Big 4 billable hours reddit. You kill your utilization - which means you record billable hours as ‘research’, ‘office’, ‘admin’ when it is really billable. With just work, I probably bill around 4 a day). ago. Busy season would increase to about 8-9hrs of a 10hr day. Yes, the office hours on the last Thursday (morning) of the month are billable. I worked about 45 - 55 total hours during tax season and 25-35 during the off season. You'll work a 40 hour week - just be careful about secondary employment. After about 3 weeks I was brought in to the main partner's office and chastised that I was only billing 56-58 hours a week. It takes a while to master, but once you get it down you’ll be billing 8-10 hours a day in your sleep. Big 4 has 55 hour requirement during busy season. billable hours seem impossible. For each of these 9. " All so the manager can meet his unrealistic budget expectations. 64/hour as a 1st year and in all honesty you will probably be closer to 45 (40-42. Step 4 - Staff stops charging all of his time to avoid going over budget. Weekends. ($57k base LCOL) I probably will be more around 1,600 though. In my experience, 60 hours in insurance is far better than 60 hours in consulting. Why work 110% for 60 hours when you can work 85% and still hit your target with being less stressed and come review time, the 110% worker is unlikely to be viewed dramatically different than the 85% worker. Now divide your salary of $85,000 by 2860 hours. Both methods hurt you in review time. For example, if you have 16 billable hours across 2 days working 14 billable on Wednesday and 2 billable on Thursday, it would look better if you have 8 billable on both days. I would not take lunch when I was at my office (I can now because I save about 1. The following will get you fired at a Big 4: If a manager+ calls you and it doesn’t get picked up before the first ring. Big four audit. I completed all 30 months (by Mid December 2021), the necessary hours, the levels and passed my the CFE exam recently . a litigating attorney? When you read about working in Biglaw, people always talk about "burnout" and how many billable hours you have to do, usually around 1800 - 2000. " This tends to come with a lot of billable hours because the pay is quite high. Of course YMMV as you could pick up private clients in B4 or a public client at a national firm. If you’re working 20-30 less hours a week than your co-workers you could get overwhelmed by arbitrary deadlines. So you eat your hours to get them off your My co-workers behind me are having a huge circle jerk regarding how many billable hours they have this busy season. So firms just assume they'll receive 20% less than they bill, write that into their hours requirements, and that's how the average billable hour went from ~1850 in the 90s to >2000 today. Reply. 2. Billable hours targets are stupid too. Which you should definitely attend. For me, a 11-12 hour day typically yields around 8. Or are they just stretching their hours Of these 9. I was making $42. BoorishWoodpecker. My main issue is, for a really complex project, the PM only give you 15 hours of budget when it’s 40 hours work. I had plenty of weekends with nothing that had to be done. Moving your billable hours around won’t do anything to help your utilization. Knock 2 off for vacations, so you're at 48. What if I simply refuse to work more than 5… Other things can make you profitable, like rainmaking, but a big profit center is the delta between what associates bring in and what they're paid. You should still try to hit as many hours as you can within reason, because there is a difference between someone at 1700 and 1200. You can be very efficient in the office and bill almost all the time you are there. The difference is you’ll likely have more private clients at the national firms so you’ll have a longer busy season that stretches into April vs a hard stop in March. You'll only get in trouble if you are not meeting the goal because you ran out of tasks and didn't tell the team. Nothing new or unique to this situation. If you go to BDO, RSM, or Grant sized firms, you should consider the engagement you are on. 5 hours. So if you consider a 48-week year (giving 4 weeks off total for holidays and vacation), you could hit 2400 billing 50 hours a week. I work at a firm with a ~88% billable hours goal, which means >7 hours out of the 8 hour day have to be billable. a litigator? And somehow my fucking hours are still a problem. Have an honest conversation why during busy season your utilization may dropped under 90 percent in advance. Also big 4. For reference, 70% utilization rate is something that is a target for the whole company (the consulting part). I averaged less than 10 for 4 weeks straight post busy season. Your base salary is typically about 1/3 of your revenue with most smaller firms. Oh sure, it matters to the firm's bottom line. When you have steady work, that's a 10-11 hour day M-F or 9-10 hours M-F plus some weekend time. Is it difficult? It is not easy to avoid billables during busy season. I also got all my PERT reports signed off by my mentors through the "mentor If you do litigation you’re bound to get one really high month that lets you have easy months in the future. 