What belongs in a time entry?

What does a factual narrative look like?

It says what was done. "Checked the period and replacement status of the cited memo; identified the current source and section; drafted the replacement citation for review." That is an entry a reviewer can read, a client can understand and the firm can stand behind.

What it does not say is "delivered significant value through expert analysis." That is not a narrative, it is an opinion, and it is not what a client is paying to read.

Why does the matter number matter so much?

Because the matter number is where confidentiality, billing and review meet. Time against the wrong matter is a billing error and a potential disclosure at once. Researching the equipment expensing change is Halden work and goes to 2041. Reviewing controls evidence is Orrin work and goes to 2057. An associate's own certification study is neither; it is not client work and is not billed to a client.

What about time that helps both matters?

It is almost always one or the other, and the narrative tells you which. If it genuinely is general learning, it is recorded as such. It is never split across two clients to make the numbers look tidy.

Why read the letter before the invoice?

Because the letter has terms and memory has habits. The Halden Foods tax advisory letter uses a fixed-fee basis, a 25% deposit on signature and net 21 payment terms. If a client's finance team asks whether the invoice can use a different payment period, the answer is to name the signed terms, record the request and route any proposed amendment to the engagement partner. The associate does not agree a change on the call and does not quietly apply a default.

Two further rules follow from the letter. Do not invoice an unapproved scope change. And do not turn a staffing allocation into an invoice quantity. The Orrin statement of work's percentages describe planned allocation; they are not a count of hours sold.

Who reconciles and who releases?

June Okafor reconciles recorded time, delivery milestones and the commercial terms. The engagement partner approves release. On a fixed-fee matter the invoice follows the milestones on the signed cover sheet, so the reconciliation is checking that a milestone has actually been delivered and reviewed, not adding up hours.

How is private research billed?

The same way as any other work on the matter, with one difference in who can see the note. An associate's billable research note can be shared with its matter team for review while remaining unavailable to other matters. The time is Halden time; the note is Halden-visible. If the learning is reusable, that becomes a separate, approved methods note with the client details removed, and the time spent writing the methods note is firm time, not Halden time.

What happens to a mistaken entry?

It is corrected explicitly. The period, the matter and the reviewer have to remain auditable, so an error is fixed with a visible correction rather than a silent edit. The same principle runs through everything else we do: corrections name the changed statement and its replacement.

What should an associate check before closing the day?

• Every entry is on today's date, against the right matter, with a factual narrative.
• Nothing billable has been entered against general study, and nothing general has been entered against a client.
• Any client request about terms has been recorded and routed, not answered from memory.
• Anything that might be reusable has been flagged for a methods note, not copied into one.

What does a good entry look like beside a poor one?

A poor entry reads "research, 2 hours." It names no matter, no question, no source and no outcome, and in a year nobody including its author will know what it was for. A good entry names the matter number, says what question was being answered, names the source that was consulted and records what was found or what remains open. It can be read by the reviewer, by practice operations when the invoice is prepared, and by the associate themselves when the same question comes up on the next matter.

The difference in effort is a sentence. The difference in value is the whole record. On a fixed-fee matter like Halden Foods the entry is how the firm learns what the work actually cost; on a staffed plan like Orrin Marine it is how I see whether the allocations are holding. Write the sentence.

Q&A

The questions associates ask most about time entries and billing are answered below.

Last updated 1 October 2026.