Time Tracking with Chrometa

Earlier this week, we penned a guest piece for Small Firm Success, a great resource center for small law firms, based on our findings from a time tracking survey we’ve been conducting with attorneys since early summer.

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Hate Tracking Time?  You’re Not Alone!

If you really hate trying to keep track of your time – at least you’re not alone. Since June, we surveyed over 250 solo and small firm attorneys, many of whom we had live conversations with as well, about their time tracking habits. To sum up their sentiment – tracking time is the worst part of their jobs

Accounting for Billable Time

First we asked each attorney what percentage of their billable time are they able to account for. In other words, how much legitimate billable time is lost due to interruptions, multi-tasking, and an inability to remember what they did after a few days had gone by?

For folks who make a living billing by the hour, the answers might surprise you. They estimated that, on average, they are able to account for only 67% of their billable time – in other words, attorneys are working 3 hours just to bill 2. And check out the breakdown below – almost 40% of respondents believe they are accounting for less than 60% of their legitimate billable time!

Billable Time Captured by Attorneys

Read the rest of this piece at Small Firm Success…

Good news!  By popular request, we’ve added the ability to export your Chrometa time tracking data to Microsoft Excel.

This was released as a free update earlier this week.  If you’re new to Chrometa, any trial copy you download will now contain this feature, located under the File menu.

For existing Chrometa users, please follow these steps to upgrade:

1. Go to Help – Check for Updates
2. Download the Updater
3. Exit Chrometa
4. Run the Updater
5. Relaunch Chrometa

Exporting Chrometa to Excel

An Excel sheet will launch, with data from the date(s) that you have selected in Chrometa.  It’s a pure WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) export – dates and filters are preserved and placed in the Excel sheet.

And there are three tabs that contain your data – in this order respectively:

1. Active Time
2. Away Time
3. Timestamps

As always, please call or email with questions!

Tune in for an exclusive interview with Brett Owens (Chrometa CEO) and Ari Kaplan on the ROI of time capture and other trends in Legal Technology.

Chrometa introduces version 2.0 of its time capture software to help professionals maximize the potential revenue from the time they spend working for their clients.

Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) August 11, 2009 — Chrometa LLC, creator of productivity and time capture tools, today announced the availability version 2.0 of its automatic time capture software. Chrometa automatically captures all computer-based billable activity to help lawyers and other professionals make sure they get paid for every second of billable work they perform.

In addition to the time tracking capabilities included in earlier versions, Chrometa 2.0 includes additional “smart,” capabilities that remember previous actions and classifications of tasks. For example, if a user drags and drops a specific activity such as “contract review” to a billing category, the next time the user works on that item, Chrometa will group it in the appropriate category. The result is that Chrometa captures and categorizes all billable activity, with no effort or data entry required on the user’s part.

“Ease of use and quick time reconciliation were the driving factors for Chrometa 2.0,” said Brett Owens, CEO and co-founder of Chrometa LLC. “Our mission is to simplify our customer’s lives, so we made Chrometa smarter. Comprehensive time capture and fast categorization by account/client matter are very important to our users – and thanks their great feedback and input, we’ve drastically improved these features in Chrometa 2.0.”

How Chrometa Works:

• Chrometa is a software tool that runs in the background of a PC, without interfering with established work flow and routine;
• Chrometa automatically records the amount of time spent editing documents, writing emails or even conducting research online;
• Chrometa’s logs contain only relevant activity; keystrokes and content are not stored, to protect client and attorney information and confidentiality;
• Files, folders and URLs can be tagged with client accounts or client matter numbers to easily filter work history;
• Real-time activity logs can be accessed at the desktop for quick time reconciliation

Confidentiality:

The ability to manage client confidentiality is built into Chrometa with unique features that allow users to track specific activities that the professional chooses, or even block other activities that users would not like tracked. Also, the new release includes the ability to delete activities.

