Depending on how busy I am, and what portion of my time is spent doing proposals, and office management functions, etc. I do between 60-100% billable, averaging about 75% (based on a normal work week).
I expect 90%+ from production staff, and 80%+ from project managers.
Expecting much more is unrealistic (at least in the long term).
salary. . . expected to work between 42 and 45 hours a week. of this, 38 hours should be billable per week. the other time is office overhead, administrative duties, marketing, proposals, continuing education, professional development, mentoring, etc.
100% billable.
unless i am doing something that is specifically for the firm that goes under overhead everything gets billed - cleaning my desk, scratching my butt...
All hours are billable. Time sheets are ajusted to move non productive work into the overtime column so that the core working hours are all billable to jobs.
I guess I have been told recently that general research even for a specific job is not to be billed to that job. Not sure how to draw that line. Yet I get warnings if 2 hours are billed to general office in a week on my time sheet. We are also encouraged to be conscious of potty breaks and coffe breaks and not bill them to clients. So 3 hours a week that I don't bill to jobs doesn't seem unreasonable to me given my firm's stance. I feel the coffee breaks etc are a necessity, not a luxury, and can add up to .5 hours a day alone. However, I fear my "accurate" time keeping makes me appear less productive than my coworkers who do bill 100% whether it's true or not.
Thanks for all your anwsers, I was wondering how the rest of you handled these things.
But doesn't billing 100% of your time falsify the amount of time it took to do a job? Those of you that bill 100%, how can you ignore these subtle things that can eventually add up to big bucks?
For comparison, does anyone know how lawyers bill their time?
Most lawyers bill on a Quarter hour basis.So if he spends an hour and 5 min. on your job. He bills you for 1 hour and 15 min. based on his hourly rate which is usually around $200/hr.
I bill 95% of my time to clients. I bill by the quarter hour. If I work only 5 minutes on a particular job, I bill 15 minutes. I won't bill break time to small jobs, but If I'm working all day on the same project, I will bill my breaks (never longer than 5 minutes) to the client I did the bulk of the work for. It also depends on the client. If they are good people, who don't treat me like a totally worthless peon, I'll underbill them. If they demand a full set of CDs, which I bust my ass to get to them before the Thanksgiving holiday, and then pick up the drawings a week later without so much as a thank you, they get overbilled.
I hate whoring out my life in 15 minute increments.
I bill 8 to 10 hours 5 days per week. Since this is a small office I'm also the computer tech person, maintenance man, secretary, bookkeeper, etc. In order to bill this amount and still do all these other tasks I work about 60 hours per week. My partner does more of the marketing/public relations tasks so she doesn't generally bill as many hours though she works at least as many as I work. She probably averages about 6 billable hours per weekday.
Our interns do not usually bill as many hours as I do, because they pretty much work a 40-hour week and they do have some time spent on errands and office-administration tasks. We expect as much of their time to be billable time as possible - i.e. coffee breaks of a few minutes are fine, long breaks aren't encouraged. We don't expect interns to put in a lot of overtime (and we do pay for overtime) so we don't expect that they do all their "desk cleaning" and other non-billable tasks after hours, but we do hope they're avoiding prolonged cleaning sprees, and we appreciate it when they discuss with us anything they're thinking of doing that will result in many unbillable hours before they undertake it!
Research undertaken for specific projects are always billed to those projects. I'd usually rather undertake "general" research projects myself on my own time than be paying someone else to do this research, but this would depend on the situation - for instance there's a certain amount of "code research" that everyone in the office does need to do at some point.
We notice that new employees often don't understand the impact on the firm of billable vs. non-billable hours, and so are enthusiastic to start internal "firm improvement" type projects - things like making new CAD standard booklets, re-organizing the supply closet, making marketing brochures, etc. It's not that these projects are unnecessary or unappreciated - but because newer employees are paid hourly and I and my partner aren't it often makes more sense for us to do these things in our own "overtime."
Dec 10, 04 7:52 pm ·
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billable time
How much of your time is billable time? Put it in a ratio of 40 hours a week. Like say 39/40 hours this week was billable for an example.
hmmmmmm. i wish my thesis was billable time....
73 hours last week. and 26 hours in 2 days this week already.
only 2.5 hours is "archinect surfing" time code Overhead 2849.
Unless I'm cleaning off my desk, everything is billable. Last weeks 55 hours was 50 hours billed and 5 hours scratching my ass.
As a project manager/associate I bill out a min. of 8 hours a day which usually means working 10 hours.
