Because I'm self-employed, I track all of my working hours--even the time spent on projects for which I receive a flat, rather than an hourly, rate. In fact, I strongly recommend that all professionals track their time whenever possible. If for no other reason, knowing how many hours you spent on that last PowerPoint presentation can help you more accurately estimate the time required to put together your the next one.

Several years ago I researched time tracking programs, and the one that best suited my needs then--and now--is TimeReporter by iambic, Inc., which runs on Windows and Palm OS. You can easily track time spent away from the office on your handheld using the Palm utility. Then, when you HotSync, the Palm entries are added to the master TimeReporter database on your Windows machine.

Time entries are easy to create and sort, and you can use them to build reports. TimeReporter could stand some improvement; I wish you could create reports directly in the program rather than having to export the data to Excel, for instance. And the program is a bit pricey. But in my experience, this time tracker is the best I've tested.

The Standard Edition of TimeReporter 4.0.2 includes the Palm and Windows apps and costs $150; the Professional Edition, which adds support for Microsoft SQL Servers, is $200. No Pocket PC version is currently available. You can purchase the software or download a free trial at www.iambic.com