Pricing and Availability

Chrometa 2.0 is available now for a free 30-day trial (no credit card required) at Chrometa or call (916) 254-0260 to speak with a company representative. Chrometa is available immediately for a $99 one-time fee, which includes free email support. Multi-user licenses and contracts are available. Chrometa has dedicated representatives standing by to assist with product installation and support.

About Chrometa LLC

Chrometa LLC, headquartered in Sacramento, CA, is in the business of saving time and maximizing efficiency. Chrometa LLC’s time tracking tools are utilized by high-paid professionals to enhance revenue and gross billings. Please visit www.chrometa.com for more information.

If humans ever split into different species, lawyers will likely evolve into giant heads with no bodies. After all, you only need your body to transfer your thoughts to your computer. Otherwise, it serves no particular function other than creating more lawyers, which you could no doubt outsource. But for now, you may as well make sure you get paid for the long hours you spend hunched in front of your computer.

Chrometa 2.0 … in One Sentence

Chrometa automatically captures and organizes the time you spend on your PC, facilitating your ability to accurately bill all your time.

The Killer Feature

As soon as the “ink” dried on our previous report on Chrometa 1.1, the company announced version 2.0. As you may recall, we pointed to Chrometa’s ability to log all your computer activity as its killer feature. You can later transform these log entries into time entries in your billing system.

This automatic capture still exists, but the company has added a second killer feature — drag and drop, which further automates the time capture process.

You can now drag one or more activities recorded by Chrometa and drop them on the appropriate client/matter account. Chrometa is smart enough to remember this action so that next time you perform similar work (e.g., editing the same document), Chrometa will automatically enter the time spent in that client/matter account.

“We found that lawyers spend an average of 2.6 hours each week reconciling their time,” Chrometa CEO Brett Owens told us. “Chrometa’s automatic time capture and now drag and drop take a significant bite out of this process.”

Other Notable Features

Befitting its new version number, Chrometa includes many other new features. For example, you can now capture meeting, phone, and other time spent away from your PC, and categorize it by client/matter. This form of tracking requires manual entry, but Chrometa created a quick entry tool for this purpose. The upshot is that you can now see all your activities in Chrometa.

By popular demand, Chrometa features improved categorization of computer activities. For example, it can list email messages individually by subject line along with the accompanying time spent reading or writing the message. Chrometa also supports advanced tagging of both Word and WordPerfect files, providing similar granularity down to each individual document. When you’re ready to transfer the time entries you’ve captured into your billing system, Chrometa can sort them by client/matter.

Equally notable in the new version are the redesigned user interface (see accompanying screenshot) and improved security tools. You can now password protect Chrometa, delete activities, and remove historical data.

What Else Should You Know?

Chrometa 2.0 runs in Windows XP and Vista, and sells for an introductory price of $99, which includes unlimited email support. You can try it for free for 30 days. Learn more about Chrometa 2.0.

In the old days, working on a client’s matter involved fetching a folder from a file cabinet. While you might receive a phone call about another matter, multitasking as we know it today didn’t really exist. Thanks to the combination of email and computers that can run many programs simultaneously, you fly from task to task on different matters, making it challenging if not impossible to accurately track your billable time using old-fashioned methods. It’s time to track your time differently.

Chrometa 1.1 … in One Sentence
Chrometa 1.1 is a billing program that automatically captures and categorizes the billable time you spend on your PC.

The Killer Feature
Although time tracking for many lawyers has long since moved from a ledger to computer software, the method remains the same. Lawyers must actively enter the time they spend on tasks. Timers can help, but they too essentially operate manually.

Read the rest of this piece on the TechnoLawyer Blog…

Looking for a simple, easy-to-use alternative to Microsoft Outlook Journal? Check out our latest demo video, because Chrometa may be exactly the product you’re looking for.

Chrometa – Capture your time from JP Ren on Vimeo.

Lately we’ve been contacted by an increasing number of former Journal users, looking for a pragmatic alternative solution to automatically capture their time. If this sounds familiar, you may want to take advantage of our free 30-day trial offer, and start reclaiming all of your lost time today.