[Tcohle]

I’m at a small to mid sized firm where I do both tax and audit.

During busy season (Jan-May 1) I was getting 65-70 billable hours/week (we were expected to have 60 hours and 90% billable). I’d stay late and leave around 12-1 am.

During the offseason, we had half day fridays in the summer. But I’d still be pretty swamped and put in more than 40 billable hours a week. Now we’re almost at the end of the 10/17 deadline and the past couple days I’ve had nothing to do! I finished all my work and we’re waiting on the client to provide us info to finish another audit.

So today I was just browsing the internet looking at college courses to get to 150 hours and other cpa stuff.

It’s uncharacteristic for me to have non-billable hours and I’m a little paranoid that a manager might say something. I don’t think they will but I’m unsure about it. I went around and asked if anyone needed help.

Has anyone gotten reprimanded for having some non-billable time in the slow offseason?

FAR- 5/11/15 76!!
AUD-10/31/15 63, 84!
REG-7/12/16 72
BEC-8/31/15 75!! Perfect Score!

Wiley CPAExcel Platinum
Ninja 10 pt combo for FAR/AUD/BEC

[CPA2BEE]

Every firm is different. It seems like the larger ones stick more to their “quotas” so to speak. I work in tax at a small firm and during busy season I'm usually 75%-90% billable, while when its slow I'm sometimes 50% billable on slow days. I've never been told how many hours to bill out or what my conversion rate should be. It is more like: “Here's your work, budget ‘x' amount of time for it, get it done.” I work directly under the managing partner and he has never said a word to me about billable time – I've been here almost 3 years.

If its slow, I'm sure your manager knows its slow too. There is also nothing wrong with addressing this directly to your manager. Let them know you feel it is slow for you right now and address your concern about being billable. If not, take off early today! I just finished my last 10/17 return and gonna get my weekend started 🙂

FAR - 80
AUD - 82
BEC - 80
REG - 85

ETHICS - 90
EXPERIENCE - COMPLETE
Application for California license mailed 8/4/2016

[Anonymous]

I work for a firm that is not too stringent with quotas for billable hours. There's some days where I might work on marketing stuff, improving operations, staff training, business development and other nonbillable tasks. However, I'm always looking to maximize my billable hours – I might have to stay a lil late or there are some clients and engagements where you can bump up your time because the client is willing to pay a premium, they want “rush service” or some other circumstance.

I would also say that, you should never have no work to do – there's always some client you can get started with or some WIP that you set aside. Rarely am I ever caught up with everything, I'm always chasing new work, finding new projects, and anticipating our clients' needs.

With the tax filing season coming to an end, I start emailing/ calling clients to discuss tax planning before year end.

[Anonymous]

I work at a mid size firm and there are plenty of days outside of busy season that I am not doing billable work. Its a blessing and a curse.

[laxman06]

My firm doesnt really seem to care about billable hours as long as you get the work done. Tax season you are expected to work pretty hard but outside, maybe a 20 hours a week billable. We also go on two annual firm trips where there are no meetings or anything, just pure fun!

[livealittle]

my firm has very clear billable hour goals. we have meetings once a month to go over your “report card” which is the amount of billable hours you had the previous month. while no one can get 100% realization, all of your write downs are clearly listed and if you disagree with them you can bring it up then. I think I'm one of the few who actually say what I think of everything. As far as I'm concerned, management can't fix something if they don't know that there is a problem.

I think my firm is moving in the right direction.

BEC - 8/8/16
REG - 66, 77
AUD - 81
FAR - 9/8/16

[Author]

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