55 hours a week times 52 weeks is 2860 hours. Normally work a total of 2400 hours per year with at least 1500 hours of billable time as tax manager in a small regional PA firm. It’s a vicious cycle. This was true last year (and the like decade before it). Managers cannot sign off on experience. 22/hour. There are 104 saturdays/sundays, and 11 federal holidays, to 250 work days. Time charged should be actual time minus 1 hour for what is deemed a "reasonable commute". I wanted to say, "but it's your damn firm!!" The issue with 1200 hours is going to probably be your compensation. As a staff, you need to report all your time working. 5-4 nonbillable) which ends up being ( 230000/45/50) $102. If you're assigned 2200 hours worth of work in a year, you're going to be expected to bill those hours, even if your target is 1900. At the end of the day, you may attend to 4-8 things for different clients each or which takes well under 15 minutes but you bill 1-2 hours because of quarter hour billing increments. It really depends how efficient you are as well. I am not really told budgets for clients but on average I think T2 only would range from $2500 to $5000, compilation engagements probably 3k to 6k, all depending on the level or work needed. My advice would be do not forget to bill for emails. Well, factor in 1 hour for lunch, morning and afternoon tea breaks, and other little things, you'd be surprised how easily 2 hours is not billable time. Call the CPA PERT advisors and ask them specifically what would happen to verify. 72. I’m going to hit my overall hours this month and will be way over my admin hour goal. Ask questions, seek advice, post outlines, etc. For current and former Law School Redditors. Also make sure you’re billing for your prep work and file reviews. Big 4 have huge turn over because more ppl are leaving, and the more ppl that leave, the more over worked everyone is, which leads to more ppl leaving, repeat. Big 4 - CPA PERT Sign Off and Submission for Designation. 5 hours to a client this week because i was short, shit happens. My estimate is there's a 10-30% tax of G&A bs on too of the billables. 50 billable hours literally means working 12 hours every weekday because I have to eat and take breaks like a HUMAN. 5K during my first year, in which I logged in almost 2,700 billable hours at a local firm. Billable Hours At our firm we need to hit a certain level of billable hours for the year to get bonuses at year end. Your firm probably has a policy where it needs to be approved. Slow week: 30 billables, 40-45 total; average/normal week: 40-50 billables, 55-60 total; busy week: 55-65 billables, 70 total; closing week: 70+ billables and basically all time is billable. It would just make your billable hours look better on each day during the week. Reply reply. However, I still ended up billing 2400 hours last year because my individual workload was insane. 76K subscribers in the Big4 community. I've had friends who've had to stay till 1am on a regular basis, which is no where near my experience. Personally, I would have LOVED to have been making $55K my first year in public. Assuming 2 billable to 3 total, (some people call this 1:2 meaning billable:non), I'm no longer any good at math but if you say you need 45 billable per week, you need to be there 67. 5 or so billable on average (my firm has us bill all the trainings and other events meant to introduce us to the firm which definitely drives hours up. not carrying your work phone/laptop everywhere you go. I don’t love 60 hour weeks now that I’m working for a carrier but I have far more control over my schedule than I ever did in consulting. The partner bragged that they were billing 70-75 hours a week. They are pushing us all to work at least 70 in busy season. 4. In the USA salaried employees are expected to work 45 hours a week and sometimes 50. So, a little back story. Both lead to getting a job you actually want. Hours probably matter less than you think. Fuck em. The thought of leaving my cushy remote optional zero billable job for one of these, to slave away all day every day for a similar salary is Generally a firm is considered "Big Law" if it has 500+ attorneys. Welcome to r/Big4, a place to discuss everything related to the Big 4 accounting firms… How many hours do you work over what's in your schedule? For example, if it says 60 billable in my schedule, what should I expect? If you do litigation you’re bound to get one really high month that lets you have easy months in the future. I’m in the process of getting a house so I can’t quit just yet. My supervisor just told me that the partner is not happy that I won’t be hitting my billable goal I’m not really sure what an articling lawyer is, but at any firms that are of the big 4 caliber, even entry level associates (non-partner lawyers) are going to be billing well, well over $500/hour. $160k, then it's a no brainer to take the lower billable requirement. In those 4 months, his timesheets had more billable hours than what the target is for level 1 staff for the entire year (over 1400 hours in 4 months, vs less than 40 in 8 months). As long as you continue to communicate with your team and you hit at