Units or minutes? How time is recorded

Where the differences show

• Billing: a two-minute email becomes six minutes in units. Clients increasingly question that, and some corporate clients set their own billing increments.
• Productivity: units overstate short tasks, so utilisation reports built on them flatter some work and hide the true cost of other work.
• Fixed fees: if you price on value, actual minutes give a truer picture of what a matter really cost.

The decisions inside the decision

• Is rounding applied to each entry, or to a day's total on a matter?
• Can rules differ by client or matter type, to meet billing guidelines?
• Are both the actual time and the billed units kept, so you can bill one way and analyse the other?

What to ask, and what to see

1. Record a four-minute call under unit rules and under actual-minute rules, and show both on the matter and the bill.
2. Show a client-specific billing increment.
3. Show how a report distinguishes recorded time from billed units.