Question to those in PA -
Does your firm have a:
1) yearly total hours requirement,
2) yearly charge hours requirement,
3) both

Got into a discussion with a Partner about it because I think our firm is an anomaly so I thought I would ask.

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Chargeable hours are most important, but both are tracked. If your charged hours annual goal equates to less than 40 charged hours a week, then the non-charged hours will start to be more important. But if you are charging 40+ hours a week, then non-charged hours are less important.

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Accounting firms are doing this because they still accrue revenue via hours rather than by product completion. When accounting firms finally decouple hours spent on fixed fee deliverables and hours that can be billed directly, you will see all the 'time charging madness' critically reduce.

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Recent IconRecent

Both. Heavily.

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Yup charge hrs/utilization is heavily tracked

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If you look at utilization anything non charge gets added to the denominator so it still brings your metric down, but yes it is more so the opportunity cost which is why I said it’s not incentivized

Charge hours/utilization % only. Based on standard 40 hour weeek.

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During busy season we have hot/cold weeks. Hot weeks is when the base hours is raised to 45-50 hrs minimum. Cold weeks is 40. Granted these are minimum and true hours are based on engagement need.

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Both even though they make us join all these nonchargable events that bite us in the ass

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We technically have a total hours requirement, but nobody cares about it

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As long as we hit charge hours then nobody cares about the rest. At the associate level it’s 1800 charge out of 2300. So 500 non charge hours, but a little more than half of that will be taken up by PTO and holidays. The rest kind of gets eaten up by CPE, training, time entry, and firm events.

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Mind blowing that crap like that is still going on

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That people work under those conditions.

Focus is on charged / available (aka no consideration for total billers) but if your timesheet for any week is under 40 total you’re in trouble and if you use the “unassigned” code it’s monitored closely and will cause flags

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Both. Only started to matter after a new leadership team was put in place a couple years ago

Both. Heavily. Firm contribution hours don’t matter nearly as much.

Really? I asked my seniors and they said they weren’t tracked 👀.
But I know charge hours is; wasn’t sure about utilization. What’s the standard?

Yes

But they won’t let u know what it is until you sign the offer letter

When I was at Crowe both.

Yes and yes

Both. But I’m curious what OP thinks they’re the anomaly for tracking.

We only have charge hour goals. Up until this past March we didn’t even input non-charge hours.

I noticed that some people still don’t really and others do.

We do not have a total hours goal at all.

Both. Was quite surprised to learn they really care about non-charges too.

Both

Both. Although chargeable hours are tracked far more. People are let go for too few chargeable hours

3. But the requirements have not been consistent and if you miss them but are well liked it’s usually fine. Until we have a year like this one and we’re left trying to understand why everyone’s so mad about hours. Total hours are really only scrutinized if the chargehours are missed or you’re trying to get a promo or we need a tie breaker when comparing two professionals at the same level.

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