Gone are the days of punch clocks, time cards and paper shuffling. In the digital age, small business owners have a host of online tools to keep track of time sheets, billable hours and client-related expenses.
But with a growing number of apps available on the market, it’s harder to make the right choice for your business without feeling overwhelmed. We look at some of the best apps available for small business owners to make internal processes easier and faster.
Harvest
- One of the best ways to track your team’s hours (we think) is with Hubstaff. Our robust time tracking app makes it easy to track time, activity, and progress on projects all in one place. Hubstaff can also be used to calculate billable hours.
- By managing billable and non-billable time accurately, businesses can cover more non-billable hours, and negate some of these uncomfortable situations. Why are non-billable hours so vital? While service providers would love to have as many billable hours as possible, this is easier said than done.
- Oct 25, 2018 Use this feature to track and bill customers for the number of hours consumed in a project or activity. Time Details. Based on the rates you specify and whether or not the time is billable, time detail will automatically appear on customer invoices. The number of details on the invoice is up to you. You can include: Employee’s name.
- Mar 08, 2015 I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations. I have really liked the exgis app for blackberry. It easily coverts to an excel file where you can filter your general time by client and print out. I need hours more than billable hour rates. With blackberry’s lack of apps, was thinking of switching phones but wanted something similar any ideas.
- Harvest allows users to enter billable hours for projects on a daily basis. It works alongside Google, so consultants can enter their time without leaving Gmail by filling out a form sent from Harvest to users. The app is also useful if employees or team members need to.
Harvest allows users to enter billable hours for projects on a daily basis. It works alongside Google, so consultants can enter their time without leaving Gmail by filling out a form sent from Harvest to users.
Jun 23, 2020 Billable hours seem like they should be black and white, but they aren’t always. Generally, if you can tie your work back to the client, your time is billable. For instance, answering an email from your boss does not constitute billable time. Answering an email to a client, though, is billable time.
The app is also useful if employees or team members need to track expenses as well as mileage by project. Users can also photograph receipts and go paperless with their recordkeeping. Data entered into Harvest automatically syncs with a password-protected personalised account.
Time Tracker by eBillity
This allows you to track time from anywhere and approve your employee time sheets, as well as sync to QuickBooks Online for billing and payroll. Once submitted, an admin (typically the boss or manager) gets to review employee time sheets. The admin can edit entries, reject them or ask an employee to resubmit.
Toggl
Enables team members to manually enter the time they spent on a specific project or use a stopwatch feature. As with the Harvest app, all tracked hours are automatically synced with the web app.
The app also allows users to download real-time performance charts that show how time was spent and what portion of it was billable. Paid versions allow users to plan tasks ahead of time and send customised reports to clients.
SherpaDesk
From smartphones and tablets, to laptops and desktops, today’s worker carries out their job across a multitude of platforms, so they need to be able to clock their hours, no matter which one they are working on.
SherpaDesk can be used across numerous devices, and its advanced time-tracking feature allows users to accurately record the hours they spend on a particular task. This makes it ideal for telemarketing or IT sales businesses, where switching between live chatting and phone calling is a daily occurrence.
Seamlessly working alongside the software you’re currently using, such as QuickBooks Online, the app also automatically generates invoices for you.
TSheets Time Tracker
Log time anywhere with the aid of TSheets Time Tracker. But don’t let its name fool you – the app does so much more than clock time. Based in Idaho, United States, the app’s intuitive GPS tracking system allows you to see who’s working on what and their whereabouts, making it a practical choice for contracting businesses who have employees working on multiple sites at any given time.
Integrate the app with your existing software, such as QuickBooks Online, to automatically export timesheets and halve the hours you’d normally spend processing payrolls.
See what other Apps you can use to run your business at Apps.com.
Billable hours are any hours worked that must be compensated. If you spend four hours balancing a client’s books, and you’re paid by the hour, you have four billable hours. However, you have to have a record of your time worked to bill that time to the client. And that’s just one step to recording and being paid for billable hours.
Requirements for billable hours
Technically, a lot of people work billable hours—think contractors or freelancers. But few industries have requirements for billable hours. One exception is the legal industry, where many attorneys are required to work a certain number of billable hours each year. Legal professionals who fail to hit that number or a close milestone can be fired.
Consultants and temporary workers are two other groups that use billable hours frequently. One requirement both might face is recording their non-billable hours to get paid for all the time they’re at work. Billable hours are tied to the client. But their employer must pay for all working hours (including non-billable hours) they spend on other tasks. If the employee is hourly, they must keep track of billable and non-billable hours.
If you are required to track your billable hours, you may benefit from an automated time tracking solution. A digital time tracker can help you record all your working hours. Some tools make it easy to track time against clients or jobs, so you can bill more accurately for the work you do. From there, you can take your hours tracked and create an invoice that’s easy to back up with time data.
Billable hours examples
Billable hours seem like they should be black and white, but they aren’t always. Generally, if you can tie your work back to the client, your time is billable.
For instance, answering an email from your boss does not constitute billable time. Answering an email to a client, though, is billable time. Attending a mid-year review to talk about your performance is not billable time. Attending a mid-day meeting with a client is billable time.
The legal industry is unique. In most cases, professionals are required to work a number of billable hours in a year to maintain employment. The average number of required billable hours in 2015 was 1,892, according to the National Association for Legal Professionals. But billable hours make up only a percentage of an attorney’s working hours, as a 2018 Yale report shows. The report assumes lawyers may take off five weeks of work in a year for PTO or vacation. To achieve 1,832 billable hours, the associate would have to work 10 hours and 20 minutes a day, every day, for 47 weeks.
