[futureCPA12]

For those in Audit, how many hours do you typically work in a week? I’ve been averaging about 45 hours a week and I’m a 1st year staff. Am I an anomaly?

[taxman89]

yeah but if that happens five times during a day they just got hit with 75 min billed for 25 mins of work. Regardless this is all irrelevant if you bill by project not by hour and rate. Since you bill by project, your billables are purely used as an internal tracker (presumably to measure how well the are prices their services)

Aud-75 3x I knew i never liked you
Bec-77 1x being in the bubble is stressful
Reg-82 4x its not me its you...and no we cant be friends
Far-78 1x easiest section

[taxman89]

yeah but if that happens five times during a day they just got hit with 75 min billed for 25 mins of work. Regardless this is all irrelevant if you bill by project not by hour and rate. Since you bill by project, your billables are purely used as an internal tracker (presumably to measure how well the are prices their services)

Aud-75 3x I knew i never liked you
Bec-77 1x being in the bubble is stressful
Reg-82 4x its not me its you...and no we cant be friends
Far-78 1x easiest section

[san4596]

taxman – .25 hours = 15 minutes, so you would be looking at 45 minutes billed but only 15 minutes of work.

CPA EXAM: DONE!!!!
Ethics Course: Passed
Application Mailed: 3/16/15
Professional Conduct Exam: 97
Certification Date: 4/2/15!!!

[san4596]

taxman – .25 hours = 15 minutes, so you would be looking at 45 minutes billed but only 15 minutes of work.

CPA EXAM: DONE!!!!
Ethics Course: Passed
Application Mailed: 3/16/15
Professional Conduct Exam: 97
Certification Date: 4/2/15!!!

[taxman89]

he said 5 times. five quarter hours is an hour and 15 min…or 75 min 😀

Aud-75 3x I knew i never liked you
Bec-77 1x being in the bubble is stressful
Reg-82 4x its not me its you...and no we cant be friends
Far-78 1x easiest section

[taxman89]

he said 5 times. five quarter hours is an hour and 15 min…or 75 min 😀

Aud-75 3x I knew i never liked you
Bec-77 1x being in the bubble is stressful
Reg-82 4x its not me its you...and no we cant be friends
Far-78 1x easiest section

[futureCPA12]

I'm kind of embarrassed at where this thread is going. Could you maybe branch the billable conversation to a new thread? I'd like to keep this strictly about busy season hours.

[futureCPA12]

I'm kind of embarrassed at where this thread is going. Could you maybe branch the billable conversation to a new thread? I'd like to keep this strictly about busy season hours.

[Study Monk]

Wow i haven't looked at this post for a while lol.

@payfields I worked at a firm that had a .25 system as well. If I had a five minute phone call I did not round up(that's crazy talk):P I would just wait until I worked another ten minutes on the client to log in the .25. That's how ethical people(or people educated on the subject) do it. I had a spreadsheet for each client and tallied it up at the end of the week.

Whether or not your partners decide to charge clients a flat fee is irrelevant. You are still inflating your hours and making it difficult for your employer to estimate costs. The information that you are giving them will increase prices in future periods. This will either result in the loss of clients(money out of your employers pockets) or clients unknowingly paying more over time because every time you shake your wee wee you are entering .25. Now I know why inflation is so bad.

Also based on your logic when I am the best tax accountant around my billable rate will be $1000 hour, but because I am 4 times faster than anyone else I get to charge $4000 an hour. lol Why do you think partners and managers have higher billable rates? Overhead is a separate cost than labor(meaning staff accountants shouldn't be worried about it when figuring out their billable hours).

Lesson of the day : Accountants are suppose to account for things properly.

Srry futureCPA12 lol. I couldn't resist

I spoke to an ancient wise man who sent me on a mushroom induced journey through an ancient forest to find the key to passing the CPA exam. A talking spider monkey told me to throw the last of my drinking water in the dirt to find what I was looking for. So I followed his instructions and the following message appeared in the soil:

"Do 5000 multiple choice questions for each section"

[Study Monk]

Wow i haven't looked at this post for a while lol.

@payfields I worked at a firm that had a .25 system as well. If I had a five minute phone call I did not round up(that's crazy talk):P I would just wait until I worked another ten minutes on the client to log in the .25. That's how ethical people(or people educated on the subject) do it. I had a spreadsheet for each client and tallied it up at the end of the week.

