I strive to always make the best use of my time, especially when doing work-related stuff; ensuring I complete more projects, tasks and milestones faster. This does not only help me to achieve business growth, I also get more time to relax and enjoy life.

Many people do not measure their efficiency and therefore never know how much they could gain with increased productivity.

I recently installed tracking software on my computer so that I could track my productivity. This way, I could focus on business-related stuff and see how efficient I really am.

Below are the results, verifying that I am almost 70% productive during the week. It was interesting to learn that I am most productive in the afternoons.

My efficiency over a two week period

On analyzing further, I realize that I still waste my time on things that I have absolute control over; meaning I could still easily increase my productivity.

According to this, I spend 14 hours on entertainment; browsing through Facebook, YouTube and other media avenues. This seems great but still shows that there is room for improvement. On the other hand, these results still show great efficiency and I’m really pleased with myself.

Do you want to know more about efficiency? If so, look out for my blog post soon where I’ll share more information on this.

So, why am I talking about efficiency?

I am going to give you some genuine reasons why you are not achieving your goals. However – a word of caution at this point – many business owners and freelancers find these make for uncomfortable reading and possibly may find themselves feeling just a little “hot-under-the-collar”.

Why aren’t you getting things done?

Apparently, we were not able to get things done in a better and faster way because instead of looking into the core of the problem, we build defences to justify our errors. We tend to make excuses that would save us from the blame.

Here are some of the reasons why we do not accomplish what we set out to achieve:

• No assigned workspace. Most freelancers consider their own workspace a must-have. It can be messy and time-consuming to be constantly moving work to one place and then to another resulting in frustration.  This is more evident when hot desking and remote working is in play for the employed. This also has an effect of forming a routine. Human beings are habitual creatures. If you have established good work habits, they will serve you well. Having no work routine can slow you down. Face each day as if you are “going out to the office” even if in reality, you are only going into the spare room.

• Lack of focus. Do you suffer from a lack of focus – if you find yourself flitting around from one task to the next without achieving anything you may indeed be lacking in focus. Develop a good, sound work-plan then follow it.   At times interruptions are no good – if they are caused by demanding clients, learn to say “no” once in a while. Taking time to rediscover your rhythm and therefore productivity is difficult. I find that social media can be a real de-focusing tool. It is possible to lose your entire day on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Thanks to social media, we have more opportunities to be social and distracted than ever before. If you are guilty of this, perhaps it is a good idea to invest in some blocking software.

• Lack of the right equipment. Perhaps you are missing a crucial software or hardware tool that you need. Tools that can drastically improve workflows include Google Apps, Google Docs and of course Skylight.

• No clear Project scope. Do you really know what your client wants you to achieve for them? A surprising number of freelancers do not have a clear scope for their project needs. Solution is to simply ask!

• Illness. If you have been neglecting your health to get those extra hours, fatigue might be in play here. Nobody does their best work when they are sick. If you do not feel well, focus on your health issues so that you can get your work done. Take time to get well – then forge ahead again. Tiredness. Burning the candle at both ends can seem a great way to find more time in your day; however, sleep deprivation actually slows you down and can even make you ill.

• You just do not like what you are doing. Disliked tasks can become elephants in the room and although they may not be difficult, take on lives on their own in the fevered imagination of freelancers. Tackle things immediately when they come in – it is guaranteed they will not become any easier and will not mature well like a good wine.

• Overbooked and overwhelmed. It is not a good idea to take on more work than you can realistically handle – learn to say no occasionally when you realize that your workload is becoming stressful.

• Unhealthy attitude. Do you find yourself angry with your clients or your situation? A bad attitude can affect the way you do your work even at sub-conscious level effects with your client dealings. As your business grows so does your network, past clients or colleagues asking for “just a little favor” – turn what, on the surface look like minor tasks into major headaches with little or no reward. Again, learning to say “no” is not easy but sometimes essential for your own well-being.

• Depression and stress. Do you struggle to motivate yourself every single day? Do you find more and more reasons to simply stay in bed? Do you lack enthusiasm for tasks you used to love? If this has been going on for some time, depression may be the culprit. You may need to seek some professional help. Stress can turn a pleasant day into a nightmare. It stops you thinking logically and panic can set in. It can even, left to its own devices, lead down the road to depression. Take time out sometimes – even a half hour walk in the fresh air may do the trick.

• Your own boss. Some freelancers and entrepreneurs find that not being accountable to anyone but themselves is a real struggle. As a freelancer, you are primarily responsible to yourself for getting your work done – be a firm employer.

