Time recording software for bookkeepers
Most bookkeeping practices do not lose money on the work they quote for. They lose it on the work they never wrote down.
The fixed-fee blind spot
Bookkeeping has moved decisively towards fixed monthly fees, and clients prefer it that way. But a fixed fee quietly changes what time recording is for. It stops being the thing you bill from and becomes the only way to tell whether the fee was right.
Without a time record, every client looks equally profitable, because every client pays what they agreed. With one, the picture is usually uncomfortable: a handful of clients absorb a disproportionate share of the week, and they are rarely the ones paying the most. That is not a billing problem — it is a pricing problem, and you cannot see it without the hours.
The firms that raise fees confidently at renewal are the ones who can say “this engagement took nine hours a month, not the four we priced”. The ones who cannot, discount by default.
Why reconstructed timesheets under-report
Time written up on Friday for the week just gone is not a record, it is a reconstruction. And reconstruction is systematically biased in one direction: downward.
What survives to Friday are the big blocks — the VAT return, the month-end, the payroll run. What vanishes are the ten-minute pieces: the client who rang with a query, the missing invoice you chased, the bank transaction you investigated, the email that took three attempts to answer. Individually they feel too small to write down. Collectively, across a year, they are frequently the difference between a practice that is busy and one that is profitable.
This is why speed of entry matters more than any other feature. Software that takes thirty seconds to log five minutes of work will not be used, no matter how good its reports are. The recording has to cost less than the thing being recorded.
What to look for
- Entry that takes seconds. A timer you can start without thinking, or a manual entry screen that is one field and a duration. If it needs a decision tree, it will be skipped.
- Unit rounding to your convention. Six-minute units are standard in professional services; your software should apply them, not make you do the arithmetic.
- Rates per client and per activity. Not every hour is worth the same, and a single blended rate hides exactly the information you need.
- Room for non-billable and fixed-fee work. If the system only accepts chargeable time, your record of where the week went will have a hole in it precisely where the problem lives.
- Recovery reporting. Time recorded against fee charged, per client. This is the report that changes pricing decisions.
- A route to the invoice. Recorded time should become a draft invoice without anyone retyping a number. Rekeying is where both the errors and the month-end evenings come from.
When a spreadsheet stops working
For a sole practitioner with a dozen clients, a spreadsheet is genuinely fine, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The breaking point is not the recording — it is everything downstream.
It arrives when a second person joins, and consolidating two sheets becomes a weekly chore. It arrives when a client queries a bill and the supporting detail is three versions of a file ago. Most of all it arrives at month-end, when the totals have to be transcribed into invoices by hand. That transcription step is where practices lose evenings and where the mistakes that cost you client trust get made.
How Posttime handles it
Posttime is browser-based, so there is nothing to install and your team can record from a client's kitchen table as easily as the office. Time is logged with a start/stop timer or typed straight in, rounded to your firm's units, with the right rate applied automatically.
Fixed-fee and non-billable work sit alongside chargeable time, so the reports show the whole week rather than the flattering part of it. When you are ready to bill, unbilled time becomes a draft invoice in one step, and posts straight into QuickBooks Online — no retyping. Everything else exports to a spreadsheet.
Client records fill themselves from Companies House, so onboarding a limited company is a search rather than a typing exercise. See the full feature list, or try the Companies House search free.
Questions bookkeepers ask
Do I need to record time if I charge fixed fees?
Yes, and arguably more than an hourly firm does. On a fixed fee the time you spend is your entire cost, so without a record you cannot tell a profitable client from a loss-making one. You are not recording it to bill it — you are recording it so that next year's fee is right.
What is the best way to track billable hours?
Record as you work rather than reconstructing at the end of the week. Reconstructed timesheets consistently under-report, because the short pieces of work are the first thing forgotten. A timer or a fast entry screen is what makes same-day recording actually happen.
Can I just use a spreadsheet?
For a sole practitioner with a handful of clients, yes. It stops working when you add a second person and have to consolidate, or at month-end when spreadsheet totals get rekeyed into invoices. That rekeying step is where the errors and the lost evenings live.
What should I look for in time recording software?
Speed of entry above all — slow software does not get used. Then unit rounding, per-client and per-activity rates, room for non-billable and fixed-fee work, a recovery report, and a path from recorded time to an invoice with no retyping.
What does it cost for a small practice?
Posttime is £9 per user per month on Solo, or £15 on Team which adds QuickBooks invoicing and approvals. Every plan has a 14-day free trial with no card required, and we are not VAT-registered, so there is no VAT to add. See full pricing.
See where your practice's hours actually go
Fourteen days free, no card required. Add your clients, set your rates, and record time the same afternoon.