If you use Microsoft Outlook as your contact management software, here is a great tip to help you with your bottom line and time management. (If you don't use Outlook, this is a good reason to start - you can add your clients to Outlook so you can track your billable time easily.)

If you track your chargeable hours, as most of us do, here is an easy way to track your time spent on the phone with your clients. This is also helpful if you need to track your long distance calls.

To track your calls in the in Microsoft Outlook try this tip:

1. Go the Contacts folder and double-click the contact you are going to call.
2. On the Actions menu at the top of the tool bar, click New Journal Entry for Contact.

    

3. When you begin the call, click the Start Timer button. While you're talking, you can record notes from your call in the space provided in the Journal Entry.

    

4. When you're done, click Pause Timer and save your entry.

When you need to provide your chargeable/billable hours each week or month, you can just print out the list of phone calls from your Journal or copy and paste the list of calls into an Office document.

To view a list of all the phone calls in your journal:

1. Go to your Journal folder.

    

2. From the View menu, choose Current View, and then click Phone Calls.

Note: In Outlook 2000, you can also use the new Contact Activity Tracking feature to get a list of all the phone calls, e-mails, or meetings related to a contact.

To view all the Journal items related to a contact:

1. Open the contact you want to view.

    

2. Click the Activities tab.

    

3. In the Show list, click Journal.