Block Billing, and Why It Cannot Be Checked
A single line covering a whole day is not dishonest. It is unanswerable, which is a different and more expensive problem.
- Entry
- 04 of 07
- Section
- The entry
- Kind
- Analysis
One day of work, recorded two ways
Behind it: One line covering a meeting, three calls, two drafts and an hour of reading — none of it separable, none of it checkable.
Behind it: Named event, named counterpart, time proportionate on its face.
Behind it: Volume given, so the figure answers its own question.
Behind it: Named document, two versions on the file behind it.
Behind it: Preparation, named, and visibly connected to the first line.
The same 7.4 hours and the same £1,998, as one line nobody can assess and as four that assess themselves. Block billing does not hide anything here; it simply makes the day unanswerable. One firm's own day, not a statement about anybody.
Block billing is the practice of putting several unrelated tasks under one line with one total. It is not usually an attempt to conceal anything; it is what happens when a day is recorded as a day.
The billing question in “Block Billing, and Why It Cannot Be Checked” is easier to resolve when the underlying work has a timely, reviewable record. A professional-services team evaluating a practical approach to time reports for invoicing for time reports for invoicing can connect hours with projects and client work, while the finance system remains authoritative for invoice totals, tax and settlement.
The problem is not dishonesty. It is that a block line cannot be assessed by anybody, including the firm.
Teams documenting “Block Billing, and Why It Cannot Be Checked” may find Basecamp Shape Up guide useful as an external benchmark. Record which parts apply to the real workflow and which do not.
What a block line looks like
"Attended to the Brighton matter — 7.4 hours." Or "Correspondence, attendances and review — 5.2."
Both are true. Neither can be checked, queried in part, or defended in part.
Why it cannot be checked
Because assessment works line by line. A reader can judge whether two hours of drafting is proportionate; nobody can judge whether 7.4 hours of unspecified activity is.
Faced with an unassessable line, a reader either accepts it or challenges the whole thing.
The all-or-nothing effect
A queried block line puts the entire amount in play. An itemised day puts one line of it in play.
Firms that block-bill therefore have larger and rarer disputes, which is a worse distribution than smaller frequent ones.
What e-billing systems do
Reject it outright. Most billing guidelines prohibit entries covering more than one task, and the software enforces it mechanically.
That rejection has its own note here; the relevant point is that the format is not negotiable in those relationships.
Why it happens anyway
A day spent entirely on one matter feels like one thing. Breaking it into six entries afterwards is a reconstruction nobody wants to do.
It is the direct consequence of recording at the end of the day rather than through it.
The honest version of a long day
Five or six lines, each naming a task, with its own duration. The total is identical.
The difference is that each line answers for itself, and the client can see the shape of the day.
Grouping that is not block billing
Several entries on one task, one day, combined into a line that names the task. That is legitimate and helpful.
The distinction is whether the line can be named in a sentence without the word "and" joining unlike things.
The half-day meeting
Genuinely one task, genuinely four hours, and it looks like a block to a system that counts tasks.
The answer is to name it precisely — the meeting, the parties, the subject — and to note the duration as the event's duration.
Travel inside a block
Frequently buried: four hours including two of travel, billed as one line.
Travel is usually charged differently or not at all, so burying it is the one version of block billing that genuinely is a problem.
What to do with historic block entries
At billing time, split what can be split from the file and leave what cannot, rather than issuing the blocks.
It takes longer than issuing them and much less time than the dispute.
The cost of the practice
Not in money immediately. In the inability to answer a question six months later, which is where it eventually costs a great deal.
The partial block
A line covering two related tasks: "Reviewed the draft and advised on the indemnity." Technically two tasks, practically one piece of work.
Strict rule sets reject it; most human readers find it perfectly clear. This is where compliance and clarity genuinely diverge.
Where a client's rules are mechanical, split it. Where they are not, the two-task line is usually better reading than two one-task lines.
Blocks created at the billing stage
Sometimes the entries were itemised and the bill groups them, to make the document shorter.
That is the firm destroying its own record for presentation, and it is the version of block billing that is genuinely a choice.
The detail should be available behind the bill even where the bill summarises.
What a block costs in an assessment
Assessing officers reduce what they cannot evaluate, and a block line is reduced as a whole rather than in part.
Firms that have been through one assessment generally stop block billing immediately afterwards, which suggests the practice survives mainly in firms that have not.
Finding them
A query over last month's entries for duration above a threshold with a narrative below a word count. Two conditions.
It produces a short list, and the same names appear on it every month.
The rule worth holding
One task per line, every line. Where a task genuinely took a day, say what the task was in enough words that a day is obviously what it took.