Start to track billable hours

Time is money. If you don’t track your time, then you’re more than likely wasting both your time and money.

This is especially true for service-based industries which rely on billable hours to remain afloat.

The first step in not wasting your time and money is identifying both billable and non-billable hours.

Billable vs non-billable hours

Billable hours need to be tracked so that you can raise your invoices and increase your profitability.

Non-billable hours need to be tracked to make sure that disproportionate time isn’t being taken up with administrative tasks.

It’s also useful to see which clients are the ones that generate more than their fair share of non-billable time.

Tracking billable and non-billable hours helps you to set an appropriate fee structure that ensures your business is earning enough in billable hours to cover all the non-billable hours too.

By identifying the amount of time spent on non-billable work, you are taking the first step in controlling the time spent on these activities and increasing the productivity of the team.

How do you start?

To start using time billing, introduce time tracking software to help you optimise not only your time but also that of your employees.

Get greater visibility into your workday by investing in online accounting software and manage your billable hours. MYOB AccountRight offers simple and easy to use Time Billing.

If it’s more complex functionality you require you could also select from an array of add-on software options which may be perfect for your business.

The opportunities are endless with online software; all you need to do is explore the MYOB Add-On Solutions range.

In our own business, we use MYOB AccountRight Time Billing.

We’ve set up billable and non-billable activities, and our staff log in and record the times that they have worked, who for, which job codes etc.

The activities are set up with the rate that activity is charged at.

Then we use the activities to raise Time Billing invoices to charge out all the billable hours and use the same time billing entries to raise time sheets and payroll.

This process helps us to make sure that all billable time is correctly charged onto clients and nothing falls through the cracks.

Where we are working on projects, we can choose to bill out the work done to date, allowing progress invoicing to occur.

Reports, reports, reports

The reports in MYOB AccountRight are also very useful.

There are a range of reports under the Time Billing section of MYOB AccountRight.

They give insight into the productivity of each of our team, of our clients, of the time billing activities and by job.

It clearly shows how much time each person is spending in billable and unbillable activities, and gives full details of all work performed.

Get going today

Don’t waste any more precious time, start recording your time now – once you’ve chosen the right system, evaluate its performance and compare the difference to the months prior.

If it proves successful don’t look back; if it proves cumbersome keep looking for the next best software.

You will soon come to the realisation of how much time you save and you will win the war of time wastage!

Once the appropriate systems are in place, missing out capturing valuable time, productivity and money will be a thing of the past.

Efficiencies will create a more successful business and will free your time so you can focus on growing your business.