Welcome back to Part 5 of the Freesources series! If you’ve been with us from the start, you know we’ve covered MailChimp, Google Analytics, G Suite, and Social Media platforms on previous Insider posts.

In general it seems like our audience of pet store owners and pet industry enthusiasts have been appreciating the series and we just wanted to take a quick moment to thank everybody for your messages, engagement, shares, and so on! It helps a lot and we are grateful for the feedback. To check out all of our latest Insider posts related to per store marketing, promotion, and marketing strategy, hit it!

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Alright, no more games, let’s start digging for bones right? A broad question to start it off: how many pet store owners feel like you manage your time well?

Based on our experience in marketing pet stores and in working in and managing pet stores, we bet that the majority of pet store owners are saying “I am pulled all over the place and hardly feel in control of where I spend my time due to the demands of the business.” There may be a few others that say “things are pretty smooth, I go where I want and when I’m needed” and then there may be a few more that fall on the “I’m an expert at time management, I make it work for me” portion of the spectrum.

If you’re in the latter group, then we salute you! Part of our personal philosophy here at Pet Engine Marketing is that as individuals and as an organization we can always improve, can always grow, and are always looking for ways to do that. Time management is an area where we feel we’re usually not perfect, but striving for it. We’ve gotten much better at it through the use of Clockify.

What Is Clockify?

Simply put, Clockify is an online tool that helps you track and manage your time. For both pet store owners and pet store employees, it can be used as an easy time tracker and timesheet app for tracking productivity, attendance, billable hours, payroll, and more.

Wanna hear something awesome? There’s a highly effective free version that our team at Pet Engine Marketing uses every single day.

Although one could argue that Clockify doesn’t strictly fit in as a tool for a pet store’s marketing strategy, we would respond by saying that at Pet Engine we are focused on improving the business in as many ways as possible. While we are experts at marketing, we know a thing or two about running a business and try to be as firmly entrenched as a business partner should be.

Need a business partner that knows how to improve your pet store? Reach out to us!

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Features & Benefits

With an easy-to-use and easy-to-learn interface, Clockify is the best type of time tracking tool we’ve found. We are very grateful everything it offers. Here’s a few items worth noting:

Time Tracker

As a pet store owner, there are so many reasons that tracking your time should be an item you pay attention to. Want to accurately track ROI? You need to have an understanding of how much your time is worth, and how much of your time you’re spending. Want to delegate a task? Find out how long it takes you, and then pass it off by setting the right expectations. Want to know what your employees are up to, how long they are spending on the sales floor, how long they are taking to close up the shop, how long they are taking to unload a shipment?

Reporting Dashboard

Clockify brilliantly lays out all of this data for you in colorful labeled charts and graphs.

See you and your pet store employees top activities and where the most time is spent, get a breakdown of what was worked on and who’s currently working on what. See daily, weekly, and monthly money and time reports at a glance. Export your data into easy PDFs or Excel sheets.

It’s good to know how much time tasks take because it makes it easier to invest your money and your time when you have data to back up your decisions.

Works Everywhere

Clockify works across devices. Here’s how we envision it working best for pet stores:

Have a standard computer or tablet available for use instead of a punch-in/punch-out device. It will be more reliable, quicker, and easier for tracking.
Do your pet store’s employees get some type of commission for sales? Track their average number of customers helped, sales frequency and volume, and understand their true ROI and efficiency with accurate time tracking.
All employees should have Clockify on their mobile phone. When they get into the habit of using it properly and accurately, you can see what tasks they’ve been working on, what tasks they get pulled away from when the store is busy, when the store is truly busiest, and more. Finding the patterns and insights in the data, and turning that into conclusive ways to improve the business, is where Pet Engine can help!

Conclusion

Ultimately, time tracking is about enhancing the quality of your life and business, both regarding work/life balance and enjoying the day-to-day aspects of running a business. Time tracking is a tool that makes life easier for you and your pet store’s employees… and increases your bottom line! By having a better idea of where your time goes, which tasks take the most from you (mentally/emotionally and as a time investment), you can find out what’s worth outsourcing, delegating, and handling on your own.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Let’s hear it!