The other 2 hours are for dealing with the day to day administrative aspects of the job.
38 b/2 ub (Friday team breakfast...lunch-learn)
typical week.
Depending on how busy I am, and what portion of my time is spent doing proposals, and office management functions, etc. I do between 60-100% billable, averaging about 75% (based on a normal work week).
I expect 90%+ from production staff, and 80%+ from project managers.
Expecting much more is unrealistic (at least in the long term).
salary. . . expected to work between 42 and 45 hours a week. of this, 38 hours should be billable per week. the other time is office overhead, administrative duties, marketing, proposals, continuing education, professional development, mentoring, etc.
45/40
all hours are billed to the job til you top out on fee.
then you're working for free!
proto - are you saying you bill 45 out of 40 hours?
no wonder you top out quick
100% billable.
unless i am doing something that is specifically for the firm that goes under overhead everything gets billed - cleaning my desk, scratching my butt...
All hours are billable. Time sheets are ajusted to move non productive work into the overtime column so that the core working hours are all billable to jobs.
no doubt BOTS
we're not freakin charity here
=D
"Cash Rules Everything Around Me, C.R.E.A.M., get the money, dollar, dollar bill y'all"
It's all billable time til a client disputes it. Then you compromise.
It's called the cost of doing business. Be prepared to accept it
I guess I have been told recently that general research even for a specific job is not to be billed to that job. Not sure how to draw that line. Yet I get warnings if 2 hours are billed to general office in a week on my time sheet. We are also encouraged to be conscious of potty breaks and coffe breaks and not bill them to clients. So 3 hours a week that I don't bill to jobs doesn't seem unreasonable to me given my firm's stance. I feel the coffee breaks etc are a necessity, not a luxury, and can add up to .5 hours a day alone. However, I fear my "accurate" time keeping makes me appear less productive than my coworkers who do bill 100% whether it's true or not.
Thanks for all your anwsers, I was wondering how the rest of you handled these things.
But doesn't billing 100% of your time falsify the amount of time it took to do a job? Those of you that bill 100%, how can you ignore these subtle things that can eventually add up to big bucks?
For comparison, does anyone know how lawyers bill their time?
Most lawyers bill on a Quarter hour basis.So if he spends an hour and 5 min. on your job. He bills you for 1 hour and 15 min. based on his hourly rate which is usually around $200/hr.
I bill 95% of my time to clients. I bill by the quarter hour. If I work only 5 minutes on a particular job, I bill 15 minutes. I won't bill break time to small jobs, but If I'm working all day on the same project, I will bill my breaks (never longer than 5 minutes) to the client I did the bulk of the work for. It also depends on the client. If they are good people, who don't treat me like a totally worthless peon, I'll underbill them. If they demand a full set of CDs, which I bust my ass to get to them before the Thanksgiving holiday, and then pick up the drawings a week later without so much as a thank you, they get overbilled.
I hate whoring out my life in 15 minute increments.
my target is 95% I usually come in between 95% and 110%
I bill 8 to 10 hours 5 days per week. Since this is a small office I'm also the computer tech person, maintenance man, secretary, bookkeeper, etc. In order to bill this amount and still do all these other tasks I work about 60 hours per week. My partner does more of the marketing/public relations tasks so she doesn't generally bill as many hours though she works at least as many as I work. She probably averages about 6 billable hours per weekday.
Our interns do not usually bill as many hours as I do, because they pretty much work a 40-hour week and they do have some time spent on errands and office-administration tasks. We expect as much of their time to be billable time as possible - i.e. coffee breaks of a few minutes are fine, long breaks aren't encouraged. We don't expect interns to put in a lot of overtime (and we do pay for overtime) so we don't expect that they do all their "desk cleaning" and other non-billable tasks after hours, but we do hope they're avoiding prolonged cleaning sprees, and we appreciate it when they discuss with us anything they're thinking of doing that will result in many unbillable hours before they undertake it!
Research undertaken for specific projects are always billed to those projects. I'd usually rather undertake "general" research projects myself on my own time than be paying someone else to do this research, but this would depend on the situation - for instance there's a certain amount of "code research" that everyone in the office does need to do at some point.
We notice that new employees often don't understand the impact on the firm of billable vs. non-billable hours, and so are enthusiastic to start internal "firm improvement" type projects - things like making new CAD standard booklets, re-organizing the supply closet, making marketing brochures, etc. It's not that these projects are unnecessary or unappreciated - but because newer employees are paid hourly and I and my partner aren't it often makes more sense for us to do these things in our own "overtime."
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