Who is billable by the hour and does timesheets?

When you’re not billable, how do you cope/motivate yourself to do stuff?

V. quiet at work at the moment (worrying) and it’s killing me…trying to look busy is awful.

Some idea of the industry you’re in would help…?

When you’re not billable, how do you cope/motivate yourself to do stuff?

I take the afternoon off and go riding 🙂

sell some more work?!?!
done 10 years timesheets…. just quit for a non-billable job. WAHOO!

I’m billable.

I’m also an expert writer of fiction.

You haven’t found the “STW” code on your company’s timesheet software yet then?

We have an overhead code to book to.

But there’s the catch 22 of you’re not allowed to book to it without permission, and you only get permission if there’s overhead work to do, and there’s no overhead work to do because the budget for that was cut entirely.

GEN-STW 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5 7.5

Making up hours and filling out time sheets is still better than managing people who make up hours filling out time sheets

I find that no matter what task I have on hand, it always takes 7.5 hours. Strange that.

Wasn’t so bad at the old place as I was expected to put time into BD and service development but the current place expects full utilisation as the work is supposed to be supplied from elsewhere, except it isn’t.

I got grief for writing proposals for £250k worth of work that took 3 days.

But there’s the catch 22 of you’re not allowed to book to it without permission, and you only get permission if there’s overhead work to do, and there’s no overhead work to do because the budget for that was cut entirely.

I don’t miss this crap at all. Nearly a year since I last had to justify my existence with a timesheet and had to grovel for time from project managers for doing work there was no budget for and then getting in trouble from line managers for not having said billable hours in a big infinite loop.

OP if you’re still at the stage where you can book unbillable time without having to ask and being dissected over it then things ain’t too bad!

Only book hours for actual work done, let (email) Manager know you need more work (if required).

If pulled up for billing less hours, refer ‘caller’ to your Manager and forward them your email.

Life’s too short.

Some jobs time billable, some not. I do try and time sheet everything then at least I have a record of what time was spent and if the job was remotely profitable or not. I work for myself so more motivation for this. At an old practice used to suffer severe memory loss when trying to recall what the hell i’d been doing all day! No code for coffee, chatting or gorming.

I’m paid on daily rate, though timesheet stuff I use works on hours. I just use 7.5 per day.

“professional working day” basically. If I’ve done what I feel is a day’s worth of work, be it in 3 hours or spread over 10, then I bill for a day. If I feel I’ve spent half a day on STW and done crap all work, then might bill less 😉

As far as the client is concerned, if they see the work is being delivered then they pay. If they have an issue then they have the right to not dispute the invoice I give them.

As I’m freelance, if I’m sat about doing nothing due to no work, I may as well just go home. Or if working at home I just go out ride bikes and not bill. I know plenty will still charge, but I don’t feel that’s right. For IR35 friendly purposes I charge on the basis of projects and days definitely worked on it. Ideally I’d charge fixed fee but it’s nearly always unworkable. A daily rate, especially if the client raises a PO for set number of days for a piece of work, is nearest I can get. Hourly rate to me is more about charging for time sat at a desk which I don’t feel is so good for IR35.

the introduction of time-sheets is a sure sign that it’s time to look for a new job.

it’s not the concept that bothers me, it’s the pointless inevitability that they bring.

fridays and month-ends, are wasted with project managers arguing over hours. where they can and can’t go, just to make everything look good. No-one has a clue how many hours are actually taken up by each project, it’s all a work of fiction.

“we need you to work on this project, but you can’t book any hours to it, go and see Dave*, you might be able to hide your time on his job”

etc.

(*who tells you to jog on)

I’m currently top of our billability league for this FY. It’s the main reason I have a good laugh when I hear the phrase ‘private sector efficiency’ 😀

“we need you to work on this project, but you can’t book any hours to it, go and see Dave*, you might be able to hide your time on his job”

The established process for this here is “you need to be a little flexible with your timesheet this week”, which means, book the time to some other sucker’s job without telling them, and if they notice, tell them it was an innocent mistake and then drag your feet on transferring the time until they give in under pressure from the finance dept to close off the month end.

I’m billable and need to do a timesheet – it’s a PITA as I work on several different clients and each client has several different projects so I have about 15 projects at the moment I can book to, some of those projects have sub-codes to (only the descriptions of the projects aren’t very meaningful so I have to keep a separate list of what they actually are). I sometimes spend more time chasing to be added to a project than I do actual work on that project.

