The hour worked and the hour billed are not the same hour
The gap between them is exactly where a services firm's money goes, and in most firms nobody measures it. Here it comes out of the same data: utilization (how much of the available time was logged), realization (how much of what was logged reached an invoice) and collection (how much of what was invoiced actually arrived).
Three percentages, not a feeling. A firm can be full of work and still be losing money if the second one is low — and revenue will not show it.
WIP: work done, not yet billed
Logged, unbilled hours are a real asset that usually sits unseen in a spreadsheet. The draft bill gathers them per engagement and period, including what is written down or carried forward, so invoicing is not a memory exercise at month end.
A written-down line stays visible as a written-down line. Deleting it would make the margin look better than it is.
Rates per role, not one price per firm
A rate is set per role and can be overridden per client or per engagement, because a partner and a junior do not bill the same and a separately negotiated client stays separately negotiated. Budgets can be fixed, hourly, capped, or a retainer with included hours.
Engagements, conflicts and the register
For a Romanian accounting practice the engagement letter is the statutory instrument (OG 65/1994 art. 14), and for a lawyer the legal assistance contract, with the special register the Statute requires. The conflict-of-interest check runs before the client is accepted, not after.
Resourcing: whether you can deliver what you sell
Allocation across people and weeks shows over-allocation before it becomes a missed promise, and the demand forecast weights pipeline opportunities by their probability.
What is worth knowing
A time tracker tells you how much was worked. The question that keeps a firm alive is a different one: of what was worked, how much was billed, and how much was collected. That answer exists only when time, invoices and accounting live in one system rather than three.