What the Entry Says and What the File Says
Two records are made of the same hour: one for the client and one for the firm. Keeping them separate is a practice, not an accident.
- Entry
- 06 of 07
- Section
- The entry
- Kind
- Analysis
Each hour leaves two records behind it. One is the narrative, written to be read by the client; the other is whatever is in the file — the attendance note, the email, the internal comment — written for colleagues.
The record described in “What the Entry Says and What the File Says” should be created while the work is still clear rather than reconstructed at the end of the week. Used for daily schedule template, see the relevant capability overview can supply project-linked time context, provided people can review and correct entries before those records support billing or management decisions.
Keeping them apart is deliberate work, and the places where they leak into each other are where bills go wrong.
Teams documenting “What the Entry Says and What the File Says” may find OWASP logging guidance useful as an external benchmark. Record which parts apply to the real workflow and which do not.
What belongs in the narrative
What was done, what it was for, and enough of an object that a stranger can check it. Nothing else.
- The narrative: what was done, what it was for, an object a stranger can check.
- The file: the reasoning, the alternatives, the misgivings, what went wrong.
What belongs in the file
Everything: the reasoning, the alternatives, the misgivings, what the client said that is not repeatable, what went wrong.
The file is where a firm thinks, and it only works if it is candid.
The leak outward
Internal shorthand reaching the bill. Matter codes, nicknames, abbreviations, the occasional candid phrase.
"Chased client again re documents" is accurate and reads to the client as a complaint about them.
The leak inward
Narratives written to look good, in the file, instead of notes written to be useful.
A file whose notes are all written for an outside reader stops being able to record anything awkward, which is a much larger loss than a bad bill.
The entry that admits a mistake
"Redrafted clause 7 following error in earlier version." Honest, correct, and it should never be on a bill because the client is not paying for it.
The hour goes in the file; the line comes off before issue. That is a deduction, and it has its own section here.
The entry about the client
"Call with the client, who had not read the report." The second clause is file material.
Narratives that characterise the client are the single most damaging category of leak, and they survive review surprisingly often.
The entry about a colleague
"Correcting the draft produced by [name]." Internal performance information in an outside document.
It is also a line that invites an immediate and unanswerable query.
Reviewing for leaks
A pass over the draft bill looking only for sentences that say something about a person rather than about work.
It takes five minutes and catches the entries that cause real damage, as against the ones that merely cause queries.
Two fields, not one
Time systems that offer a client narrative and an internal note solve most of this structurally.
Where only one field exists, people write the useful version and somebody edits it later, which is slower and less reliable.
The cost of a single field
Either candid entries that need editing, or sanitised entries that are useless in the file.
Most firms end up with the second, and discover it when they need to reconstruct a matter.
What the client would see if they saw the file
Usually nothing alarming. Occasionally something very alarming indeed, and almost always something they would read differently from how it was meant.
That gap is the reason for the separation, not secrecy.
Privilege and the bill
In some circumstances the narratives themselves can be disclosable, and a bill written carelessly can say more about the matter than anybody intended.
A narrative should describe work, not conclusions, for that reason as well as the others.
The review that catches it
A read of the draft bill looking only for sentences that describe a person: the client, a colleague, a counterparty, an opponent.
Five minutes, and it is a different pass from the one looking for vague narratives. Done together, one of them gets skipped.
Who should do it
Somebody other than the person who wrote the entries. The author reads their own shorthand as transparent, which is precisely the failure being looked for.
In small teams this is a swap rather than a hierarchy: each person reads another's.
The entry that is true and unusable
"Waiting for the client to provide the information requested on three occasions." Accurate, chargeable, and it will be read as a complaint.
The billable fact is the waiting; the characterisation is the problem. "Time awaiting the schedule of titles" bills the same hour and says nothing about anybody.
What a candid file is worth
The ability to reconstruct a matter, to defend a decision, and to learn from one that went wrong.
Firms that sanitise the file to make it bill-safe lose all three, and the loss is invisible until the first time somebody needs it.
Two fields in the time system cost nothing and protect both documents.
The practice
Write the narrative for the client, the note for the file, and spend five minutes before issue looking only for sentences about people.
Three habits. None costs more than minutes and together they prevent the entries that do lasting damage.