If there's one thing that everyone knows about business metrics, it has to be this often-quoted advice: “what you measure, you will improve.”
While true, there are some metrics that just aren’t worth measuring. A good business owner knows how to choose and measure the metrics that will improve core aspects of his or her business.
Harvest time tracking and invoicing software contains several such metrics. Let's take a look at some of the most useful Harvest metrics:
Open Projects
The metric provides a quick look at your current workload. It’s important to track the number of open projects because it will allow you to more efficiently manage your team and projects.
Hours by Task MTD
In essence, this gauge tracks where your team is spending time. This metric is often overlooked, but it’s so powerful when you’re looking to improve team efficiency.
Without much effort on your part, you can identify the categories your team spends too much time on. Plus, if you filter by Technician you can identify training opportunities and even the ideal task fit for an employee.
Amount Uninvoiced
Monitoring the amount of hours that haven’t been invoiced yet will help you identify an issue that could affect monthly income. You’ll want to ensure all your hours are being invoiced and paid for.
Stale Projects
Stale Projects are typically projects in which hours have not been entered for 7 days or more. It is important to identify these and figure out why they are stale and what needs to be done to get them moving again.
Projects Over Budget
Projects that have required more hours than originally budgeted for should be a major red flag. You’ll want to monitor this in real-time to identify any potential issues and remedy them as fast as possible.
Hours vs Budget
This gauge is primarily used to track progress on your currently open projects, but can also be used to highlight when you’re over budget on a particular project.
BrightGauge brings best practices to our customers with our dashboard templates. Each template is made by our Data Team to give you the best possible look into your business. Learn more about Harvest here.