least 40 per week you will be fine. , but no one will bill 100% of their office time as there just are too many tasks that are not billable. Policy is (unless otherwise stipulated in the engagement letter): *travel during normal business hours, yes, bill for your time. *Outside of normal business hours, bill a non chargeable code. From talking to friends, 45-50 billable hours translates to working 60+ hour weeks, and the prospect is a little bit daunting. Many people see doing a few years at the big 4 as an extended grad school where you get paid a little. Note that his target was 30%. I mean for your own future and your own career. Big law hours seem reasonable; what am I missing? It appears to be the case that hours for junior associates in big law are terrible, involving 60-80+ hours / week, with common work on weekends and vacations, according to most Redditors. And then when you’re a 6th year you can bill 11 hours a day 🫠🔫. I was an intern and got promoted to staff but I was an hourly employee. 5-9 hours depending on the type of projects I’m working on, but I’m not always the most efficient person, so I may not be the best example. Two more months of roughing it I guess. 13. Edit: to clarify, policy is ALWAYS charge the real It's not "evil Big 4 hiring managers" who determine the market rate for an accounting graduate with zero experience. Burning through associates and giving no shits about employee wellbeing is much less expensive than actually working on a functional system, particularly This works out to around 2k billable hours. Keep in mind my goal was just to meet the billable requirement. I interned for a big four in NYC last year. Seems like there's more to your question than the title since you're asking everyone how many hours per week they're doing their job. There is some truth about billable hours being in different buckets, but the billable hours that count are the hours that the client actually pays for your services. A lot of large firms like Kirkland don’t even have an hours requirement, but everybody ends up billing 2200+. 5 and 9 hours. 5-10 hour days, I can usually bill between 8. It takes long hours, is stressful and competitive, you're not doing meaningful work, its not usually fun. In most Biglaw shops 2500 hours makes you very profitable and solid. They know a lot of people won't make it more than a few years so they get as many as possible in hopes that they can get a few who do go multiple years. 3 Honestly, though, BL hiring is such a bizarre market, so who knows. Management thinks they can just throw benefits at the problem instead of paying ppl more or hiring more. Billable hours works like this: you work your ass off every minute of the day and also when you get home at night, then forget who your family is, then forget who you are, then crawl in defeated only to hear the partners scold you for not billing enough because a third of your hours don’t count. And it makes up a small portion of your income early on. That is good enough when it comes to renewing ur license. I currently make 75k in a non legal job. I've also read that minimum billable hours for big law tend to be around 1900 or so, with 2000+ being usual Billable hours are a joke. ADMIN MOD. EY could care less about your unbilled time until it comes to round tables. That’s what you’ll be compensated for when your bonus comes due. 1. Generally around 9-7, 6. If the manager says something like “I try not to work anyone pst 40 hours”, then congrats, they are a real leader and an outstanding human being. So I would appreciate a feedback from people who work for b4, I may think about changing jobs if the hours are in the same range. It will be a partner. 90% is impossible and a target that inventives a lot of overtime hours. Is 45-50 billable hours per week a common requirement at law firms? Is that high or low? And what is work/life balance like for you? It takes a while to master, but once you get it down you’ll be billing 8-10 hours a day in your sleep. that's what the 475k is for. Maybe there are some here and there that demand more, but at mine 2500 makes you a rock star on track for partner. I also got all my PERT reports signed off by my mentors through the "mentor What is the minimum billable hours at T25 firms like? I know big 4 hours are 55 hours and some firms in the top 10 are 55 as well. We just went over billable hours and I wanted to know if anyone here has had to bill for over 2100 and how they do it, day after day. 2100-2200 are more the realistic expectation among good standing associates. But for those that have exited public accounting from the Big 4, would you do it over again if you were able to go back in time and decide whether or not to take the Big 4 offer? Even a modest billable target requires billing ~5-7 hours in a day, and that doesn't account for breaks, quoting, prospecting, admin work, socializing, training, department meetings, a lot of research, networking, etc. If you leave the firm they still need to sign off on your stuff - they cannot hold you hostage. My firm has an 1800 hour “target”. 45-60 hours a week doesn’t sound terrible, but it can be Big 4 - CPA PERT Sign Off and Submission for Designation. 