Accountants
Time tracking for accountants with twenty clients and one day
An accounting day is not one long engagement. It is a reconciliation for one client, a query from another, a payroll run for a third, and a dozen emails that each belong to somebody.
In short
Accountants need time tracking that keeps up with many short pieces of client work. Automatic time tracking records which applications, documents and windows each stretch of time was spent in, so the day can be assigned to clients afterwards, invoiced from the measured minutes, and compared against fixed fees to see which clients actually pay.
- Time, assigned after the fact
- Per client
- Invoice lines
- Time or fixed
- Idle time, never folded in
- Separate
- Export
- CSV or PDF
What does the time you forget to log come to?
$4,888 a year, over 58 hours, at 5 days a week and 46 working weeks
The day is too fragmented for a timer
Timers assume work arrives in blocks. Accounting work mostly arrives as interruptions: a client calls about a notice, a bank feed needs a look, a colleague asks where a figure came from. Each one is a few minutes, each one belongs to a client, and almost none of them get a timer started.
Those minutes are the ones that disappear. Not because anybody decided they were free, but because writing them down costs more attention than doing them. Automatic capture removes that cost: the day is recorded as it happened and sorted into clients when you have a moment, with the window titles and documents there to remind you what each stretch was.
What accountants get that a timesheet does not give
- Short client work that is actually recorded
- A four-minute call and a nine-minute fix are captured like any other session, so they can be billed, or at least counted against the client they belong to.
- Hourly and fixed-fee lines on one invoice
- An invoice can carry time lines built from tracked minutes alongside fixed-fee lines, which is how most practices actually bill a client.
- The real cost of a fixed fee
- Most compliance work is quoted as a fixed fee. Tracking the hours behind it shows which engagements are priced well and which ones you are quietly subsidising.
- Invoices from the same hours
- Advisory and out-of-scope work billed by the hour goes from tracked time to an invoice line without a spreadsheet in between.
Fixed fees still need the hours
Moving to fixed fees does not make time tracking pointless. It changes what the hours are for. Instead of producing the bill, they tell you whether the bill was right.
Compare the hours each client took over a year against what they paid, and the clients who need a new quote usually stand out. The ones that look fine on revenue and terrible on hours are the ones busy season was quietly paying for.
- Effective hourly rate per client: fee divided by hours tracked.
- Out-of-scope work: hours on tasks the engagement letter did not cover.
- Busy-season load: hours per week across the team, by client.
Where a practice-management tool fits better
Stunda is a time tracker with invoicing. It does not manage engagement letters, client portals, document requests, deadlines or work-in-progress ledgers, and it does not post to your accounting software. If you need those, a dedicated practice-management system is the better fit, and Stunda can still sit underneath it to capture the hours, with CSV export to move them across.
Questions
What is the best time tracking software for accountants?
One that captures short client work without a timer, invoices from measured minutes, and lets you compare hours against fixed fees. If you also need engagement letters, deadlines and a client portal, a practice-management system fits better, with a tracker underneath it for the hours.
Do accountants need to track time on fixed-fee work?
Yes, though for a different reason. The hours no longer produce the bill, they tell you whether the fixed fee was priced well. Fee divided by hours tracked gives an effective hourly rate per client, which is how underpriced engagements show up.
Can I bill in six-minute or fifteen-minute increments?
Stunda bills the minutes it measured and does not round them for you. If your practice bills in six or fifteen minute units, set the hours on the invoice line in the editor, and the measured figure stays on record beside it.
Does Stunda integrate with my accounting software?
It does not post to accounting or practice-management software. Entries and sessions export to CSV and invoices to PDF, and your own hours are readable over MCP from tools such as Claude or Cursor.
Does it work for a small practice?
Yes. The team plan is priced per person with no seat cap, and seeing other people's time is a role permission that defaults to off.