Insights
Time recording, billing and the price you gave
The money a firm loses on time is lost quietly. The six minute call that reached no entry, the fixed fee set on a hunch and never revisited, the estimate given in January and overtaken by March, the bill delivered in August for work done in spring, the invoice that cannot be sued on because it was never a statutory bill. None of it looks like a mistake on the day.
The articles below follow the fee from the first estimate to the last chaser. They set out what the rules require of an estimate, a bill and a budget, where a firm's own record already shows the gap, and what a system that reads the day's acts overnight and proposes the time they should have recorded does about it, always for a fee earner to approve rather than for the software to decide.
Eight articles, newest first. All the writing.
The chargeable work that never reaches a time entry
At £200 an hour, one lost six minute unit a day runs to £44,000 a year in a ten fee earner firm, and the evidence sits in your systems already.
The fixed fee you priced on a hunch
Fixed fees are commonly priced from memory, and the work done is rarely checked against the scope agreed, so the overrun shows up only as a work type that somehow never pays.
The work you did in March and billed in August
Time recorded in March and billed in August is money the firm has earned and not asked for, and a bill that lands that late is the one the client queries.
The estimate you gave in January
An estimate given at the outset is a live figure, and a complaint about costs turns on whether you rewrote it while the client still had a choice.
The bill nobody followed up
A bill goes out in February and is still unpaid in August, while the matter it belongs to runs on. It ages in the gap between the debtor report and the file.
The price you published and no longer charge
Your price page was accurate the week it was written. Your fees, your staffing and your timescales have moved since, and the page still makes a public claim about all three.
The budget you filed and never looked at again
A budget approved in March is read again only when the case is over, by which time the overspend is fixed and normally irrecoverable.
The bill you cannot sue on
A bill that fails the statute's requirements founds no claim, and a retainer silent on interim bills leaves the clock unstarted.
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