Within the legal profession, for example, attorneys are required to complete a set number of billable hours each week. You may even realize you need to hire an extra employee, a virtual assistant, or turn to specific software to automate some of these non-billable tasks. This will effectively free you up to focus on billable hours. But, there’s also a certain weakness of a utilization rate system, especially applicable to consulting businesses. Junior staff members or those who are at the lowest level of hierarchy in a consulting firm, usually have minimal chance to choose their work tasks. So, if their supervisors give them only non-billable administrative duties, the utilization rate of a junior staff member will be extremely low. Every staff member should keep track of his/her tasks (billable and non-billable).

The system automatically lets them know when it’s time to take a breather. The best time tracking tools must be easy to use for every member of the team. Otherwise, organization-wide adoption will be time-consuming and costly because you have to provide one-on-one support.

What Can Be Considered Billable Work?

It’s a great way to avoid letting work hours go uncompensated. Meanwhile, it might be challenging to work with client X as they would require a lot of time and attention — limiting the number of clients you can take up. Clearly, client Y doesn’t drain you of your resources and time so that you can focus on other clients as well. In the client’s case, you can also identify what their cost is to you. It’s essential to have an effective method of tracking your billable work. Everything you need to know about the 4-day workweek concept A 4-day workweek offers better employee productivity and engagement.

Hopefully, this post showed you that tracking billable hours is not complicated. Anyone can do it if they know what to look for and have the right tools.

The utilization rate for PR agencies

While service providers would love to have as many billable hours as possible, this is easier said billable hours than done. Lawyers are constantly on the move and often work on multiple cases simultaneously.

If you’re a business owner and you want to generate more billable hours, you and your team should start following these simple steps. Billable hours for lawyers are the attorney work hours billed to clients for activities that are directly related to client matters. Attorney work not related to client matters, such as professional development, client development, and office management, is considered non-billable. Even though the term billable hours is vastly used in legal practices, it is also used in all other sectors where someone needs to be reimbursed for working on a project.

Which Industries Benefit From A Time Tracking App?

How much time does your team spend looking to better themselves for the company? You can better track how much time everyone spends cracking away on projects versus how much time they spend researching industry trends and studying up on their specialty. Are you looking to figure out how to calculate billable hours for your business? If you’re a business owner or freelancer, this should be something you’re looking to master. Non-billable hours are hours that a law firm’s client should not pay for. These include truly wise time investments such as continuing legal education, networking, and rainmaking, for example. Non-billable hours also include timekeeping , other administrative functions, and errands, for example.

Learn more about its pros and cons, and countries that adopted it…. Related articles on how to run a more efficient, profitable law firm. Expert https://www.bookstime.com/ advice and resources for today’s accounting professionals. We provide third-party links as a convenience and for informational purposes only.