To meet today’s industry average of 1,892 billable hours, an associate would have to add 60 more hours in the year. That’s around 15 more minutes of billable time a day, which culminates in an average workday of 10 hours and 35 minutes.
Example of an attorney’s billable and non-billable hours
Billable hours:
- Work on your client’s case from 9:15 AM to 12 PM.
- Resume work on your client’s case, and work from 1 PM to 3:45 PM.
- Get back to work on client material, and don’t stop until 6:35 PM.
Non-billable hours:
- Spend 30 minutes going through emails and other correspondence.
- Attend a 30-minute team meeting about casework.
- Take 15 minutes to grab a coffee and use the bathroom.
- Take an hourlong lunch break.
- Take another 15-minute break.
That’s the kind of schedule an attorney would need to keep up to hit 1,892 billable hours in a year. It means never letting a meeting run over 30 minutes, never leaving work early for an appointment. And in the end, the result isn’t just 1,892 billable hours—it’s 2,480 hours at work.
For workers like consultants, freelancers, and contractors, a full day’s work, hopefully, looks a little different. Especially if the person working manages their own hours.
Example of a contractor’s billable and non-billable hours
Billable hours:
- Spend an hour going over a client’s account, in preparation for an in-person meeting.
- Meet with the client from 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM.
- Compile your notes for 30 minutes, and send a follow-up email to the client, outlining the next steps.
- Respond to client questions for 15 minutes about the follow-up email.
- Work on your current client’s account until 5 PM.
Non-billable hours:
- Spend 30 minutes going through emails and other correspondence.
- Spend an hour creating an email campaign you plan to use to market your services.
- Take an hourlong lunch break.
- Spend 30 minutes responding to an inquiry from a potential client.
- Take a 15-minute break.
Billable versus non-billable hours
If a client is paying you per hour, any work you do on their behalf is considered billable. Any work you do for yourself, your business, or your team—unrelated to the client—is non-billable. Depending on your industry, here are a few tasks that may count as billable hours.
Billable-hour tasks
- Responding to client questions or correspondence.
- Performing any work related to the client.
- Brainstorming for client projects.
- Doing research related to the client.
- Attending meetings with the client or related to the client’s project.
- Planning client meetings, client project timelines, etc.
- Working on client revisions or responding to client revisions.
Whether you’re a business owner or an employee, not every task constitutes billable hours. Generally, non-billable hours are the time you spend on any tasks unrelated to the client or their work.
Non-billable-hour tasks
- Marketing your business.
- Answering emails unrelated to the client.
- Going to teambuilding and networking events.
- Attending team meetings unrelated to the client.
- Planning business initiatives and goals.
- Completing administrative tasks like payroll or hiring.
- Creating plans and proposals for future clients.
- Corresponding with potential clients.
- Attending any meetings with people who aren’t yet contracted clients.
- Attending training or completing coursework related to your work, in general.
How to calculate billable hours
- Set an hourly rate for your billable hours.
- Track and record your billable hours.
- Add up your billable hours.
- Multiply your billable hours by your hourly rate.
- Add any additional fees or taxes to your client’s invoice.
Billable hours Excel template
Download the billable hours’ template for Excel to record your hours worked and hourly pay rate for each client or project in a day. For best results, enter values on your desktop to calculate your total for invoicing automatically. As you work on a client or project, enter your times in and time out. The billable hours’ template does not account for non-billable hours. It does not include spaces for sick time, overtime, holiday pay, or other fees and paycheck deductions.
Software that can help your track billable hours
Calculating billable time isn’t the challenging part. Tracking and recording that time, invoicing for that time, and determining the productivity of that time is far more challenging. But for those tasks, there are tools that can help.
1. Saviom
Companies with lots of moving parts can benefit from the insights achieved through Saviom, a resource management and workforce planning software. Regarding billable hours, Saviom can help managers better understand their employees’ workflows, projects, and productivity. From there, it’s easy to make adjustments to billable and non-billable time to increase productivity and output.
2. TSheets
To invoice for billable time, you have to track time. And there’s no better tool for tracking time than TSheets. With TSheets time tracking, you can track time against clients but also against jobs or projects for those clients. Customize your billing with the option to set billable rates, depending on the client or job. Upgrade your account to get job costing features that let you track time against a project’s expected number of hours. Use retrospective reports to inform your decisions and craft more accurate estimates.
3. PracticePanther
If you’re operating in the legal industry, you might try PracticePanther, a law practice management software. Besides helping lawyers keep track of their billable hours, PracticePanther also helps organize documents and client information securely. When an associate is ready to finalize their billable hours, the solution even takes care of legal invoices, payments, and accounting.
4. Asana
App To Track Billable Hours
If you’re going to be tracking billable hours, it helps to have a task management software or app that can organize your client to-do list. Asana is a great tool for teams looking to “organize, track, and manage their work.” Plus, Asana integrates with hundreds of apps to create a suite of business tools. The worst thing you can do for a client is to forget a project or miss a deadline. Asana keeps your task list straight, so you and your team can do the best work of your life.
5. QuickBooks
Tracking your billable hours is just one part of the equation. Once you record time, you need to get paid. QuickBooks makes it easy for solopreneurs and teams to invoice, track payments, and manage cash flow. Once you complete the project and your billable hours, you can feel confident that your books are in order.
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Billable Hours Template
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