Billing the time recorded on a matter

How the Legal pack bills time recorded on a matter alongside its fee estimate, consultations and disbursements, and what the practice still decides itself.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 5 min read · For Legal businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

Most matters in a small practice are billed in more than one way at once. The client accepted a fee estimate at the start. The first consultation was charged separately. Part of the work is a fixed fee, part is charged on time, and along the way the practice paid the sheriff, a courier and a search fee that have to be recovered. At the end of the month, someone has to turn all of that into a fee note the client will understand and accept.

In many firms that someone works from a time sheet, a copy of the estimate and a folder of receipts, and the fee note is assembled by hand. Achekam's Industry CRM, with the Legal services pack, brings those pieces onto the matter itself. This article explains how time is billed there, where each kind of charge lands in the books, and which decisions remain the practice's own, for law practices in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

Hourly work on a matter that began with a fee estimate

The pack uses a practice's own vocabulary: customers are Clients, records are Matters, quotes are Fee estimates and leads are Enquiries. A matter keeps its parties and court dates, and a Consultation can become a matter when the client instructs you.

Many matters start with a fee estimate the client accepts on a link by typing their name and ticking a box. Acceptance drafts the invoice in receivables. That covers what was agreed up front. Time recorded later, as the matter runs, is billed against the same matter, so the estimate and the hours sit together on one record instead of in two systems. How an accepted estimate reaches the ledger is set out in from accepted fee estimate to legal fees in the books.

Consultations, professional fees and fixed fees as items the practice prices

The pack's starter catalogue lists the kinds of work a practice bills:

• consultations;
• professional fees;
• fixed-fee matters;
• retainers;
• disbursements recovered.

None of these carries a price. No starter catalogue item in any industry pack does: the practice sets its own. Before billing time, price the items you will use: the consultation rate, the hourly rates for professional fees (by fee earner if your rates differ), and each fixed-fee service you offer. A consultation that becomes a matter can be billed as a consultation item before the matter's own work begins, which keeps the first meeting visible on the fee note.

Time recorded against the matter, billed from the second wave

Billing time recorded against Industry CRM work is part of the add-on's second wave. On a matter, that means the hours your fee earners record are there to be billed, against the matter and the client, rather than retyped from a separate time sheet.

That changes the end-of-month routine. Instead of collecting time sheets and matching them to client files, the person preparing fee notes opens each active matter, reviews the time recorded on it, and bills what should be billed. The time, the estimate and the earlier fee notes are all in one place, so it is easy to see when a matter is running over what the client was told.

When it does run over, tell the client before the fee note arrives. A sent fee estimate is frozen and changed only by a revision, so the revised scope and price go to the client as a new version they can accept, and the history shows what was agreed and when.

Invoice lines that name the revenue account they post to

Switching on the Legal pack adds its revenue accounts to the practice's chart of accounts and its unpriced items to the catalogue. Each invoice line then names the revenue account and the product it sells, so revenue posts account by account in the same journal.

If an account code the pack needs is already used in your chart for a different type of account, activation is refused and the clashing account is named, so ask your accountant to look at the chart before switching the pack on.

Disbursements recovered on their own account

Recovered disbursements are not fee income, and the pack keeps them apart. The sheriff's charges, the courier, the deeds office search and the expert's report are billed as disbursements recovered and post to their own account, not to Legal fees.

The benefit shows at month end. Fee income is the practice's own work; recoveries are money passing through. When the two are mixed, the practice looks busier than it is. With separate accounts, the income statement answers both questions: what did we earn, and what did we recover?

What the practice still decides by hand before billing

Recorded time is raw material, not a fee note. Before anything goes to the client, a person decides:

1. What is chargeable. Internal discussions, training a junior or correcting your own error may be written off.
2. The rate. Which catalogue price applies to which fee earner's time on this matter.
3. Agreed limits. Whether the estimate or the mandate caps the fees, and what happens to time above the cap.
4. The narrative. What the fee note says about the work, in words the client recognises.
5. Timing. Whether to bill now or at an agreed stage of the matter.

In South Africa, every attorney and law firm is bound by the Legal Practice Council's Code of Conduct, and it belongs beside your fee policy when these decisions are made. Nigerian and Kenyan practices should apply their own professional rules.

Before the first billing run

Price the catalogue, check the chart of accounts with your accountant, and agree who reviews recorded time before it is billed. Run the first month on a handful of matters, compare each fee note with the estimate and the mandate, and only then roll it out across the practice. The intake side of the same matters is covered in from enquiry to consultation to matter.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.