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Accounting Firm Metrics Dictionary

A comprehensive guide to understanding and leveraging key metrics for better business performance

DashboardInsights Team avatar
Written by DashboardInsights Team
Updated over a week ago

What is this for?

Introducing the Dashboard Insights' Metrics Dictionary, a comprehensive guide designed to provide you with clear definitions, business impacts, and formula logic for each metric featured in our data analytics dashboards.

Gain a deeper understanding of your metrics based on industry standards, empowering you to run your accounting firm more efficiently!


Metrics Dictionary

Job Management Metrics

Definition & Business Impact

Formula Logic

Open Jobs

Ongoing tasks or projects for clients that are not yet completed and potentially not billed, indicating the firm's workload and capacity.

Count of all the jobs that have started and are not tagged as completed.

Overdue Jobs

Ongoing tasks or projects not completed within the expected period. Delays revenue generation, risks client dissatisfaction, and capacity plans.

Count of open jobs that are past their due dates.

Days Since Last Timesheet

Number of days since the last timesheet was submitted for a specific job. This is helpful for checking any jobs that haven’t been touched for a long time, or alternatively, jobs that were worked on recently.

Maximum value of Current date - Date of last timesheet entry.

Job Budget in $

Budgeted amount in dollars allocated to a specific job. Acts as a financial benchmark, making sure cost and resources are within planned limits.

Sum of amount pulled from the job budget field.

Task Budget in Hours

Budgeted amount in hours allocated to a specific job. Acts as a financial benchmark, making sure cost and resources are within planned limits.

Sum of estimated hours from the tasks in the jobs.

Job Turnaround

Time taken to complete a job from initiation to delivery. Affects billing frequency, job efficiency, and client satisfaction.

Average days between Job Completion Date and Job Start Date if Job = completed.

Timesheets Metrics

Definition & Business Impact

Formula Logic

Billable Timesheets

Hours on a timesheet spent on client-related tasks that can be invoiced, crucial for revenue generation.

Sum of hours recorded on timesheets (if timesheets billable = true).

Non-Billable Timesheets

Hours on a timesheet for internal or non-client tasks not chargeable to the client. It’s important to track for internal efficiency and managing operational costs.

Sum of hours recorded on timesheets [if timesheet billable = false (excluding leave hours)].

Leave

Recorded absence for vacation, sickness, or other non-working periods. Reduces expected capacity hours in calculating productivity.

Sum of hours recorded (if timesheet hours = leave hours).

Total Timesheets

Total recorded hours submitted, including billable, non-billable, and leave hours. Measures total time and effort spent on jobs.

Sum of all hours recorded on timesheets.

Capacity

Total work hours an individual is expected to work, critical for understanding how much workload a firm can handle.

Total available hours for a given period (e.g., 8 hours/day * number of workdays).

Productivity

Measures the utilisation of working hours by a firm to generate chargeable work. Indicates the firm’s ability to allocate capacity efficiently.

Billable Hours / (Capacity Hours - Leave Hours) * 100.

WIP Metrics

Definition & Business Impact

Formula Logic

WIP Added

Amount of billable work in dollar amount added to the WIP Balance by inputting timesheets and disbursements to progress the jobs of the firm. Used in tracking how much gross production a firm is doing.

Sum of Billable Amount from each WIP recorded in time, disbursement, and interims at the record date.

WIP Invoiced or Removed

Value subtracted from WIP Balance after invoicing or washing-up WIP from jobs. Used in assessing for write ons/offs when compared against billing and in determining how frequent the WIP Balance gets evaluated.

Sum of Billable Amount from each WIP recorded in time, disbursement, and interims at the invoiced or removed date.

WIP Movement

Net change in the WIP Balance over a specific period. A positive WIP Movement indicates that unbilled workload is increasing while a negative WIP movement, while sometimes favorable, may indicate a slowdown of business intake.

WIP added - WIP Invoiced or Removed.

Unbilled WIP Balance

Total value of completed work not yet invoiced. Provides insight into billing cycles, workload, and revenue forecasting. A well-managed WIP Balance is healthy for revenue and cashflow, and making sure no forgotten work hasn’t been invoiced.

Sum of Billable Amount from WIP that do not have any invoice date or invoice number.

WIP Aging

Shows number of days the work has been record but not billed. Tracking WIP Aging helps identify projects at risk of being written-off as it gets older. It helps to identify patterns in inefficiencies for work completion.

Days between the WIP record date and today.

Billing Metrics

Definition & Business Impact

Formula Logic

Total Billing

Shows the generated revenue for the firm based on invoices. This shows the most important metric for a business’s overall health as it measures how much money you’ve generated from clients for the work being provided.

Sum of amounts from all invoices.

WIP Billing

Invoiced amounts that have directly contributed from WIP for time and disbursements spent on jobs, and any interims that were applied.

Sum of invoice amounts directly from billing Time, Disbursement and Interims WIP.

Miscellaneous Billing

Invoiced amounts that cannot be allocated to certain data points as it might be missing a job for miscellaneous invoices. It might also be not related to WIP, therefore is allocated to the team member, interim or miscellaneous.

Sum of invoice amounts from invoices that don’t have jobs or WIP.

Recoverability

Measurement for how much WIP billing has been generated from the WIP that has been invoiced. It can also be a measure of efficiency of a job or team member in providing billing from their expected output.

WIP Billing divided by WIP Invoiced.

WIP Hourly Rate

Average Billable Rate per hour for invoiced timesheets.

Billable Amount for Time WIP divided by Total Billed Hours.

Billed Hourly Rate

Average Invoice Rate per hour for invoiced timesheets.

Invoice Amount for Time WIP divided by Total Billed Hours.

Write Ons/Offs

Adjustments made to the WIP during invoicing to increase (write-on) or decrease (write-off) the initial WIP value being invoiced. Provides insight for completion time, quality and client satisfaction.

Adjustments to billed amounts, can be positive (Write Ons) or negative (Write Offs).

Profitability Metrics

Definition & Business Impact

Formula Logic

Billing

Shows the generated revenue for the firm based on invoices.

Sum of amounts from all invoices

Cost

Measures the estimated expenses incurred while performing the work to service the clients.

Sum of billable amounts from disbursements plus sum of billable hours from timesheets multiplied by the salary hourly rate.

Profit

Represents the financial gain (or loss) achieved after subtracting the costs from the billing. This is important in making sure the operations of the business are making money overall and meeting its goals.

Billing - Cost.

Profit %

Percentage of how much profit the firm makes for each dollar of revenue.

(Profit / Billing) * 100.

ROI %

Measures the profitability of investments into jobs or team members.

(Profit / Cost) * 100.

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