What is non-billable time?
Clio allows you to track activities that won’t be charged to the client or appear on a bill. Tracking all work being completed–both billable and non-billable–offers you insight into the productivity of your firm. Also, in the case of flat fee and contingency matters, tracking non-billable activities allows you to determine profitability by measuring the value of the work completed. If you would prefer to “no charge” your client for time worked and have this show on an invoice, leave the time entry as billable and apply a discount when editing the invoice.
Note: You cannot show non-billable time on an invoice since it is inherently not billable. However, you can make those time entries billable and then discount the individual line items by 100% (or use a Custom Activity Category with a $0.00/hr Rate) to show that you are not charging for them.
Note: Any hourly Time Entries associated with billable Flat Rate or Contingency Matters will default to non-billable, but this can be adjusted in your settings so that all Time Entries associated with a Flat Rate or Contingency matter will default to Billable by following the steps listed here: Can I Change How The Non-Billable Checkbox Behaves By Default?
Creating a non-billable time entry
When creating a new time entry, check the box next to Non-billable to mark the entry as non-billable (or toggle Non-billable on if on your mobile device).
For the steps to create a time entry, click here.
Time entries associated with non-billable matters will always be marked non-billable.
Creating a non-billable time entry associated with a billable flat rate or contingency matter
Any hourly time entries associated with billable flat rate or contingency matters will default to non-billable, but this default can be adjusted on individual time entries or for all time entries.
- Adjust an individual time entry to billable by unchecking the box next to Non-billable when creating a time entry
- Adjust your settings so that all time entries associated with flat rate or contingency matters default to billable:
- Go to Settings
- Click on Billing
- Scroll down to find the Non-billable Time settings
- Uncheck the box next to Set hourly time entries on flat rate and contingency matters to non-billable by default (As this is tied to the Firms Billing Setting, this should only need to be unchecked once by an Administrator)
Any billable hourly time entries associated with billable flat rate or contingency matters will default to a $0.00 rate.
Viewing individual non-billable time entries from the Activities table
Non-billable time entries are viewable on the Activities table in the Non-billable ($) column. You can view the summary totals at the bottom of the table to compare your billable work to your non-billable work.
You can also filter your activities table to only show non-billable time entries by selecting Non-billable as the Invoice Status.
The information in the Activities table can be exported to PDF or CSV.
Viewing total non-billable time from the matter dashboard
The sum of non-billable time entries can be found on the matter dashboard (in the financial section) alongside the sum of billable time entries. Use this comparison of billable and non-billable work to gauge the profitability of matters.
Bulk edit time entries from billable to non-billable
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Changing a matters billing status from billable to non-billable will bulk edit time entries on that matter to be non-billable. Learn more about what happens to time entries when you change a matter’s billing status between billable and non-billable here.
- From the activities table, you can bulk edit time entries associated with billable matters from billable to non-billable. You will be unable to bulk edit time entries associated with non-billable matters as these time entries cannot be made billable unless you change the matter to billable. Learn how to bulk edit time entries here.
Please note, Non-billable time entries are excluded from Work In Progress calculations in reporting and the matter dashboard.
In this video, we will walk through an overview of non-billable time entries in Clio Manage.