Here's something that might sting a little: the SPI Research 2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark found that average billable utilization across professional services fell to just 68.9% in 2024, meaning nearly a third of your working hours never make it onto a single invoice. Not because you're slacking off, but because those quick client calls, email check-ins, and "just one more thing" moments add up fast and never get captured.
If you're a bookkeeper managing month-end closes for a dozen clients, or an accountant juggling BAS lodgements, tax returns, and advisory work all at once, you already know the feeling. You've been flat out all day, but when it comes time to reconstruct what you actually worked on? That's where the headache starts.
We talked to seven accountants and bookkeepers about how tracking their time changed the way they run their practices. What they told us went well beyond just "knowing where the hours go."
It starts with seeing the truth about your time
Before Michele Grisdale, BAS Agent and Director of Rainforest Bookkeeping in NSW, started tracking her time, she described her business as "unproductive." That's a tough word to use about your own practice, but it's one a lot of business owners would quietly agree with.
The problem isn't effort. It's visibility. Without tracking, you're essentially guessing how long things take, which clients are profitable, and where your team's hours are really going. Time tracking strips away the guesswork and replaces it with something you can actually work with.
Sarah-Jane Bishop, BAS Agent at EMB Solutions in NSW, put it perfectly: "We thought we knew what parts of the business were taking up the bulk of our time. But after tracking time, it was clear that the tasks without much value were taking longer than we realized."
That gap between what you think is happening and what's actually happening? That's where revenue leaks live. (If you're still on the fence about whether tracking is worth the effort, we've written about why time tracking matters so much for accountants specifically.)
Better task prioritisation (based on actual data, not gut feel)
Once you can see where your hours are going, you can start making smarter decisions about how you spend them. It sounds obvious, but most accounting and bookkeeping businesses are running on instinct rather than data when it comes to daily task prioritisation.
Time tracking reveals patterns that aren't always obvious. Maybe your team is spending three hours a week on a low-value admin process that could be automated with the right integrations. Maybe a particular client takes twice as long as similar clients, but you've never noticed because it's spread across lots of small tasks.
A survey of over 1,200 managers by Tribes.AI estimated that missing or inaccurate timesheets cost professional services businesses around US$50,850 per employee per year. Close to one in every five billable hours go unrecorded. When you can see those patterns clearly, you can reprioritise with confidence instead of guessing.
For professional services teams, this kind of insight is the difference between working harder and working on the right things.
Unlocking the KPIs that actually matter
Key performance indicators in accounting and bookkeeping go beyond simply "staying busy." The metrics that drive practice profitability (billable utilization rate, realization rate, revenue per client) all depend on knowing exactly how time is being spent.
Jane Noller, the accountant at Jane L. Noller & Co. in NSW, says that thanks to time tracking, she now has "a close handle on the profitability of each client and each area of the business."
That's a game-changer. When you know which clients and service lines are profitable and which ones are quietly draining your resources, you can make strategic decisions about pricing, capacity, and where to focus your team's energy. This is especially true if you're moving toward fixed-fee pricing. Tracking time on fixed-fee projects is just as important for understanding profitability, even when you're not billing by the hour.
Tamara-Lee Beveridge, BAS Agent at BizCore 360 in Tasmania, saw a direct impact on cash flow by capturing time for invoicing. "Being able to run a report on what area of service offering the business makes more income from assisted in refocusing and readjusting the service offering."
This is what proper time tracking reporting looks like in practice: not just pretty charts, but insights that directly shape how you run your business.
Understanding utilization and realization rates
Two metrics every accounting and bookkeeping business should be tracking:
- Billable utilization rate: the percentage of your available hours that are spent on billable client work. According to the SPI Research 2025 Benchmark, the average across professional services sits at 68.9%, well below the 75% optimal threshold. For accounting practices specifically, individual utilization typically ranges from 65% to 85%, depending on role and seniority.
- Realization rate: the percentage of your billable time that actually gets invoiced and collected. The 2025 Rosenberg MAP Survey found that smaller accounting practices (under $2M in net fees) achieved a realization rate of 99%, while larger practices (over $20M) averaged 87.1%. A rate in the mid-80s or above is considered healthy for most full-service practices.
The gap between these two numbers represents your time leakage: hours that got worked but never turned into revenue. Even a small improvement can have a significant impact on your bottom line. For example, if a team of five improves their utilization by just 5% (that's roughly two extra billable hours per person per week) at a billing rate of $200 per hour, that adds up to around $96,000 in recovered annual revenue. For a practical look at how to start capturing more of that time, check out our guide on how to track billable hours so clients actually pay you.
Figuring out what to stop doing (or hand off to someone else)
One of the most practical benefits of time tracking is identifying tasks that don't need to be done by you, or maybe don't need to be done at all.
When you can see exactly how many hours per week are going to non-billable work like admin, marketing, or internal processes, the outsourcing conversation gets a lot easier to have. You've got the data to back it up.
Neethu Stephen, Founder of Evalua8 Corp Limited, and Paula Byers, Founder and Director of Lime Cloud Limited, both based in the UK, found that marketing was eating into their billable hours more than they'd expected. Both decided to outsource some of their marketing efforts as a direct result of tracking their time.
For bookkeepers and accountants, the most common candidates for outsourcing or automation include:
- Social media and marketing tasks
- Administrative work and data entry
- Scheduling and appointment management
- Basic invoicing and billing follow-ups
The key is having the data to know where your time is actually going before you make those decisions. Without it, you're just guessing, and you might outsource the wrong thing.
