Bill every hour you work: time capture to invoice for professional firms 

A professional firm bills more of the work it already does when time is captured as it happens, from calendars and project tools. Each person confirms their time weekly, draft invoices go to a partner for approval, and polite reminders follow on a schedule. Clients do not need any new software for any of it.

Unbilled time is work a firm has done for a client but not yet invoiced. In a firm that sells hours, it is the clearest place where revenue leaks away.

Why does time written up from memory never get billed in full?

Few people in a professional firm enjoy filling in timesheets. They are busy with clients, so the timesheet waits until Friday, or until month end, and by then the details have faded. A short call, a quick review, an email thread of ten replies: these are the first things to be forgotten.

People also round down. If you cannot remember whether a task took two hours or three, you write two. Repeat that across a team and a quarter, and a large amount of real work is never billed.

The delay causes a second problem. When invoices go out weeks after the work, clients are less willing to pay in full. The work is no longer fresh in their minds, and a vague line on an invoice invites questions.

A simple example shows the scale. Say a consultant bills by the hour and loses just half an hour a day to forgotten calls and quick replies. Over a working week that is two and a half hours. Over a year, it adds up to many working days of work done and never invoiced, and in a firm of ten the total is large. The firm is not short of work. It is short of a record of the work.

How do weekly draft timesheets work from calendars and project tools?

The idea is to start from what has already happened instead of a blank page. Your calendar shows meetings with clients, your project tool shows the tasks worked on, and your email shows threads linked to a client or matter.

Each week these signals are gathered into a draft timesheet for every person. Entries are grouped by client and matter, each with a suggested duration and a short description. On Friday the person opens the draft, corrects it in a few minutes and confirms it.

• Calendar meetings matched to the right client or matter.
• Project task activity turned into suggested time entries.
• Gaps in the week highlighted, so missing time is easy to spot.
• Each person confirms their own time, and nothing counts until they do.

The rule that matters is confirmation by the person who did the work. The draft is an aid to memory, not a record that can be billed without a human check.

How are draft invoices prepared from confirmed time and approved by a partner?

Once time is confirmed, billing becomes mostly a matter of arranging it. A draft invoice is prepared for each client from the confirmed entries, using the rates or fee terms you have set, and the descriptions are tidied so they read well to the client.

The drafts wait in a queue. A partner or manager looks at each one, adjusts the amount, writes off any time that should not be charged and approves it. Only then is the invoice created in your invoicing or accounting software and sent. The partner stays in control of everything that goes out in the firm's name.

Fixed-fee and retainer work fits as well. The same records show how much time a fixed-fee job has used against its estimate, so a partner can see early when a job is running over.

The partner's queue is designed to be quick. Each draft shows the time entries behind it, the amount against the agreed rate or fee, and any flags: time that looks unusually high, entries with no description, or a client already close to a budget cap. A partner spends a minute on each draft, not an hour.

Every write-off is recorded with a reason. Over a few months that record shows which clients or matters regularly lose time, and the firm can adjust its quotes or fee terms to match.

How do polite reminders go out on a schedule you set?

Chasing payment is awkward, so many firms avoid it. A schedule takes the awkwardness out. You set the rules, for example a friendly note a few days before the due date, a second one after it, and a call for a partner to make if the invoice is still open later on.

Reminders are written in your firm's tone and sent from your usual email address. Sensitive clients can be kept off the schedule, and a partner can pause any reminder at any time. When payment arrives, the reminders stop on their own.

How does a proposal library help quotes go out in days?

Slow quotes lose work. Many firms write each proposal from scratch, or from whichever old one they can find. A proposal library keeps your approved wording for scopes, assumptions, team bios and terms in one place.

When an enquiry comes in, a first draft is put together from the library and the details of the enquiry, and a partner reviews and edits it. The draft saves the first hour or two. The commercial judgement stays with the partner.

An accepted proposal can also set up the new matter, its fee terms and its time codes, so the very first timesheet already points to the right place.

Firms that hold client confidences, such as law and accounting practices, need extra care here. The drafts should use only the data your own tools already hold, with access limited to the people who need it. Agree what is read, where it is stored and who can see it before anything is connected. Your own professional rules come first.

None of this changes how your people serve clients. They still meet, advise and write. What changes is that the record of their work builds up as they go, so the invoice reflects what was done and the firm is paid for it.

Where should a firm start?

1. Pick one team or practice area, and the tools it already uses.
2. Turn on draft timesheets for a month and compare them with what people write unaided.
3. Add draft invoices once the habit of confirming time has settled in.
4. Switch on reminders for a small group of clients first.
5. Build the proposal library from your strongest past proposals.

We do this for you. We scope it, build it, connect it to the tools you already use, train your people and keep it running. A partner approves every invoice and every proposal.