Recording non-chargeable time
Why staff should record training, administration and business development time, how to categorise it, and what an honest time record then shows partners.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Ask a trainee what they did last Thursday afternoon and the honest answer might be: an hour on a CPD webinar, half an hour fixing a printer, a meeting about the year-end schedule, and twenty minutes helping a colleague find a file. None of it was for a client. Most of it will never appear on a timesheet.
That missing time does not vanish. It turns up in the firm's figures as something else. Either the person looks idle, because their client hours are low and nothing explains the rest of the week, or the hours are quietly booked to a client, inflating that client's WIP until a partner writes it off. Both distort the picture partners rely on to price work, plan staff and judge performance.
Why non-chargeable time must be recorded
Recording internal time is not about proving that staff were busy. It is about knowing where the firm's capacity actually goes.
- Pricing. If client hours are padded with internal work, engagements look more expensive than they are, and fees drift upwards for the wrong reason.
- Write-offs. Time booked to a client that was not client work is written off later, and the write-off is blamed on the client.
- Capacity. A firm that does not know how much time goes on administration will always plan as if everyone had more hours for clients than they do.
- Fairness. Staff who do the firm's internal work, such as training juniors, running the IT or organising events, deserve to have it seen.
Categories that make sense
A long list of internal codes defeats the purpose. Staff choose whichever is nearest, or the first on the list. A short list that people can apply without thinking is more accurate.
A workable set for most firms:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Training and CPD | Courses, webinars, study leave, internal technical sessions |
| Practice administration | Timesheets, IT problems, filing, internal meetings |
| Business development | Proposals, client presentations, networking events |
| Supervision and coaching | Helping juniors, reviewing training files |
| Quality and methodology | Updating templates, quality reviews, consultations |
| Leave and absence | Usually recorded through leave, not the timesheet |
Agree the list with the partners, write a one-line description for each, and set up the firm's timesheet to match before asking staff to use it. Then tell staff plainly: internal time goes on the timesheet under these headings, never on a client.
Training is the category most worth getting right, because professional bodies expect it to be tracked. In Kenya, for example, ICPAK's page on practitioner's licences sets out the requirements for a practising certificate and each licence category, including CPD hours. SAICA and ICAN members have their own CPD obligations, and an accurate training category makes the annual declaration easier.
Captured time confirmed by the person
Achekam records a person's working time automatically while they work on a client, an engagement or a work item. It does this from counts of key presses, clicks and scrolling, never from the keys typed. Capture is on by default and a firm can switch it off under Settings > Time & presence.
Two consequences matter for internal time.
First, captured time follows what the person had open. If someone opens a client's file to look up a phone number for an internal matter, that time can be captured against the client. By default, captured time reaches the timesheet only when the person confirms it, so the confirmation step is where staff correct it.
Second, internal work done away from client files, such as a training session in a meeting room, will not be captured at all. It has to be entered.
Make confirmation a daily habit: look at captured time, move anything that was not client work to the right internal category, and add the internal work the capture could not see. More on how capture works is in automatic time capture.
Approved like any other time
Staff submit weekly timesheets that a manager, partner or administrator approves or returns under WORK & DELIVERY > Timesheets. Internal time goes through the same approval as client time.
A reviewer should look at it with the same care. Questions worth asking at approval:
- Is anything booked to a client that looks like internal work?
- Is anything booked to administration that was really for a client and should be billed?
- Does the training time match the course the person said they attended?
- Is business development time attached to a proposal or lead the reviewer recognises?
Returning a timesheet for a wrong category is not a reprimand. It is how the record stays useful.
What the reports then show
Once internal time is recorded properly, the reports start to mean something. Time Reports offers ten reports for a chosen period, such as staff time, engagement time and utilisation, exportable as CSV, XLSX or PDF. Utilisation is never based on keyboard or mouse activity; it comes from the time recorded.
A person's utilisation is only honest when the rest of their week is visible too. Low client hours with large administration hours suggests the person is carrying internal work that someone should look at. Low client hours with nothing else recorded is a gap in the timesheet, not a conclusion. How to read the figure fairly is covered in measuring staff utilisation honestly.
The Team Activity page adds a check: it shows each person's recorded and captured time against their working hours, and the work due on them next, stated as facts about the work rather than a judgement of the person.
Agree the short list of internal categories at the next partners' meeting, brief staff on it in one page, and ask managers to look closely at internal time on the first month of timesheets.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
