I’ve been working on creating a system for tracking profit margins nternally by project, and I want to capture some costs that are a bit more nebulous. Most importantly of all: my time (as a business owner).

I have to imagine many struggle with this, given how many ways you can split it. I’m just of so many minds. Part of me thinks in terms of what I can’t do if I’m working on a project. The value in the things not done, basically.

Part of me thinks about how when I work on something, it’s generally because it’s absolutely necessary for the project, or a good client, and it acts as a value multiplier.

Part of me also thinks about how when I have to travel for work on a project, my productivity is lower even when I’m not working directly on site. Etc.

For a concrete example, I’m traveling next week for work and will be out of the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday. Over that period I’m working on the project 14 hours. And traveling across 4 flight legs where I’ll certainly be less productive (even if not 0%). 10 hours in the air. And then all the time in between, including a dead day in one city. Can still work, but less productive again.

But it’s for a good repeating client with good, consistent, relatively easy (if time intensive) work. So the value of the work extends beyond the single project.

In this case it seems easy to work up some assumed value of time that ends up making the project artificially less profitable, even though it’s totally fair to consider the value of my time.

So really I just am curious how everyone handles things like this.