My manager is obsessed with coming under budget to “make the account team look good”even if that means billing less than what the actual hours are. Constantly wanting us to track hours in addition to time sheets. Often returns timesheets to adjust hours. They’ve been in the industry ~8 years. Never have experienced this in the past. In turn this messes up future scopes because hours aren’t accurate and lowballed.

Who would you address this with?

Get a new job

Bring it up with their manager. Ideally, you have receipts of them specifically saying that they want you to underbill to make the account team look good.

Your agency leadership by the way HAAAATES this. They are losing money because your account team is overpromising and your creative manager (8 years so… Senior? ACD?) is going along with it despite knowing full well creatives spent more billable hours on the project. And assuming you work under a holding company, this can mean the world when the agency wants to showcase growth which they must as a part of a publicly traded company.

The few times I’ve worked on something where the agency was on board for not charging the clients the full amount for something or were fine with taking a loss (like reshoots), I STILL was told to bill accurately and finance simply handled it on their end. This is NOT something your 8-year-in-the-industry creative manager decides.

Is this person a creative? Never in my life

Can you go above them? In a “is this the right way to be billing?” Kind of way vs complaining about your boss way

Illegal. Abd unethical

If you have a PM or OPs person, let them know. The purpose of our business is to make money, not free labor. If you go over the scope, ask them to open an investment job

My 2 cents having been a CEO at an agency: this is baffling. Tracking actual time in parallel would be the leverage one would use in fee negotiations, ie you paid for 10 ftes, they all worked 20% over agreed upon FTE hours, we need to add two bodies and appropriate fee. This can’t be leveraged if the client has official correspondence from your agency showing those 10 FTEs came in at or under the agreed upon hours. Internally, the “real” reporting would certainly be relevant for HR if people are over worked and there is churn, if there’s a lot of overtime being paid out at entry level, and there’s a need to true up the P&L. This would be the case if, for example, the CFO was performing a client by client or team by team P&L analysis and the real time explains why something is below margin goal. But I’m stumped. Baffled. It really doesn’t make sense to me. At all. And your actions should be predicated on if and how this is directly impacting you:
1. Are you severely overworked but the clients think you’re all working fairly normal hours? Because if you’re over worked the real time reporting is what’s needed to add to staff and fee, the evidence needed to get the client to scale back SOW or increase fees.
2. Is there an incredible amount of churn on the business? People leaving because they’re over worked and a lot of the burden to maintain continuity falls on you?
3. Is this just a mysterious nuissance?

If it’s 1 or 2 you should discuss with HR. Because it’s a poor management issue or at poor policy and agency management and finance should be aware, if not already, that client facing information doesn’t reflect reality, and if overworked / understaffed, it will affect work quality and client relationship health. If it’s 3 and it’s just a tiny time-suck…you / your team’s hours are reasonable and the churn rate doesn’t feel out of whack…leave it alone. Because if there’s malfeasance happening at a team level, your manager will be found out eventually. And if it’s just agency policy, you’re fighting city hall. No benefit will come of that.

Had an assh*ole CD that said this to me too. I ended up leaving the agency shortly after. He was running a sweatshop.

Ask for a docket for timesheet revisions.

Billing less? What means this?

Definitely speak with them first. And if they don’t want to change, then go to their boss.

Try this 1:1 with your manager:

“Hey, [Insert manager‘s first name] agencies make money on time, right? Clients pay for hours. By revising time downwards, aren’t we leaving money on the table? All while creating an inaccurate feedback loop. The next time someone quotes a new job, we will get fewer hours to do good work, right? Obviously I want to understand how the business works, so I can learn snd do a good job, and maybe I’m missing something? Help me understand why this makes sense, please.”

The answer you get will shine a light on your best next step.

Where I worked, there were the internal numbers and the billed numbers. Teams like strategy and creative were always encouraged to report their actual time spent on each task/ project. Account teams/ Principals met regularly to review what the client would be billed, and sometimes made adjustments to the billed amount before billing the client. That's generally acceptable -- if you're salaried, working at or more than 35 to 40 hours a week, and rates are set right externally, the agency leaders can reduce what hours they bill the client for to keep everyone happy, and still generally be profitable, while still tracking actuals.

It's bad for the company to not track actuals internally. You can end up underresourced as a team, or overextended individually. I've never known an account person to want anyone to underreport their time on agency timecards for this reason. So the manager may actually be doing something that will end up confusing Accounts in the long run rather than making their job easier.

If you're paid hourly: this answer is easier. Never underreport your internally reported time that you're paid based on (clock in, clock out). If a manager makes you adjust your hours after the fact, or does it to reduce what they pay you, it's wage theft. Talk to an employment lawyer, not us.