Startups: Punch the clock!
As a teen, my friend Rich and I agreed that we’d work hard to avoid “real jobs” – those hourly waged card-punching jobs that our friends had. I indeed dreaded lining up to find my paper card to punch in a work start and a stop time. Rage against the timeclock machine!
The only thing I liked about punch clocks was Elvis Costello’s 1983 Punch the Clock. But that’s different.
After a couple decades of high-tech culture and startup zest, the very idea of punch clocks seemed rather grotesque.
I was wrong.
You and your team are dedicating so much time and effort to product and business development, that you’re not bothering tracking those hours. This early work is important to track – in terms of contribution, but more important to possible R&D tax credits. In Canada we have SRED, the US has R&D tax incentives… etc.
So how do you track? SaaS comes to the rescue. Timesheet vendors offer hosted solutions. One of the top companies is Dovico which offers packages for about $10 per user / per month. There are dozens more.
Why should your startup implement this early on? To capture the incredible effort it takes to start a company and build software. Don’t sell yourself short!
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