People are freelancing more now than ever and has become a reality for many Canadians.
If you are a freelancer or provide your services by billing your clients for your time, make sure you record your time, or you may not get paid.
At our firm, a large portion of our work is billed at our hourly rates, and we use docket sheets to show where we are spending our time, even though we record our hours in PCLaw.
It is important if you are billing a client an hourly rate, that you can substantiate your time to them. The one time you forget to record your time will be the one time a client asks for you to back up your hours, and you may end up not getting paid.
Sometimes people who do not bill for their time do not understand how you can bill what you do, unless it is showed to them. People are surprised how much time things take to do, and without backup, that becomes a problem.
If you have outstanding invoices that are in dispute and you proceed to litigation, the Court will want to see some sort of documentation that substantiates your time charged to your client(s).
Failing to be able to backup your time that you bill to your client could result in the Court not awarding you what you are owed.
So the moral of this blog is: the more information you have on your time, the better for you.
Murray Brown, Licensed Paralegal