Stop leaking billable time: WIP and recovery for accounting firms

Billable time leaks in the gap between doing the work and invoicing it — time captured late or not at all, work in progress that ages into a write-off, and hours quietly discounted at billing without anyone deciding to. Recovery is the share of the work you actually did that turns into money you actually collect, and in most firms it is lower than the partners think.

Work in progress, or WIP, is the value of work you have done but not yet billed. It is real money, sitting unbilled. The longer it ages, the more of it you lose — to forgotten detail, to scope you can no longer justify, to a client who has moved on.

The four places billable time leaks

1. 1Uncaptured time. Work done but never logged, because capturing it was a separate chore at the end of a busy day.
2. 2Aged WIP. Work logged but left unbilled for months, until the detail fades and the case for the fee weakens.
3. 3Write-downs at billing. Time captured and billed, but discounted at invoice — sometimes for good reason, often by habit.
4. 4Scope creep. Extra work absorbed into a fixed fee because nobody flagged it as it happened.

Each leak is small in isolation. Across a year and a whole team, they add up to the difference between a healthy firm and a stretched one.

Why recovery rate is the number to watch

Recovery rate is the clearest single measure of the leak: it compares the value of the time you recorded against what you billed and collected. A firm can be busy, fully booked and still bleed fees if its recovery is low. The data says the firms that improve recovery rarely do it by raising rates — they do it by closing the gap between work and invoice.

How to keep the fees you earn

Closing the leak is mostly about timing and visibility — capturing time at the moment of work, and seeing WIP before it ages.

• Capture time as you work, against the client, so nothing depends on end-of-day memory.
• Watch WIP aging — flag work that has sat unbilled too long and bill it while the detail is fresh.
• Bring time, WIP and billing onto one client record, so the invoice reflects the work without re-keying.
• Review recovery rate by client and by staff member, so you can see where the fees go.

Make WIP a weekly habit, not a year-end shock

The firms that recover well treat WIP as a weekly number, not a year-end surprise. A short, regular look at aged WIP and recovery by client turns a slow leak into a managed one. The key is that you can only manage what you can see — and unbilled work is the easiest thing in a firm to lose sight of.