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Chief
Lol welcome to our world. Xoxo, lawyers.
Enthusiast
Um yes? How have you been doing your timesheets all these years? It’s normal for me to have 20+ lines on my timesheets for specific items that come up every single day.
Enthusiast
Not often by 15 min, but definitely 30, this is the norm in tax. Pretty common to be working on 20-30 unique items per week, and going back and forth between them.
Never been asked. But I would def ask for a charge code to charge my time for tracking my time. 🤣
We have a code for that. General admin.
Yes, seems pretty standard
They didn’t ask us in PY. Now I miss going to the offices
I bill in 15 minute increments so yes, seems standard for me (in tax) - some tax groups are billing in 6 minute intervals so I feel fortunate.
Pro
I charge time in 6-minute increments, and yes, it's torture. When you're on one big client, your entire day (minus lunch) goes to that one code. When you're on twenty small clients... timekeeping becomes a timesuck,
BDO makes us do our time sheets daily, so I can't get too far behind. When I worked at KPMG, and had to do it every semi-monthly... I'd spend an entire morning twice a month doing it.
I always have a notepad beside me so I can scribble down what I did and how long it took. I also check Outlook for any quick emails I sent during the day but didn't write down. Then I enter it at the end of the day. But yes, it's brutal.
There's always an hour or so that went to reading generic emails, getting coffee, quickly chatting with someone on the team, going to the bathroom, etc. so you end up 'losing time' for these little things. Partners say to include that time in your billable work, but then they wonder why clients push back on fees.
Works well for people with 1 or 2 tasks. Nightmare for those on 3+ jobs/tasks. Admin tasks distractions don’t help at all.
I can’t be the only one that wings my time sheets to a certain extent. I guess-timate the time I spend in certain sections of the file
I keep track on an excel sheet of time stamps I've working on certain tasks, then calculate the time and add up all the time for the same tasks, and input my time based on that. so when I switch from working on like, capital assets to SoCF, I'll note the time I switched. then when I switch again, another time. the difference between the two is the time spent on SoCF.
You can just have SYNC open and update the time as you complete a task. Seems easier than needing to maintain a separate spreadsheet..
Rising Star
I can’t say I agree with anyone who thinks this is normal. Maybe in advisory? In audit our budgets are more long-term and honestly, I expect people to mostly adhere to them unless something really unexpected happens. I don’t keep track of whether something took me 15 or 17 hours this week if the budget says 16. That hour is probably a fluke anyway. Some days you do work faster and more efficiently, other days you’re lazier and spend more time. As long as the hours are reasonable and the work gets done, I won’t ask.
I will ask if a bunch of hours hit but things didn’t get done. Also in audit we don’t technically bill per hour, so there’s that. We care if there’s a large swing because it may indicate scope creep, but you working 15 or 16 hours doesn’t change our fee.
You’re lucky you’re not in tax lol. We have to charge every hour that we work and it’s not always to the same code. I typically have 20 codes that I charge time to every week.
Yeah it’s for budgeting purposes - track ETCs
Lol KPMG OP if that’s too much for you then I imagine you’re in for a difficult life.
Yes we bill in 6-min increments. And I work at an agency across many clients & many many projects. It’s not hard just takes practice. Do you timesheet as you go about your day. Certainly you’ll have admin time and/or time you can quite recall/track. Do the best you can & bury the rest.
Use Harvest! You can use the timer widget when you switch tasks. Super easy. I’m a designer so not sure if this helps, but I often go through my “recent files” and date all my exported files, which are timestamped, so I can calculate how long it took me to do certain tasks.