Turn time into six-minute units, valued per fee earner UNITS
Paste time entries and each fee earner’s hourly rate. You get units, values, VAT and a total for each matter, with rounding up each entry set beside rounding up the total.
The time
One entry a line, the parts separated by commas or tabs, so columns pasted from a spreadsheet work. The time can be a start and finish, as 09:12-09:47 (a finish before the start runs past midnight), hours and minutes, as 1:05, or 1h 5m, 35m or 0.5h. A plain number is minutes. The fee earner is matched by initials or by name.
The result
The working
How it works
A unit is six minutes, a tenth of an hour, so a unit at £250 an hour is £25. Whether a seven-minute call is one unit or two, and whether ten short calls are rounded one at a time or together, changes the bill, and this page shows both. It is arithmetic only: it says nothing about what a firm may charge. Nothing typed here leaves this tab.
What it does, and what it does not
Each entry’s time is counted to the second, then put into units of six minutes, always rounded up: one second to six minutes is one unit, six minutes and one second is two. Rounding each entry on its own is the usual way, and it means every short call or email costs at least a unit. Rounding a fee earner’s total on a matter once instead adds the minutes first, so twenty minutes over three short entries can be four units rather than five. The comparison table shows the difference on every matter, whichever you choose.
A fee earner’s value on a matter is their units times their hourly rate, divided by ten. The values on a matter are added before anything is rounded, and the net is then rounded to the nearest penny, a half penny going up. VAT is worked on each matter’s net and rounded down to the penny, which VAT Notice 700, section 17.5, allows on the total of an invoice; VAT shows the other methods. A time with no fee earner, or a fee earner with no rate, is refused with the line named.
It does not record time as you work, keep a ledger, issue a bill or say whether a charge is reasonable, recoverable or allowed by any rule of conduct or court. It knows no unit but six minutes and no minimum charge. Disbursements, fixed fees and different rates for different kinds of work are not in it; COSTS builds a schedule of costs with those, phase by phase.
Doing this often? OBSCURA Practice records time in six-minute units with timers on each matter, at rates per person or matter, and turns it into pre-bills and invoices with VAT. On its own, US$2 a month; with everything else, US$5 a month or US$48 a year. 7 days free.