• No Milestones and goals. Without goals, you may not get anywhere – goal-setting is an excellent way to improve yourself and your freelancing business. You can use Skylight’s Project Milestones and tasks to break larger goals in to tangible chunks.

• You are just not taking on the right work. It is one of the reasons we choose to work as we do; freedom to select the work we do. However, we can be guilty of choosing projects not best suited to our skills – be careful when selecting projects.  If you are as precious about the quality of project delivered as I am than taking on the right project can make that much difference in getting it done right.

• Lack of passion and drive. We are creative and so to obtain the most productivity, creativity has a large part to play in our work. Like a lover, business owners and freelancers needs passion to keep the fire and flare alive. Losing passion can cause a dip in productivity when a project becomes simply a chore instead of a love.

• Procrastination. It should come as no surprise that putting things off can keep you from being productive.

• Multi-tasking. We are constantly bombarded with cliche’s like multi-tasking. As freelancers and business owners, we can become stuck in the mind-set that multi-tasking is a good thing. Research however has shown that far from being good, multi-tasking can actually harm productivity.  Focus on what needs to be done and when and stick to your plans.

• Not asking for help. DIY – freelancers are martyrs to it. “Do-it-yourselves” seems to become a mantra and instead of seeking help when required, we actively avoid it. Sometimes however, climbing down from our self-imposed pedestal and asking for the occasional helping-hand is the best and quickest way to get things done and again, can reduce unnecessary stress and worry.

• Effective Time management. A common problem faced by many business owners. There is always more to do than there is time in a working day. Split your work down in to manageable chunks. If you are behind than reflect this on your schedule.  There are many time management options available in Skylight. Prioritize your tasks so that you tackle the most important ones first and do not be tempted to back-track. Full-time business management  and part-time freelancing can be difficult if you do not set aside scheduled time for work. The idea behind highlighting all the various aspects that I think might hinder your progress is to reduce time spent on each individual task and in essence reduce the time you spend on each project!

For the last point, you would ask why? Well, the reasoning is that the more tasks you complete means the more projects will be done, and the faster you can close the project, the more revenue you’ll generate. Hence, we can easily say that closing more jobs or projects effectively and easily is what is going to bring in more cash.

Yes, I know it is difficult especially if you have type A personality who thrives more on perfection in every project, this is only possible when you spend more time on the project, however, time is money.

As a freelancer or a business owners, your monthly income is reliant on how many projects you can successfully close. Essentially this means, more time for yourself or your family and friends; even so, you have more time to learn new skills or improve the old ones.

For business owners it’s about having time to market and network, and also spending leisure time with friends and family

Over all if you think I have missed something please, feel free to leave a comment.

These updates are not always changes that are visible. At times, it will just be a small tweak and sometimes a complete rewrite (refactoring as it’s called in developers world) of existing features. All this is done with an aim to improve the user experience and add value for our business customers.

Each step we take means we get closer to achieving our vision. The vision of providing a comprehensive system that will manage your day to day business activities.

Welcome Notifications Pallet.

The new notifications pallet now provides you with recent Notifications in an accessible part of the Skylight App. You might have already noticed it on the top right of your screen.

To check what notifications you have, just hover your mouse over the ‘Notification’ section, and a pop-up palette comes to life. By default, this pallet shows you the three most recent notifications sent to you from Skylight. You then have an option to select the “show more” option to see older notifications too.

If someone leaves a comment or sends a message via email, remember all this information is relevant to you and is shown in the notifications pallet.

You can also browse over the record that represents the notification. For instance, if someone created a TASK assigned to you, you can browse that task or the team members profile who created it. All this information is now accessible by a single click.

In the above example:

1. Click on the file link will take you to that file.
2. Click on the contact will take you to the contact profile view.
3. Message will take you to that message view.

By default, all the notifications are relevant to the user, so when you are logged in and going through your notifications pallet, you are only seeing notifications relevant to you.

Notifications Emails:

Tips for Happy Browsing:

Another trick we have been suggesting to customers is getting used to “Right Click + Open a New Window or Browser Tab”. When you click any of the BLUE links provided you will be taken to that record in Skylight by leaving the current view.

You might not want this all the time and in some cases it’s necessary to have the current window open while browsing the other data. A simple solution is to get used to using CTRL + Click (pc) and CMD + CLICK (mac). Right mouse button + Click will also do the same trick.

This means you can keep your current browser window open while browsing the related data on another browser window or tab. This saves you having to reload pages after pages.

We hope this update helps you to improve the use of our Skylight service for your business. It will also enable you to reduce the time you take when looking up information and searching through your inbox.

Keep us posted on how you find the new notifications sections, and if there is any feedback, please head to our forum.

