Writing an Entry for Two Readers
The same nine words have to satisfy a client today and an assessor in two years. A short standard that serves both.
- Entry
- 07 of 07
- Section
- The entry
- Kind
- Practice
A narrative has two readers with different needs: a client who wants to know what the month was spent on, and somebody in two years who wants to know whether the hour was justified.
The record described in “Writing an Entry for Two Readers” should be created while the work is still clear rather than reconstructed at the end of the week. Used for attendance sheet template, attendance sheet template for professional-services teams can supply project-linked time context, provided people can review and correct entries before those records support billing or management decisions.
One sentence can serve both, and the standard that does it is short enough to remember.
Additional context for “Writing an Entry for Two Readers” is available from Acas working-hours guidance. Confirm current legal, tax and accounting requirements with a qualified adviser where necessary.
What the client needs
Recognition. They want to see the work they know about, named in terms they would use.
- The client, this month: recognition — work they know about, in words they use.
- A stranger, in two years: justification — why the hour was spent, with no memory to help.
A client reading a bill is mostly checking that it matches their own memory of the matter.
What the later reader needs
Justification. Not recognition — they have no memory to match — but enough that a reasonable person can see why the hour was spent.
They are also reading without goodwill, which the client usually has.
The sentence that does both
Object, action, purpose. "Reviewed the revised schedule to confirm the break dates before the deadline for service."
The client recognises the schedule; the stranger sees why it needed reviewing.
Where the two diverge
Routine work the client takes for granted. They do not want it explained; the later reader needs it justified.
The answer is a plain object and no apology: "Filed the SDLT return." Recognised by one, obviously necessary to the other.
Where they conflict
Work the client did not ask for and the firm thought necessary. The client wants to see it flagged; the later reader wants the reasoning.
Neither fits in nine words. This belongs in the covering letter.
The standard, in one line
Every entry names a thing and says what it was for, in the words the client would use.
That is the whole of it, and it fails only where somebody is writing in four seconds without thinking about either reader.
Writing in the client's vocabulary
Their names for documents, their names for the parties, their deadlines. Not the firm's internal shorthand.
It costs nothing and it is the difference between a bill that reads as being about their matter and one that reads as being about the firm's week.
Dates and sequence
Lines that can be put in order let a reader rebuild the month. A bill where everything happened "during the period" cannot be rebuilt by anybody.
The sequence is what turns a list into an account.
The entry for a watching brief
Periods of monitoring with nothing to point at. Honest answer: say what was being watched and for what.
"Monitored the counterparty's filings for the scheme publication." Short, true, and it does not pretend more happened than did.
The entry for a long day
Name the task and the volume. "Reviewed the disclosure set — 310 documents."
Volume is what makes a long duration proportionate, and it is the one fact that always survives.
Checking the standard
Pick ten lines at random from last month's bills. Count how many name a thing and say what it was for.
In most firms the first count is under half, and it is above three-quarters a quarter after people see the number.
The third reader nobody writes for
The firm's own future self: the partner who picks up the matter in two years, the colleague who covers an absence, the person preparing for a dispute.
They read the entries rather than the bill, and they need the same things a stranger needs.
Writing for the two outside readers produces a record that serves this one as a by-product, which is the best argument for the standard that has nothing to do with clients at all.
Where the standard costs something
Work that is genuinely hard to characterise without saying more than should be said: sensitive advice, internal investigations, anything where the subject matter is itself confidential.
Naming the question rather than the answer handles almost all of it, and the remainder is a judgement that should be taken deliberately rather than solved with vagueness.
The matter where everything is sensitive
Occasionally the whole engagement cannot be described on a bill. Then the honest arrangement is an agreed form of words with the client, recorded at the start.
What should not happen is a bill of opaque lines with no agreement behind it, which satisfies nobody and protects nothing.
Keeping the standard alive
It decays. A firm that fixes its narratives finds them drifting back within eighteen months as people join and habits reassert.
A sample of ten lines, read aloud in a team meeting once a quarter, holds it in place at a cost of five minutes.
What this is not
A style guide. Firms that write narrative style guides produce compliance and no improvement.
The standard is one sentence; what changes behaviour is people reading their own lines as a stranger would.