones.

You see we are all entrepreneurs in our own right and this time tracker has been a handy tool for tracking and managing our time. We can clock in and out in real time using job codes to differentiate one job from another, much to our client’s appreciation. When we leave one job site for another, we are no longer on their "dime." And if we choose to stop for a bean burrito at Baja Fresh around lunchtime, all the better. I’m not concerned about overcharging the customer or losing a client for inaccurate billing. I’m also not bound to a punch clock or hand-written time sheets that inadvertently fall between my seats or get stepped on by the dog. I can competently and accurately track my hours.

And my time tracking software has a component allowing me to create the schedule associated with each job so as soon as I access my online timesheet, I have a to-do list at my beck and call. That same software will generate the necessary reports to record what’s been done and even generate invoices for me based on my input. I love the flexible, customizable easy reporting this system promotes.

And one of the greatest developments in the last decade with the proliferation of user friendly apps, this time tracker is easy set up and easy to use. It can be integrated seamlessly with what I have plus safe and secure data storage. I can depend on daily backups. And I chose a company that could prove they held a high user satisfaction rating with 24/7/365 support.

Back in 2000, when I bought my first cell phone, I had to sign a two year contract, locking me into a product I was unfamiliar with and had limited (at best) tech support. Three cheers for this leap year! The good time tracking professionals don’t require contracts because they know their product sells itself. And they offer 14 day full free trial on all accounts. They can promise 99.9% uptime and truly the biggest bang for just a few bucks. For all that an automated time tracker offers, a monthly plan is economical and wildly reasonable. Who wouldn’t choose to "go for it"?

One of my best friends is 95 years young. She has a cell phone (hung around her neck on lovely granny strings). I don’t have many friends without one anymore. I hope that’s the way of the time tracker. I hope more and more entrepreneurs and business professionals realize how much more competent they will become and how at ease they will be employing the use of a web-based, cloud-competing, mobile time tracker. It’s a whole lot simpler than its name sounds.