Over the last few months some of our customers were reporting slow App performance, specially when dealing with large number of projects with many related records.

Some times these issues were related with a customers computer, older browser or DNS settings on local network. So if you are still having issues please check that you have the most up to date version of the browser, your DNS settings are correct, for us Google DNS settings work the best.

And a large part of it was the recent growth in our customer base, this resulted in increase server capacity being utilize to serve this growth but also required us to do some much needed optimizations.

The recent performance increases are the result of last few months of hard work, many pizza deliveries and late nights.

These updates are still rolling out, so if you find yourself not being able to login or having unexpected results, we will suggest that you clear you browser cache and cookies.

In coming weeks, we’ll be announcing new release and blogs posts with tons of new tutorials. So we welcome your feedback and input to shape these, please use our Skylight help forum or connect with us on Facebook. ]]> http://skylightit.com/2013/03/skylight-business-app-is-now-on-speed/feed/ 0 http://skylightit.com/2012/12/customer-story-clerk-fencing-specialists-in-engineering-high-security-fencing/ http://skylightit.com/2012/12/customer-story-clerk-fencing-specialists-in-engineering-high-security-fencing/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:22:43 +0000 Taimur http://skylightit.com/?p=6458 We have found the implementation of Skylight across our company’s departments as a ‘life saving’ device. After trialling 4 other ‘industry leading’ systems, we came across Skylight and instantly knew it had the correct balance of features to fit our company.

We as a company straddle the manufacturing and construction sectors and so have a production workshop and site personnel providing installation of our products, so we need a versatile system that can adapt for tracking time in different situations and allow for cost analysis of projects using bespoke manufactured and ‘off the shelf’ products.

One of the main advantages that we saw with Skylight against competitor systems was the Accounts section, which could give a very quick overview at both company level yet be project specific if needed of any costs relating to a project.

The support we have received from the development team at Skylight is second to none.

They have been able to help us develop bespoke reports from the standard templates, and have responded rapidly at every request. If you are looking for a system that can plan projects within a department with 2 users or track the activity of 500 remote users across the globe, then no matter what sector you are in, Skylight has something for you.

About Clerk Fencing:

Clerk Fencing are specialists in the supply and installation of all types of security fencing and gates, both for the commercial and residential markets, throughout the UK and Ireland.

Members of the Pro-net network of professional fencing installers, and licenced as Betafence contractors, we also supply a wide range of fabricated products to complement our fencing systems.

Welcome to a Freshly Renewed, and Imrpoved, Time Statuses: Billing, Time logging and Generating Invoices Workflow!

This new update simplifies the whole process.  Before this enhancement, it was, lets say, bit complicated for the user to generate billable invoice from logged hours.  One had to change into the list-view then proceed to select the time range (you could even select all) and then go into the actions menu () and finally choose the “Invoice Selected” option from the drop down to generate an invoice. Few clicks indeed!

The improvement has not only simplified the way Time Billing workflow goes but, we have also added other features and developments to Skylight time management.

The new statuses reveal a sum of hours booked in each status:

Sending items to invoices:(same for Quotes, PO’s)

Following the sequence of the numbered arrangement from the above image.

1 Selecting Contact details:

2 Create a new invoice or add to an existing Invoice:

3 Customise and Group:

Heading:

Separate lines Items:

4 Saved Configurations:

5 Preview:

Imagine doing months, and weeks, worth of project work for your client.  Then imagine creating an invoice and sending your client the bill and anticipating a cheque or electronic transfer. Finally envision waiting for a payment that doesn’t arrive. Just perfect!  When you’re running around chasing unpaid accounts, in addition to creating stress, you spend time that could have been used moving your next project forward.  Time management is crucial. You don’t want to create an environment where you’re involved in a cycle of collecting and waiting, for clients to pay.  Sounds familiar? Skylight is here to relieve you of that worry. We offer you the benefit of integrating our Skylight invoices with PayPal! Making Skylight a perfect solution for freelancers and small businesses.

A number of Skylight users have inquired, for months, about the possibility of us including PayPal integration to the invoices they generate in Skylight. And we agreed; it would be a fabulous feature to add to Skylight offering. Therefore we have now decided to add PayPal to be a part of Skylights growing features and we believe it’s an amazing tool that’ll save you a lot of time.

The PayPal integration is only accessible on freelance, small medium and large accounts. If you are on a free account, you won’t be able to see this PayPal option and will need to upgrade to a higher package. To upgrade your account please follow this link on Skylight knowledge base.

How will  Skylight’s PayPal Integration Help You?