We used to have overhead/bucket codes but people abused them (there’s an “admin” code but you’re not allowed to use it unless it’s because you’re still waiting to be put on the correct code and you then need to do an adjustment the following week to 0 out any admin hours. The only overhead code I have these days is to book time for completing timesheets against (max 1 hour a week)…

These days if I can’t account for my time (like now…) I just spread it around the various codes I have and hope none of the PMs ask me what I was actually doing. It’s a pain to if need to research something (I’m a tech architect), projects assume you have expert knowledge of everything required by the project so if you don’t (which is usually the case) you can’t book time researching it (reading white papers etc.) to the project you need to hide it elsewhere (but not on the “training code” as any time there needs to be cross-referenced to an approved training request…).

I miss the days I could just get on with doing my job (with a bit of random Internet browsing thrown in).

I sympathise, I had this exact situation in my last billable role. My manager was a great engineer and awful at winning jobs. I Used to go round and round the office asking people for work, (then again asking them to open the job code. 🙄 ) so i had something to book to at the end of the week.

Ended up taking days off sick because of the worry. Then, when I moved jobs because I couldn’t cope with the situation he took pains to point out how my sickness record would look to potential employers.

Never again thanks.

Ended up taking days off sick because of the worry. Then, when I moved jobs because I couldn’t cope with the situation he took pains to point out how my sickness record would look to potential employers.

I’ve a feeling someone in my last office ended up off sick because of timesheet related stress. I got immensely hacked off but could see redundancy coming for a while so had kind of given up on it anyway.

And can an employer really divulge your sickness record to potential employers in any way? Even if they come for a reference?

Ah, the tyranny of chargeable hours.

Last law firm I worked at I was regularly in the top 5% of fee earners for chargeable time recorded. But that was as a result of typical law firm behaviour: run your best people at 120+% utilisation and then act surprised when they’re miffed at the pitiful “bonus”* for the privilege of working 90 hours a week.

Never say never and all that, but it would pretty much take wild horses (read: piles of money) for me to return to that sort of environment.

*I remember bonuses being introduced into law firms – usually based on hours recorded – and partners being put out that the people who did the work expected to be remunerated for all that lovely profit for their wives to spend on new Mercedes….

I find it a bit odd worrying about timesheets. It can be stressful if you’re quiet, but as I explain to new people, that’s the manager’s problem not yours. As a (very junior) manager, I stress about my team’s timesheets, not my own.

We have a billable target, which is 65%. We’re not meant to exceed it. But then, we have demanding obligations of stuff to do when we’re not billable. And we get in trouble for not doing it. But then again, we can choose to do whatever we want as long as it meets the pretty broad criteria.

I’ve hardly had any non-billable time for ages, and the pile of stuff I want to do is big.

I find it a bit odd worrying about timesheets. It can be stressful if you’re quiet, but as I explain to new people, that’s the manager’s problem not yours. As a (very junior) manager, I stress about my team’s timesheets, not my own.

That’s all very well if you have a good manager. Ours would just say you can’t book to overheads, ask for billable hours from someone. Which you’d just spent half the morning doing instead of working. We’d all get sh*tty emails saying it wasn’t good enough, no accountability from management that maybe there were more fundamental problems, like there being no project hours to start with, project managers hogging them, etc. The girl next to me was a nervous wreck 12pm every Friday.

My previous job was a lot better, although we had a target, truth on timesheets was the mantra and you didn’t have to hide non billable time, they wanted to see it all.

I’m 100% convinced it’s a flawed system that everyone bodges to make things add up at the end of the week/month.

The good news is my billable by the hour job ends tomorrow 😀

I expect driving tomorrow evening will be a lot like this

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ei0-wq9AqQ[/video]

We have a billable target, which is 65%.

60% here. I’m at 78% and recently got told off for being too high for my grade. Then when I booked a 2 hour team meeting to an overhead code I got moaned at because the overheads are over budget. The whole thing is so silly there’s really no point in worrying about it.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, many of our clients now demand salary details, grades and cvs, and now check billed hours against agreed budget breakdowns, which means PMs have to spend even more time every week cooking the books and micro-managing what people work on before the invoices go out, which also means adjusting all financial forecasts, resource plans and project plans. It’s a wonder any real work ever gets done. A conspiracist might suggest it’s all a big scam peddled by management consultants 🙂