Happier clients (and a clearer bill)
Nobody loves getting a vague invoice. Clients want to see how their bill was calculated, and time tracking gives you a transparent, itemised record to show them. (We've written more about how time tracking can transform your invoicing if you want to dig deeper into this one.)
Sarah-Jane Bishop noted that tracking time "has made us more efficient", and that efficiency shows up in client relationships too. When you can clearly demonstrate the value you've delivered, billing conversations become a lot less awkward.
And sometimes the benefits flow both ways. One of Paula Byers's clients added £50,000 to their bottom line by tracking time. That's the kind of result that turns a service provider into a trusted advisor.
When your time tracking data syncs directly into your accounting software, whether that's Xero, QuickBooks, or MYOB, the path from tracked hours to accurate invoice is seamless. No spreadsheet exports, no copy-paste errors, no reconciliation headaches.
Keeping your team on the same page
Time tracking isn't just useful for solo practitioners. For teams, it creates visibility across the whole practice.
When everyone's tracking their time, you can spot when two team members are unknowingly doubling up on the same client task. You can see when someone's workload is becoming unsustainable before they burn out. And you can coordinate handoffs between team members without the usual "where did you get up to?" confusion.
The SPI Research 2025 Benchmark found that on-time project delivery across professional services dropped to just 73.4% in 2024, down from 80.2% in 2021. Without visibility into how your team is spending their time, it's almost impossible to spot the bottlenecks before they become missed deadlines.
For accounting and bookkeeping teams going through busy periods (tax season, end of financial year, BAS deadlines) this kind of team visibility isn't a nice-to-have. It's how you survive without losing people (or clients).
Protecting your work-life balance (yes, really)
This one might surprise you, but time tracking can actually help you work less, or at least, work more intentionally.
Della Hudson, author of The Numbers Business: How to Grow a Successful Cloud Practice, puts it simply: "I always track my hours to ensure that my flexible working doesn't become overworking."
That's a perspective worth sitting with. For accountants and bookkeepers who pride themselves on going above and beyond for clients, the line between dedication and overwork can blur quickly. Time tracking makes that line visible.
If you're consistently logging 55-hour weeks, the data gives you something concrete to take to your team (or your own conscience) and say: "Something needs to change." Maybe it's delegating, maybe it's adjusting your client load, or maybe it's finally setting some budgets and boundaries around how much time you'll spend on each engagement.
A 2025 survey by Distinct Recruitment found that 48.1% of accounting professionals worked 51–60 hours per week during busy season, with another 31.4% logging more than 60 hours. Those numbers aren't sustainable, but they're hard to push back on without data showing exactly where the time is going.
The bigger picture: growing your practice
All of these benefits compound. Better visibility leads to smarter prioritisation. Smarter prioritisation leads to higher utilization. Higher utilization leads to improved profitability. Improved profitability gives you the room to invest in growth, whether that's hiring, expanding your service offering, or simply taking a breath.
Whether you'd like to show clients the particulars of their bill, increase productivity, boost the profitability of your practice, or just get your work-life balance back, the professionals we spoke to all found the same thing: time tracking was the starting point.
The key is choosing a tool that fits naturally into how you already work, not one that creates another admin headache on top of everything else.
Frequently asked questions
Why should accountants and bookkeepers track their time?
Time tracking helps accounting and bookkeeping professionals understand exactly where their hours are going, which clients and service lines are profitable, and where time leakage is costing them revenue. It provides the data needed to make informed decisions about pricing, capacity, staffing, and which tasks to outsource or automate. Even businesses that don't bill by the hour benefit from understanding how time is spent across their practice.
How does time tracking improve billing accuracy?
When you track time as you work rather than reconstructing timesheets from memory at the end of the week, you capture a far more accurate picture of the work delivered. This leads to more detailed, transparent invoices that clients can clearly understand, fewer billing disputes, and better realization rates, meaning more of your billable work actually gets invoiced and collected.
What's a good billable utilization rate for an accounting practice?
According to the SPI Research 2025 Benchmark, the average billable utilization rate across professional services is 68.9%, with 75% widely considered the optimal threshold. For accounting practices specifically, individual utilization typically falls between 65% and 85%, depending on role and seniority. Improving your utilization rate even modestly can have a significant impact on your revenue, especially when multiplied across a team.
How does time tracking help with client profitability?
By tracking time against specific clients, projects, and service lines, you can see exactly how much effort each engagement requires versus the revenue it generates. This lets you identify underpriced clients, scope creep issues, and service areas that deserve more focus, turning time data into actionable profitability insights.
Can time tracking really help with work-life balance?
Yes, and several of the professionals we spoke to specifically mentioned this. When you can see exactly how many hours you're working and where that time is going, you have the data to set boundaries, delegate more effectively, and make a case for adjusting your workload. It turns "I feel overworked" into "I can see I'm consistently working 15 hours more than I should be."
Ready to see where your time is really going?
The accountants and bookkeepers we spoke to all found the same thing: once you start tracking, you can't go back to guessing. The visibility changes everything: from how you price your services to how you manage your team to how you protect your own time.
MinuteDock is built specifically for professional services teams who want simple, accurate time tracking that plugs straight into their existing workflow. No learning curve, no fuss.
Try MinuteDock free for 30 days and see what your time data reveals about your practice.
