Designed Specifically for Public Accountants

Time & Billing

Serving the Accounting profession for almost 13 years.

The experience of our firm is that more than 50% of our new clients either had no formal time and billing record keeping procedure or what they had was rudimentary at best.

When asked why, too often small to mid-sized practitioners feel that tracking time is a waste of their time.

Again in our experience the reality is it can lead to a more effective practice, happier staff, greater profitability and larger values upon succession.

A time and billing program designed to suit the specific needs of a professional accounting firm will help analyze the three key things every accountant needs to know.

Time is the only real asset of an accounting professional – and should be valued as such. It should be a simple task to record the activities done for each client, and when it comes time to bill, review the items to decide which items to bill and how much to charge the client. If the firm or the employees are not in the habit of recording time as the work is performed, then it is a habit that needs to be fostered.

Almost every firm that embarks on tracking time in an efficient manner say they see a pay back almost immediately – most are surprised how much time they actually spend on some clients and how much money they let slip through their fingers.

So why doesn’t everyone track all of their time? Some common excuses are: It will take too much time therefore it will cost them money. They don’t have the time to invest in setting up a time and billing program or they don’t have the additional staff needed to administer these kinds of programs. Or they simply believe they are getting by just fine so why rock the boat.

So if a firm doesn’t track their time how do they produce a bill for a client for the work performed?

Often firms will choose to simply bill based on what they “think” a client is willing to pay or based on what they have historically charged for the service. If all things were equal this approach might work. It’s been my experience that all things are not equal which means that most of the time the amount of a bill grossly understates the effort expended. Without any records of time spent it is up to the partner, manager or employee to somehow know that the amount they’ve quoted or are considering for the invoice is wrong and should be differnt.

Then I also wonder how they handle clients who question the amount of an invoice. I know that is tantamount to a lack of trust but surely everyone has one or more clients that just need to know. Having a record of the time logged on the client’s file will remove any questions from the client and will most likely point out how much the firm chose to write-off.

Finally, when the time comes to sell the practice or value it for new partners how will they demonstrate the true value, not just the amount of billing, of the firm. Where did the firm put its efforts, which clients were the most profitable? Succession is something to be dealt with in every practice, why not have the ammunition available to answer the inevitable questions?

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All this for as little as $399 (single user)!*

*USD pricing