Billable Hours: Tips for Better Time Tracking And Getting Paid

However, you won’t know how long it takes each employee to complete various tasks unless you track their time on them. When you track billable and non-billable time, you can understand all of the activities an employee works on in a day and assign them to the type of work they’re best at. In addition to billing your work at the appropriate rate and letting unprofitable clients go, you can also reduce the amount of non-billable work your team does overall.

Tracking your billable hours by the project will also help you determine your most profitable clients. Then, you can work towards maintaining those relationships, further strengthening them. For example, if you are a lawyer at a firm, you may not necessarily be paid according to your billable hours. After you’ve divided your salary by the number of hours, increase this figure by a little to account for the time you may spend on non-billable tasks. You should factor in your lifestyle requirements and things like vacation, personal days, and emergencies. When you automate your time tracking process, your billing workflow will improve — a win-win for businesses and clients.

B. Forecast project resource cost accurately

Very few of us have a memory strong enough to sustain that kind of tracking. That’s why automating this process can save you time and ensure you’re billing clients for all the time you spend on their projects. The advantage of billing time to clients with set billing rates is that it gives your client a clear picture of how you spent your the importance of internal controls in accounting time and why it is worth their money. Tracking hours you’re billing also ensures you will be paid for any overtime hours worked. This is the time that is actually being dedicated to work for a given client or on a particular project. It is essentially the time your client will be charged for –the work specifically being done for them.

Automating your invoices will let your clients see all the details on billable work without you having to create them manually. This professional document should include the services you’ve rendered and other particulars to the business and payment. If you are a freelancer and you forget to bill hours, or if your team members get distracted and forget to bill their hours until the end of the day or the week, time may get lost. Depending on requirements, you may also need to consider the opposite — the issue of billable rate overrun. The overrun rate means you have exceeded the allotted hours a client has allowed for a project.

The First-Year Associate’s Guide to Managing Billable Time

If I ever need to send an invoice, I know it’s gonna work, and I know they’re gonna get it, and I’ll know when they’ve seen it and paid or not paid it. At least if everything else gets hard, I know I’ve got a system there that’ll let me get paid. The bottom line is that the work must pertain to a client and the project for which they are paying. With Hiveage you can send elegant invoices to your customers, accept online payments, and manage your team — all in one place. “When review time comes around,” Moss says, “leadership will not have a true picture of the contributions an employee is making.

This analysis enables firms to identify high-value clients and projects, as well as those that require adjustments to pricing or scope. Another way to increase your billable hours is to track time that does not go toward the billable hours. Over time, these hours add up and take away from your billable hours. A more efficient alternative to this is relying on automatic or digital invoicing services. Simply put, the term “billable” means something that can be billed or charged. In many businesses and agencies, billable hours are how workers earn their money.

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With over 20 years of experience, this Australia-based MNC has helped more than 100 clients across over 50 countries address specific business challenges. SAVIOM also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software. Managers use this analysis to improve future forecasting and align it to real numbers. The situation worsens when an untrained consultant forcibly maximizes the billable time but does not deliver as per the client’s expectation.

• If the time spent on client work doesn’t round up to an hour, you can use the billable hours chart below to understand what to bill.
• Depending on your internal policies and agreements, getting up to refresh your coffee or chatting with your team during a Sprint meeting will not be billed to a client.
• With unequal pay and stressful juggling between several projects, work-life balance is challenging in consulting firms leading to a higher attrition rate.
• You need to take how much you’ve worked and multiply it by your hourly rate.

Moreover, organizations can identify areas where costs can be minimized, and additional resources may be needed. The amount of time spent on a job varies from each assignment and the number of tasks they require. Thus, this can seem like a lot, considering that a full-time worker typically works about 40 in a week. Consultants aid people in different areas of work, from business and marketing to education and administration.