How much time do you spend on email every day? Billing, invoicing, and accounting tasks? How much time do you spend each day on your core business tasks? Marketing?

Working from home requires careful analysis of how much time and attention certain tasks require. How else will you know how to allocate time, prioritize your day, or schedule? If you’re a service based business how will you know how much to charge?

Fortunately, there are myriad time tracking software programs ranging in price from free to several hundred dollars. Each comes with their own unique set of features and benefits. The key to getting the most from any software package is to first – Use it! Software doesn’t work all by itself – you have to set it up and use it in order to receive the data and the benefit. Therefore the second most important aspect of time tracking software is to actually use it.

Here’s how to set up and track your hours using three commonly used time tracking programs.

Time Stamp is an open source software. That means it was developed, and continues to be developed, by independent developers and released with an open source software license – anyone can use it for free. It works on any Windows operating system and installation is quick and easy.

The user interface is about as straightforward and user friendly as a software program can get. Once the program is downloaded, simply click on “file” choose “new project” enter your project name. You can also add an hourly rate to the project. For example, if you’re a personal coach and charge $100/hour for coaching sessions and typically bill 3 coaching hours a day however you also spend 3 hours a day answering email then you’re averaging $50/hour over that 6 hour period. Tracking both billable hours and non-billable hours will help you make decisions for your business as well, it’ll help you set goals.

Once your information for a specific job is entered, all you need to do to begin tracking time is click on the Timing Status button. The clock will start. When you’ve completed the task or have at least ceased working on it for the moment, click on the button again and time will stop. Reports can be generated with the reporting function to tell you how much cumulative time you spend on any particular project or task.

My Hours is a web based program which means you do not have to install anything on your computer. It also means you can access your account from any computer with an internet connection. Like Time Stamp, My Hours is free. To get started users first need to register for an account. Options are a personal account or a business account.

Once you’ve registered My Hours will send a password and confirmation to your email address. Click on the confirmation, login, and get started! Create projects by clicking on the “new project” button. On that screen you’ll see the ‘add a project’ feature. Click on it, name your project and enter an hourly rate.

To begin tracking time, in the ‘daily view’ page, choose your project, related task if you’ve assigned specific tasks to a project, and then click “now” on the Start tab when you’re finished click “now” on the Finish tab and ‘submit.’ That’s it. There’s room for notes, and additional costs. Monthly view and reports features give users a broad perspective of how their time is used.

TimeGadget is another free web based product recently introduced. Like My Hours and Time Stamp, the user interface is extremely self explanatory – create a project, related tasks, and click on ‘start’ and ‘finish’ to track time. While TimeGadget is in beta meaning it is a new software being tested and fine tuned before major release, TimeGadget offers Google users the ability to integrate into a Google Reader or Google Homepage – so tracking time is always front and center.

Tracking time is a valuable exercise however setting up and using a time tracking program shouldn’t consume too much time! These three, among many other time tracking programs, are available to provide the data you need to be successful.