Almost every studio knows its revenue per client and almost none knows its cost per client. The gap is hours. Without them, the client who pays best and the client who eats three weekends look identical on the invoice.
Nobody fills in a timesheet at the end of the week honestly, so don’t ask anyone to. RecReview attaches a timer to the task, and the discipline is only to press it.
Make it a reflex
Start the timer when you open the project and stop it when you close it. Only one timer runs at a time, so starting one somewhere else stops the other and your hours never double-count.
Log the ten-minute sessions too. Those are the ones that make a client look cheap and feel expensive.
Set Estimated hours on the task, because the comparison is the point and a logged hour with nothing to compare it against is trivia.
Time subtasks when a task has phases worth separating, like script, edit and colour. That is where you find out which step actually overruns.
Note: Starting the timer from a card needs a video attached to the task. If you get “Could not start timer: task without linked video”, upload or link a version first.
What the hours are worth reading for
Metrics turns the timer into numbers you can make decisions with: Hours by client, Avg hours / video, Estimate accuracy and Team productivity. Three months of those answer questions you currently argue about, like whether the retainer is priced right, whether one client’s rounds cost double, and whether the estimate you keep giving has ever been correct.
The hours also travel. The delivery email’s changelog quotes the time tracked on the task, so the client sees the effort alongside the cut without you writing a defensive paragraph.
Start before it is perfect
The first month of tracking will be incomplete and it is still the most useful month you will have, because it is the first time the numbers exist at all. Press play and fix the habit as you go rather than waiting for a process everyone follows perfectly.
What’s next
Track time on a task covers the timer, and Break a task into subtasks covers timing one step at a time.