You will be able to distribute your invoices to your clients and get those invoices paid directly into your PayPal account.  This integration means that clients will be able to pay you via debit/credit card or their PayPal account. It’s a really simple process and all you’ll need is a verified PayPal account.

PayPal: Enable the payment Gateway on your account.

To enable PayPal Gateway simply navigate to Accounts > Gateways. Again, if you are on a free account, you will not be able to see the Gateway section.  In order to see this link, you will need to upgrade your account.

Once you arrive at the “Gateways” section, the list of existing gateways will be displayed.  If you are just beginning the process for the first time, this list will be empty.  In order to create a new PayPal Gateway, all you need to do is click on add “+” button as illustrated in the image below.

After you select the add “+” option, you will need to enter the title which will be shown when you select this gateway in your invoices.  Under the “Email” field, ensure that you enter the primary email used for your PayPal account because this is where the payments will be sent.  Again, you will need to have a verified account in PayPal.  Then select default so that this gateway is selected on every new invoice you generate and then click “Save” button.

Now every time you create any new invoice, this PayPal gateway will display as one of the options.  In the case where you had to select the default option, in creating your PayPal gateway, that Gateway will be selected automatically on new a invoice.

The following is an example of a invoice preview page.  Keep in mind that the footers, and headers, and many other features on the invoice are fully customizable.

Any invoice you create, in Skylight, will now have that well-known Paypal “Pay Now” button. From the preview page, you can choose “Send” in order to send the Invoice to the client or another contact.

The resulting message will now have a new tokenized link embedded in the email body, it’s a direct link to the invoice. This link will be able to lead the clients to view their invoices without having to log into Skylight (or having a Skylight user account).  The direct links are randomly generated and will only be viewable by you and the recipient of the email message, or anyone you share this link with.

On receipt of this message client will then click the “Pay Now” Button to send their invoice payment. After choosing this “Pay Now” option, they will be redirected to a PayPal page that contains your invoice details and the amount due for payment.

The PayPal page will allow them the option of paying the invoice via credit card, or debit card, They can also use their PayPal account.

Payments received on your PayPal account

Upon completion, payments will be pulled by Skylight.  Skylight will then compare the original invoice versus the amount received.  Your balance, on your invoice, will automatically show any outstanding payments after the paid amount has been deducted. If the invoice has been paid in full the invoice status will be marked as “Paid” automatically by the system.

Refunds

You may be wondering “What if I issue a refund from PayPal”?  We have you covered here as well! If you issue any refunds, from Paypal, this will all be posted against the invoice that you have in Skylight. So you know exactly what’s been paid, refunded and when.

In Summary

The PayPal service is only accessible if you have a Paid packages on Skylight.  In the case that you have a free account, please consider an upgrade to a higher package and then you’ll see PayPal Gateway option.

Let us know how you find the PayPal integration experience and share your thoughts on our Forum, Twitter and Facebook.

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Those are just a few of the Skylight features that businesses using this web app are constantly working with.  One thing that’s been lacking, in helping businesses manage their accounting needs,  is the ability to generate statements for invoices, quotes and purchase orders.

We are pleased to announce release of accounting statements, now you can produce accounting statements by Client or a Project.

Freelancers and Small Business using Skylight will now have the chance to generate accounting statements for  their project, or client, or better yet, the whole business.  These statements will enable  you to fill in the gaps quicker so you can send out your client accounting information in a timely manner. For example, say you want to find out an up to date outstanding balance for a specific client.

Here is an example of how a client based  invoice statement looks like.

Once you log in, the new accounting statements conveniently reside under the  “Accounts” section. You can  browse to it from Skylight main navigation.

On the next view select the statement that you want, use the dropdown to choose  “Invoice, Quote or PO”.  Then you can further specify, if you wish, to generate a statement across your business by leaving rest of the fields empty.  You can also scope it by a project, client or even a date range (remember these are optional).

As soon as you hit “save”,  Skylight gets to work  gathering all the necessary data based on the criteria you selected in the previous screen.  And then all you have to do is  hit “save”.

Cliche as it might sound saying  “Fresh off the press”, you will be happy to get a professional looking statement ready for download as PDF or, to send to a client.

Freelance businesses with the fancy invoice styling to the small company with bigger, consistent, branding needs! No matter what size, we have you covered.  Setting up custom headers and footers is easy:  for advanced users we have full HTML support with images, tables and more. If you wish to learn more about customising these layouts  then i’ll suggest having a read of this post on our support forum. Please click here.

Hope this new Skylight update helps you in your business management.  We will be rolling out more exciting options for statements so please send in your suggestions and requests on our forum. So feel free to talk to one another, ask questions, give advice and share insights. The more you connect with your peers, the more you’ll succeed.