15-30 minutes here and there, nothing too crazy. If you are billable, the expectation is higher. Not financial advice… It looks like I’ll be at about 120 charge hours (goal is 160) this month because I was sick with covid at the beginning of it and took time off to rest. [US] Is Big 4 really worth it? The hours are brutal. Humans are not capable of being 100% productive. You will absolutely feel the difference between 1850 and 2000 billable hours. How difficult is it to get billable hours? About to start at one of these, and it seems like they're kind of a big deal. Most weekends I probably billed 3-4 hours a day (meaning I worked 4-5 hours). 1 / 2. Although I've seen some refer to 250+ as the limit. So for most they're working 60-70hr weeks, ~2200-2500 per year or so when they bill 55-60/week. 5 per day. And your revenue is just dollars in the door that are attributable to your billed time. And most things aren’t due ASAP in insurance, compared to consulting where everything was. Pick culture and learning opportunities, not what they outwardly says their hours requirements are. Do litigators have the same requirements? Is the workload more significant as a transactional attorney vs. There are 11 federal holidays, so that brings it down to 50 weeks. Offer to help pre-sales efforts. Half my non billable last week was either meetings about my hours, or anxiety attacks I was having about my hours that kept me from Projects are infrequent and when I do get a new project the project manager often only bills 2-6 hours of work for a project that will take 10-20 hours of work. For me, it was the constantly being on call compared to the raw hours worked that got tiring. Yeah I mean at the core, shadowing is essentially working on a project but not getting to bill the hours for it. It sucks, but unfortunately not much to do about it. g. Yes you can take breaks, but they aren’t chargeable. 55, total. My first two firms did not prepare me for billable hours. The amount of productive hours is fairly similar to the total hours, I'd say generally 80-90%. Honest answer: Partner will be dissatisfied with your billable hours. But what about the Firms outside of the top 10 like Moss Adams or Armanino. 5 billable with 2. It makes me want to projectile vomit all over my workstation. HR will basically pull a record of the billable hours you charged and then have a CPA sign off. When calculating distances, it is always office to . I’m just 3 weeks in, the goal is 36 billable hours every week. I know a few firms where 1800 is a “goal” versus a strict requirement. 8K subscribers in the beyond_uranus community. 1800/48 = 37. I'm at a Big 4 PA firm right now and did all my hours with them. Alternatively, there are 365 days in a year. My first accounting job out of college had a 55 hour billable hour requirement. I saw billing rates for a relatively small Florida firm this summer for associates at $400. If you take 2 weeks of vacation, a 60 hour billable week tracks for 3000 hours. I usually work another hour or two in the evening once or twice a week, and I usually clock in 2-4 hours each weekend. At least 1,900 charge hours a year for the last 3 years as a senior. Welcome to r/Big4, a place to discuss everything related to the Big 4 accounting firms… Working 55 hour weeks with 2 weeks off would get you to ( 230000/55/50) $83. First year billing should start off low and then increase and by the end of the year you should be doing the normal amount or very close to it (e. When people talk about BigLaw, they are usually referring to a firm that pays their associates according to the "Cravath Scale. 593K subscribers in the LawSchool community. , 7 to 8 a day). Only thing that could bite you in the ass is if the firm has a clawback policy, if you leave before you have your CPA. Maybe off seasons, I see that in some teams like Audit. Overall you’ll end up working the same total hours. Edit: meal, billable. I did put an extra 1. When I was in industry I worked from 8a-4:30/5p M-Th, and 8-Noon on Fridays, with about a 45min lunch break. But be mindful of your utilization, your scheduled retain for that week, and your work to be done. That is the Big 4 advice. There is usually work to be done and the superiors will make it if there There are 52 weeks and 1 day in a year. I had a few that were like a normal weekday. There are going to be social events at times after work. If you are mot billable you can probably get away with 40 hours It usually takes about 10-12 hours to bill 8 hours (this is if you’re being pretty fucking efficient). I don’t understand how so many people meet and exceed this requirement without constantly going over time or losing their minds. Let’s call it 11 hours a day of work, which amounts to 55 hours a week. I try to keep my utilization above 100% to build in a cushion for slow periods/vacation. They would make staff assist the managers in the billing process, and from there we would see how we did. All those things can be said about a competitive graduate program. No one is. There are endless, endless meetings about how I'm not working enough- while I'm meeting my deadlines, doing quality work, and sitting at my desk 10 hours a day. if you aren’t checking your email after you