Fiction vs. Fact: Why the Profession Still Needs Timesheets—Done Right

Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.

Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

A recent email posed the question: is it finally time to “ditch the timesheet”? It echoed a familiar sentiment—timesheets are outdated, inaccurate, and irrelevant in a world of value pricing and outcome-based engagements. It even referenced a 2010 Journal of Accountancy article advocating for a post-timesheet world, pushing for project management tools and After-Action Reviews (AARs) instead.

At CloudCapcha, we live at the intersection of accounting innovation and operational efficiency. We understand the frustrations. But rather than rebranding the problem, we believe in redefining the solution. We’re not defending the old timesheet—we’re defending what it could and should be: a reliable, real-time source of operational truth.

Let’s Separate Fact from Fiction

Fiction #1: Timesheets Are Inherently Inaccurate

It’s true that traditional timesheets often rely on faulty memory. People forget, estimate, or guess days after the fact. That makes the data imprecise and unreliable.

But the answer isn’t to throw out time tracking entirely. It’s to get better data.

Modern tools like CloudCapcha automate time capture by passively tracking work, suggesting time entries based on real behaviour, and prompting people while they still remember what they did. The result? Accurate, real-time data—no disruption, no manual entry.

This isn’t about control; it’s about clarity. Accurate time data drives better decisions across billing, staffing, profitability, and client value.

Fiction #2: Project Management and AARs Replace Timesheets

Project management and AARs are valuable, but they’re not substitutes for time data.

Project management helps plan work—but planning isn’t measuring. Without time data, you can’t identify overruns, bottlenecks, or overextended team members.
After-action reviews offer insights—but they’re retrospective and subjective. They don’t help you adjust mid-engagement or spot real-time issues.

In contrast, well-designed timesheets provide continuous, firm-wide insight—job by job, client by client—without the need for lengthy meetings or guesswork.

Fiction #3: Value Pricing Makes Timesheets Obsolete

Value pricing means clients aren’t billed by the hour—but that doesn’t mean time data is irrelevant. This confuses pricing with costing.

To run an efficient firm, you still need to know:

● Which work is most profitable
● Which clients overuse or underuse resources
● Where automation or streamlining is possible
● Who is overloaded

Invoices don’t reveal that. Time data does. Even Ron Baker, a leading voice in value pricing, has acknowledged that while price is driven by value, cost still matters to the business.

Timesheets Done Right Solve Real Problems

The email critiques timesheets without addressing how modern tools resolve real issues:

Painful to Use
Legacy systems are clunky. Real-time, passive capture eliminates friction and resentment.

Lost Billables
Incomplete or inaccurate records lead to billing leakage. Real-time tracking ensures nothing is missed.

Lack of Performance Insight
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Effort data gives firms a performance baseline.

Inconsistency Across Teams
Without time data, firm-wide comparisons are guesswork. Timesheets bring alignment and accountability.

Outdated Tech
The issue isn’t the concept—it’s the tools. Modern timesheet tech is intelligent, integrated, and invisible.

Debunking More Myths (Straight from CloudCapcha)

Here are three common myths we hear—and why they don’t hold up:

“Timesheets kill morale” Manually reconstructing your week does. Automated tools reduce that burden entirely.
“Timesheets don’t reflect value” True—but they reflect effort. You need both to assess scope creep, training gaps, and workflow issues.
“Timesheets are just for billing” Wrong. Leading firms use time data for forecasting, resource planning, and strategic advisory.

Final Thought: Don’t Throw Out the Compass

Getting rid of timesheets because they’ve been misused is like tossing your compass because you once got lost. The solution isn’t to fly blind—it’s to modernise the tool.

Recent events like the Ernst & Young judgment remind us that digital tools and human oversight must evolve together. The profession doesn’t need fewer timesheets—it needs better ones.

At CloudCapcha, we’re not here to preserve outdated habits. We’re here to replace them with real-time, intelligent time capture that reflects how work actually gets done.

Aug 2025

The priorities defining the accountancy firms of the future 

Are you making decisions like a high-performing firm?
Are you deploying your people in ways that truly deliver your strategy?
Are you seeing real ROI on your technology investments?

Private Equity and Technology Transformation: A Real Solution or a Mirage?

Private equity investment is bringing unprecedented change to the accountancy sector, so much so that about 30-40% of our clients now have some element of external investment.

How to choose an outsourcer

Taking the leap and choosing an outsourcing partner is, in some ways, as critical as choosing your practice’s tech systems. It cuts to the core of what is the engine room of an accountancy practice: tax and accounts production, and bookkeeping.

The Digital Switch

How Agilico is helping firms modernise finance processes, document workflows and print management

Cloud Ambitions vs. Print Realities

Across both public and private sectors, organisations have steadily adopted cloud solutions to improve efficiency, streamline operations, and cut costs. Yet despite this widespread uptake, one key IT function continues to lag behind: print.

Composable Accounting Firms: Why Practice Management Suites Are Losing to Best-of-Breed Stacks

When Accountancy Age surveyed digital leaders among the UK Top 100 firms, they found practices with 75% or more of their tech stack integrated are 63% more likely to achieve significant revenue growth.

ROME WASN'T BUILT IN A DAY

Accountancy firms in the UK are increasingly recognising that unchecked data proliferation is becoming too risky and costly to ignore. Yet, many are overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge in identifying, classifying, and minimising vast amounts of data. In this article, we explore key considerations and outline a five-step approach to help firms implement effective data retention and disposal strategies.

Turning Cloud Spend into Strategic Value: Why Finance and IT Leaders Need a Closer Look

Cloud has transformed how accountancy firms and their clients operate. It does all of the good stuff it’s supposed to: agility, scalability, and innovation at a pace that traditional infrastructure simply can’t match.