About this site
Fifty notes on billable hours and client billing, written for the people who have to produce a bill and then live with it: partners and principals who sign them, fee earners who record the time they are built from, billing and finance teams who assemble them, and the people on the other side who have to approve them.
What it covers
What a bill actually is, and what the record behind it holds. What was agreed before any hour was worked — the engagement letter, the rates, the estimate, the cap and the scope. The time entry and its nine words. What comes off before the bill is issued and who decided it. The document as issued: detail, covering note, timing, expenses and format. The other side reading it. And everything from issue to payment.
What it leaves out
How to price work. Pricing is a separate subject with its own literature, and nothing here recommends a fee, a rate or an arrangement.
Professional conduct rules, tax treatment and the law of costs. What may be charged, how time must be recorded, what a client must be told, how money on account must be held and how a bill may be assessed differ by profession, by jurisdiction and by agreement, and they change. Those are questions for somebody qualified where you are.
About the figures
Every number on this site is an illustration of what one firm recorded for itself, and is labelled as such. None of them is a benchmark, a survey result or a statement of what any method requires. Currency figures are in pounds because they come from one firm's own records; nothing turns on the currency.