are done for the day, even during weekends when you’re on a date. 558 votes, 286 comments. Firms say they look down upon people telling you to "eat hours" but managers won't hesitate to scrutinize your hours reported and question if the hours you submitted were hours you were "actually working. Here is an idea from Yale as to what a week under the billable hour looks like, but they are liberal with the breaks and lunch. It's not a big deal. As a manager I know my time is a bit skewed more on the admin side, so I would say in a normal 8-9hr day, 5hrs during non-peak time is billable between my clients. I have a monthly billable requirement of 160 hours. The big engagements might not require you to eat hours, but Step 2 - Staff follows step 1 and goes way over budget on many occasions. Also, you are not 100% productive. During busy season, you might not have to eat as many. Step 3 - Staff finally gets read the riot act by at least one manager (the others have stopped using him) because he is going over budget. 6. 77 votes, 53 comments. Senior, Local firm in the Southeast) 1,730 target billable. b) someone else will be forced to finish your work for free and it may negatively influence the feedback you receive, because there will be no budget left to book someone else for the remaining 2 days. Yep, accounting is one of those professions where the more work you and the more efficient you instead of getting extra pay and rewards you get more work. 5-10 hours in the office i usually bill 6-7. Then, repeat. 5 hours per week, or 7. My season ended in June. I work for a mid size firm and I think out expected billable hours are not realistic. On top of that, his unbilled WIP was more or less the same amount of his fee goal for the year, with a turnover of well over 300 days. Now is a great time to network (in person, if possible) or contribute what you can in Teams. So if your base is $120k, your billing rate with a 1200 expectation is $300/hr. Billable hours is a game. Don't worry about 30min of your time being spent elsewhere mentally, that's easily the amount of time spent in the bathroom Your experience at the Big 4 is VERY dependent on the clients you have. Your billable hour requirement only matters when you don't meet it. If the 1850 job pays $50k and the 2000 job pays $180k, I'd say it isn't worth it. From what I've experienced the big 4 is still hiring a lot. They did cut me some slack since I’m new and got some training to do. You either work more hours and don’t record them (example: do 60 hours of billable work a week and record 50). Most of the time if you're close to the target it isn't a big deal - an associate that bills 1880 hours is nearly as profitable as one who bills 1900 hours. If the pay is closer, like $150k vs. Part of the reason people work that many hours is because the work keeps piling up. Maybe they fire you. The billable requirement model is so archaic. Even if you are "working on clients for 8 hours," you are still not actually 100% productive. The ones who do it best are the people who bill 45 hours (outside of busy season) but are working 55 hours. 2000. I was reading through some compensation threads and got to thinking it would be really helpful to see how many hours people…. Emails will get you 2-3 hours a day easily. Talk to HR for that one. 14 votes, 13 comments. 5 hours of driving each day). 2000 hours seems like a standard full time job (9-5, M-F, 50 weeks/yr (2 weeks I do enjoy new challenges and different projects but the billable hours…man it’s insane. Man I see all these stressed out and burned out juniors billing over 2k and I gotta say guys, in my too-many years of experience being an associate, I think associates over estimate how much it matters. Billable. When you go into vantage and run ur cpe history you’ll see some random persons signature. But probably just 8-9 hours most days. Constant stress. Also time entry won't allow anything under 40 hours (chargeable or not). Ive been interviewing quite a bit from a big law (near 110 rank) that offered 85k for 1900 annual hours to 70-80k at a 5 person firm also requiring 1900 hours. Weekends were variable. A fun place for company tinfoil, DD on their filings, and a splash else. If it goes to voicemail, oh boy. 17 votes, 12 comments. I could probably become more efficient by not surfing on reddit etc. related to the Big 4 accounting I’m usually in the office from 8am to 5:30 or 6pm each week day. Your hourly wage is $29. You’re going to undercharge on something at some point, so inflate where you can to make up for it and no one will ever say anything. 45-60 hours a week doesn’t sound terrible, but it can be People at b4 always complain about the long hours, but honestly I feel like that’s all public accounting firms. 78K subscribers in the Big4 community. Pretty low in workload, first year here too! Had continuous conversation with managers and updated them about my availability to save my ass As you get more efficient, you might be able to bill 3 hours for every 4 you are there or better. Share. Alchemy-16 • 2 mo. Can anyone explain how billable hours work as a transactional attorney vs. zyxamghpyacimchujufo
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