Track Billable Hours. Down to the Penny.

How do accountants calculate the real hourly rate on fixed-fee clients?

Many accounting clients pay a fixed monthly fee for bookkeeping or a flat fee for a return. Those fees were set once and rarely revisited. Meanwhile the client's books get messier, or they add an entity, and the hours grow.

Track every session against the client and TimerMVP divides what they pay by the hours spent. Say a bookkeeping client pays $500 a month and you logged 4 hours. That is $125 an hour. Another client pays the same $500 and took 11 hours, which is about $45. The dashboard shows both side by side, which makes it clear where to reprice.

How should accountants plan for tax season workload?

Look at last season first. Run a custom report for January through April and filter by client and hashtag, such as #1040 or #1120. You see how many hours each return type really took, which is a better planning number than memory.

During the season, the weekly planner keeps the list honest. Returns waiting on client documents can be marked with a greater-than sign before the client's name, like >Chen, so they show as stuck and do not count against your score. Items that keep carrying forward turn amber at seven days and red at fourteen, which is your cue to chase documents before the deadline gets close.

• Review last season's hours by return type
• Mark returns waiting on documents with >Name
• Watch item age to chase late paperwork
• Use the Friday week review to reset the next week

How do accountants manage recurring monthly client work?

Monthly close, payroll runs, reconciliations, and sales tax filings repeat on a schedule. Put each one in the weekly planner for the week it is due. Unfinished items carry forward automatically, so a reconciliation that slips from one week does not disappear.

The by-client view groups the week by client, which is useful for checking that each recurring client got their work done. Search across all weeks lets you check when you last did a particular filing for a client without digging through email.

What should an accounting practice track during the off-season?

The quiet months are when advisory work, planning, and business development happen. Track that time too. An internal client with no rate holds marketing and admin. Advisory sessions go against the client and count as billable when the client has a rate.

The dashboard's quiet clients list shows who you have not worked with recently. For an accountant, that is often a client who would benefit from a mid-year planning call. The leads pipeline tracks new prospects from first contact to won or lost so you can fill the off-season deliberately.