Why the recording slips #
Every other task a fee earner holds has a person attached to it. A client is waiting, the other side is waiting, a court is waiting. Time recording has nobody. Its consequence turns up weeks later in a bill that somebody else prepares, and by then the person who could have fixed it has forgotten the afternoon in question.
That is why the gap between doing the work and recording it matters more than the discipline of any individual.
People round down, omit the short calls entirely, and leave out the twenty minutes spent reading back into a file before a five minute conversation. None of that is dishonesty. It is the arithmetic of remembering.
Unrecorded time is not only a revenue question #
Paragraph 8.7 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs sets out what a client has to receive.
the best possible information about how their matter will be priced and, both at the time of engagement and when appropriate as their matter progresses, about the likely overall cost of the matter and any costs incurred
The second half of that sentence is a running obligation, and it assumes the firm knows where a matter stands on costs at any given moment.
A firm carrying three weeks of unrecorded time does not know. It can estimate, and often does, but it is answering a regulatory question from memory. In the Legal Ombudsman's data for 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, costs accounted for 9 per cent of complaint types.
Separately, the SRA Transparency Rules require firms to publish, for listed services, the total cost or the average or range of costs, the basis of charges including any hourly rates or fixed fees, disbursements and whether they attract VAT. A published range that the firm's own files cannot support is a problem waiting to be found.
Why the bill is late #
Billing does not stall because drafting a bill is hard. It stalls because deciding which matters are ready is hard, and the answer lives inside individual files. Somebody has to know:
- Which matters have unbilled time
- Which of those have reached a natural billing point
- Which have disbursements not yet posted
- Which have money on account to draw against
- Which have a client who has already queried an estimate
In a firm of a handful of fee earners that reconciliation happens in somebody's head, usually at month end, usually late.
The consequence compounds. A bill raised three months after the work is a bill the client has stopped expecting, which is the worst possible moment to introduce a number. The payment chasing calculator puts a figure on what the delay costs before anybody argues about it.
What the Accounts Rules add underneath #
Holding client money turns bookkeeping into a regulated activity. The SRA Accounts Rules set out obligations that recur on a fixed cycle whatever else the week contains:
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Client money is kept separate Rule 4.1
“You keep client money separate from money belonging to the authorised body.”
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A reconciliation “at least every five weeks” Rule 8.3
Of the bank or building society statement balance with the cash book balance and the client ledger total, for all client accounts, with a record signed off by the COFA or a manager of the firm.
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Client money returned promptly Rule 2.5
“As soon as there is no longer any proper reason to hold those funds.”
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An accountant’s report Rule 12.1
Obtained within six months of the end of an accounting period, where client money was held or received.
Rule 2.5 is the one that quietly generates the most work, because residual balances accumulate one matter at a time and are never urgent on any single day. Rule 8.3 is the one with a clock on it, and a five week cycle is short enough that it lands on somebody's desk ten times a year.
Chasing your own money is the job nobody owns #
Firms chase other people all day. They chase the other side, the lender, the local authority, the client for identity evidence. Chasing their own invoices is different, because the person best placed to do it is the fee earner who has the relationship, and that is precisely the person least willing to make the call.
Accountancy practices have the identical problem, described on the chasing your own fees page, and it is worth reading because the diagnosis is the same in both professions.
What runs on rules here #
Runs on rules
- Knowing which matters have unbilled time, and how much
- Knowing which bills are past their terms, and by how long
- Knowing which matters are holding a residual balance
- Knowing which matters have had no costs update since engagement
- Knowing that a reconciliation is due, because the date is fixed
Needs a fee earner
- Deciding whether time is properly chargeable
- Deciding to write off, or to bill and explain
- Signing off a reconciliation
- Deciding how hard to push a client who cannot pay
Judgement throughout. Signing off a reconciliation is a named person's responsibility under rule 8.3, and the last one is a relationship.
Every row in the rules half is a question about the state of the firm rather than about the law. That is the useful dividing line. A fee earner who spends a morning reconstructing where matters stand is doing work that has a factual answer somebody should already be able to see.
What this page will not tell you #
- That a particular arrangement satisfies the Accounts Rules
- What to buy
- That automating a reminder makes a late bill acceptable to a client who was never warned it was coming
The obligation is the firm's, and the COFA signs it off, not a supplier.
What it will say is that the visible part of this problem, the bill, is downstream of an invisible one: a firm that cannot see its own state. That is the same shape as the client who rings for an update, and the cost of admin time calculator is a reasonable first measurement of both.