Billable vs Non-billable Time
Before knowing how to track billable hours, you must know what it is in the first place. The difference between billable and
non-billable time is simple:
the first is used in billing calculations, while the second isn’t.
What are billable hours?
Billable time is the hours you use to charge clients. This includes time your team spends working on tasks related to a client’s project,
either directly or indirectly. Some common examples of such assignments include:
- Working on the project itself
- Conducting research for the project
- Managing tasks within the project
What are non-billable hours?
Non-billable time is the hours your staff spend working on tasks not related to a client’s project.
These typically relate to your company’s management efforts or in-house projects. A few common examples include:
- Employee training and development
- Working on your firm’s own projects
- Company management tasks like HR
Tracking both billable and non-billable time can help you manage your company’s finances better and bill your clients more efficiently.
However, doing this can be a tedious task, especially if you have a larger team. Fortunately, you can simplify this process with the topic of this guide:
time tracking for invoicing.
The Benefits of Time Tracking for Accurate Billing
Automatic time tracking has several benefits over manual time tracking methods. These include:
Unparalleled accuracy—Tracking time with a dedicated app results in data that is much more accurate.
This effect is especially noticeable if you use an automated time tracker, like WebWork.
Ease of use—Tracking time with an app is much easier than manually entering spreadsheets.
Besides this, automated time tracking will save your staff a lot of time, which they can spend on tasks that help your business grow.
Scalability—Manual time tracking is difficult to scale to larger teams.
You’ll need to dedicate more staff to managing timesheets than with automated tracking.
Coincidentally, this is also one of the hidden costs of manual time tracking which you should be wary of.
How to Track Billable Hours with WebWork: Step-by-step
Let’s now dive into the main topic of this guide: the process of time tracking for accurate invoicing with WebWork.
This involves the following steps:
- Creating projects with Project and Task Management
- Instructing your staff to track their time with automatic tracking
- Setting up activity description reminders
- Analyzing tracked time data periodically
Create projects with Project and Task Management
The first step to accurate time tracking for billing is to set up a few projects.
You should separate all of your team’s work into billable and non-billable projects.
Use WebWork’s Project and Task Management functionality for this and create as many projects as you need. Make sure to enter all important details of your projects,
including the hourly rates for billable ones.
After this, you can manage your staff’s tasks within each project. This will help your team know exactly what they should be working on each day.
As a result, they’ll be more organized and will perform their best more frequently.
Have your staff track their time with automatic tracking
After setting up projects and tasks in your dashboard, you should instruct your staff to start tracking their time.
To make the process simple, you should use the WebWork Desktop App on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
By default, the app will start tracking your staff’s time as soon as their computers turn on.
This will minimize the amount of work they’ll have to do to provide you with accurate time data.
Set up activity description reminders
To ensure you get even more accuracy, set up activity description reminders in WebWork’s settings.
The highest frequency of reminders that you can set is one every 30 minutes.
This will ensure that your staff keep their activity descriptions up to date, greatly reducing the possibility of various errors.
To set activity description reminders, go to Settings, then click on “Tracker”.
In the “Desktop Software” tab, find the option “Remind to write an activity description”.
Click the dropdown box next to it and choose an option that fits your use case the best.
Analyze tracked time data periodically
The last thing you can do to ensure the accuracy of your billable time data is to check it periodically.
This will allow you to catch any errors in time and avoid under or overcharging your clients.
Consequently, this will help you build trust with your clients, the benefits of which are plentiful and obvious.
While you can do this manually, a better way to do it is through WebWork AI. You can get exactly the data you need in mere seconds with nothing but a few prompts.
WebWork AI can even provide you with accurate analyses and productivity recommendations, further simplifying your work.
Billing Clients with Accurate Tracked Time Data
Once you know how to track billable hours accurately, you’ll be able to move to the next step in getting paid: billing your clients.
This is another area where WebWork can simplify your work. Using the app’s Invoicing functionality, you can generate hour-based invoices with just a few clicks.
You may then send these invoices to your clients in several ways.
Moreover, you can even let your clients pay directly from their invoices with our Stripe integration. This will help you get paid quicker than ever.
