The weekly missed-billing review — a 15-minute habit

Most billing leakage in accounting firms does not happen because of bad contracts. Leakage happens because a time entry was logged after the invoice went out. Or because a custom field quantity was updated mid-period and nobody noticed. Each gap is small on its own. Across 60 clients over 12 months, they add up.

A weekly 15-minute check in Billing Review is one of the highest-return habits a Company Admin can build. Here is how to make it stick.

• To open Billing Review, you need the BI Analytics permission at View level, the Billing app, and the Billing Review feature. Company Owners and Company Admins have the permission already. A Company Member has it when a team grants it.
• To add work to an invoice, you need Company Owner, Company Admin, or the Billing → Invoices permission at the All level.
• Plan: Elite, Elite Early Bird and Enterprise.
• At least one invoice must have been created and locked in the period you are checking.

The Discrepancies list shows work from closed periods only — periods that have ended and whose invoice is already out. Check monthly and you review work that may be weeks old. The person who logged it may not remember the context. Weekly means the entries are fresh, easier to verify, and easier to carry into the right month.

Weekly also means the list stays short. A monthly review can feel overwhelming when 20 items appear. A weekly review typically shows 0–5 items — manageable enough that each one gets proper attention.

Path: Clients → Billing Review

There is no menu entry, so the tab strip above the client list is the way in. The address https://app.getuku.com/missed-billing opens the same page. See Billing Review for the full reference on the three lists, the columns and the actions.

Keep the Discrepancies list selected. Save the view once you have set your filters, so the next week is one click. See How to use bookmarks for how to save a filter state.

The Period filter defaults to the last 3 months. For a weekly habit, narrow it to a custom range covering the last two to three weeks. You are looking for work that became billable after a recent invoice went out.

If your firm invoices on the 1st of each month, checking weekly from the 5th onward catches any stragglers quickly.

Look at each row and ask:

• Is this genuinely billable work that should be invoiced? Check the Billing item and Est. value columns.
• Was it intentionally excluded from the invoice, or was it an oversight?
• Is it extra work the client agreed to? Then add it to an invoice. Work that was always part of the fixed fee can stay where it is.

Pay attention to two things. Items ticked in the Extra column count as extra work under the contract, and are the most likely to be real money. A greyed-out Est. value is fixed-fee work: the hours are real, the extra revenue is not. See How to mark extra work.

1. Select the rows you want to bill.
2. Choose the month in the picker beside the button. The picker starts on the current month, and a month an invoice already covers is greyed out.
3. Click Add to Invoice.
4. Read the result. Uku names what moved, into which month, and each new [Correction] task it created.

The next invoice covering that month bills the work. For a client who is not billed monthly, that is the invoice for their own period, not an invoice named after the month. See Billing Review for the full detail.

The best habits attach to something you already do. If you review the previous week’s work every Monday morning, add Billing Review to that list. If you prepare invoices on Fridays, open Billing Review before you start. The check should feel like part of a routine, not an interruption.

The Discrepancies list shows what a contract could charge for and an invoice did not carry. The list does not decide for you whether the client should be charged. Some items appear week after week because they are genuinely not recoverable, such as work under a fixed fee. Learn to recognise your firm’s patterns, so the weekly check focuses on real leakage.

Over several weeks, you will develop a sense of your firm’s typical missed-billing rate. A firm that recovers a steady amount every month has strong evidence that the habit is worth keeping. A firm that rarely finds anything may have tight enough billing discipline for the check to become monthly.

If you open Billing Review for the first time and see dozens of items going back months, do not try to resolve everything at once. Start with the most recent closed period and work backwards. For older items, ask whether the estimated value justifies the effort. Items older than three months are often better written off than chased. The client context is cold, and the administrative work is not worth it.

Once you clear the backlog, the weekly cadence keeps it manageable going forward.

• Lock time entries — lock previous periods so team members cannot edit time retroactively after invoicing.
• Manage billable and non-billable time — make sure topics and tasks are correctly marked as billable from the start.
• Track time — a refresher on consistent time tracking practice for the whole team.