Whether or not your partners decide to charge clients a flat fee is irrelevant. You are still inflating your hours and making it difficult for your employer to estimate costs. The information that you are giving them will increase prices in future periods. This will either result in the loss of clients(money out of your employers pockets) or clients unknowingly paying more over time because every time you shake your wee wee you are entering .25. Now I know why inflation is so bad.

Also based on your logic when I am the best tax accountant around my billable rate will be $1000 hour, but because I am 4 times faster than anyone else I get to charge $4000 an hour. lol Why do you think partners and managers have higher billable rates? Overhead is a separate cost than labor(meaning staff accountants shouldn't be worried about it when figuring out their billable hours).

Lesson of the day : Accountants are suppose to account for things properly.

Srry futureCPA12 lol. I couldn't resist

I spoke to an ancient wise man who sent me on a mushroom induced journey through an ancient forest to find the key to passing the CPA exam. A talking spider monkey told me to throw the last of my drinking water in the dirt to find what I was looking for. So I followed his instructions and the following message appeared in the soil:

"Do 5000 multiple choice questions for each section"

[Study Monk]

@payfields I am kind of regretting my last post. Not very monk like. So I am sorry.

I spoke to an ancient wise man who sent me on a mushroom induced journey through an ancient forest to find the key to passing the CPA exam. A talking spider monkey told me to throw the last of my drinking water in the dirt to find what I was looking for. So I followed his instructions and the following message appeared in the soil:

"Do 5000 multiple choice questions for each section"

[Study Monk]

@payfields I am kind of regretting my last post. Not very monk like. So I am sorry.

I spoke to an ancient wise man who sent me on a mushroom induced journey through an ancient forest to find the key to passing the CPA exam. A talking spider monkey told me to throw the last of my drinking water in the dirt to find what I was looking for. So I followed his instructions and the following message appeared in the soil:

"Do 5000 multiple choice questions for each section"

[megasaurus]

We have a “55hr minimum per week” goal for busy season.

As far as logging time, I'm at a big 4 and we charge time by the tenth of the hour. All of our “chargeable” time goes to the billing department and they decide what becomes billable to clients vs what the firm considers chargeable. All engagements have write ups or write downs, but (thankfully) that's not my call yet.

[megasaurus]

We have a “55hr minimum per week” goal for busy season.

As far as logging time, I'm at a big 4 and we charge time by the tenth of the hour. All of our “chargeable” time goes to the billing department and they decide what becomes billable to clients vs what the firm considers chargeable. All engagements have write ups or write downs, but (thankfully) that's not my call yet.

[payfields]

@study monk

To take the time to make a spreadsheet and tally up 2 or 5 minute conversations up so that you can wait until it hits a certain time mark sounds super inefficient. You say that's how ethical or “educated” people do it?? Real classy there bud.

You say i make it hard for my employer to cost items. It is my employer who used these practices that were in place while a manager at Touche and puts these policies in place when he started the firm back before I was born. It's worked well so far, and every firm i have dealt with does it very similar if not the same as us.

The $1000 per hour and $4000 per hour thought you have isn't correct. There is a difference between charging $4000 per hour, and taking an hour to do something worth $4000.

We do not advertise that we have XXX rate for XXX services. If a client comes in with a complex problem and within an hour I find a path to save him $25,000 that other people he has been to have failed to find, you are saying there is something wrong with charging more than whatever “rate” you have internally to track time for one hour of work? People are paying for my expertise and knowledge, not an hour of my time. Partners have higher rates because their time is worth more, simple as that.

The rate and time tracking is used as benchmark to see how much cost we have into a client and bill accordingly. Look up value based billing.

There are a few clients, government clients, where we have to provide a detailed bill, it absolutely has every time card rounded up to a minimum .25 and for 20+ years we have never had a complaint. Even the note on those time cards say stuff such as “emailed back xxx, or phone call about xxx”. Never had an issue.

If you were to look at most CPA firms and Law firms (even car service shops, welding shops, etc), on invoices they state minimum .10 or .25 hour per contact. A quick Google search will very well confirm that. Even so, like i said, we do not advertise or quote prices at XXX per hour, we quote for a service, the hourly rate is for our internal purposes only. So to say i am unethical or uneducated is pretty ridiculous, but ill leave that to you to figure out your own issues.

[Author]

Replies