Have you ever wondered if you are not making the most out of your billable time ? Maybe retrace your steps and see if there is a way to recapture billing opportunities.
If a policy is established that accounts for all time in the day, some may find that certain clients that actually end up costing the business more money than they bring in. If accurate daily time keeping is being conducted, a business owner can see what the staff does from 9-5 everyday, find out how much time is spent on administrative time and on billable time. They can also find other important statistics like how much time is spent handling client communication and how much of that time is unaccounted for. This includes both phone calls and emails. These activities tend to take a lot of time and often are overlooked when billing customers for services.
Sometimes it’s important to place a value on different tasks, and set goals for efficiency. Say there are a few clients that every time they call, they spend 20 minutes or more on the phone with a staff member. When auditing your practice at the end of the year you will see hours upon hours spent on the phone with them and they didn’t get charged. That would be a prime example of a missed billing opportunity.
To make sure time and money aren’t being wasted, staff members should set time goals for administrative and other non-billable tasks.
To make sure time and money aren’t being wasted, staff members should set time goals for administrative and other non-billable tasks.
If a budget is set and goals for flat fee and value-billed projects, staff will know when to charge more. Placing a value and hourly rates on flat fee projects will provide a guideline to determine if the fees are profitable.
This is important for a few reasons. Let’s use the out of control project as an example. An employee starts this project expecting it to take 5 hours and they priced the job at that rate, turns out the job takes them 20 hours. They now have to charge the client more and if they were tracking their time right they can show why this new amount is being billed.
This is important for a few reasons. Let’s use the out of control project as an example. An employee starts this project expecting it to take 5 hours and they priced the job at that rate, turns out the job takes them 20 hours. They now have to charge the client more and if they were tracking their time right they can show why this new amount is being billed.
In the end, tracking time ensures that everything is accounted for, bringing more value to reporting. Now everyone can see if the original work in process can be associated with adjustments made to billing. At the end of the year we need to know that we’ve made more adjustments up than down. Create systems or use software that can warn when staff are reaching max budgets. This should also be a system that is visible and easily accessible to owners, managers and key staff. The whole team needs to work together before a bad situation is beyond correction.
These policies and techniques are a great for recapturing billing opportunities.
These policies and techniques are a great for recapturing billing opportunities.
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