For accountants and bookkeepers

Time tracking for accountants who invoice clients in Wave

Small accounting and bookkeeping practices bill a lot of work by the hour: catch-up books, cleanup projects, advisory calls, the extra questions at year-end. Swell tracks that time by client and engagement, applies your rates and rounding, and creates the invoice draft in your Wave business for you to review and send.

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How should accountants track billable time?

Log time against the client and the engagement as you work, mark each entry billable or not, and keep one rate per engagement and one rounding rule for the practice. Track fixed-fee work too, as non-billable time, so you can see how many hours each fee really covers. Then build invoices from the tracked entries instead of retyping them.

Where a practice's billable hours slip

Accountants are careful with their clients' numbers. Their own billing usually gets whatever time is left at the end of the month.

Out-of-scope work that never gets billed

A client on a monthly bookkeeping fee asks for a cleanup of last year, a sales tax question or a call with their lender. The extra hours are real, but if they are not logged against that client when they happen, they disappear into the fixed fee.

Fixed fees with no hours behind them

You quote a monthly or annual fee, then never find out how long the work takes. Without hours per client, it is hard to tell which engagements are profitable and which fees need to go up at renewal.

Invoices rebuilt by hand

Hours sit in a spreadsheet or timer app while your own invoices go out of Wave. At month-end you copy the totals across, apply the rate, round, and retype the descriptions, which is exactly the kind of manual re-entry you would tell a client to stop doing.

Questions about what an invoice covered

A client asks what twelve hours of cleanup included. If the time entries have been edited since the invoice went out, the detail no longer matches what you charged, and the answer takes longer than it should.

How Swell fits an accounting or bookkeeping practice

Swell covers the stretch from a running timer to a reviewed invoice draft in your own Wave business. It does not replace your practice management or client work tools.

Hours by client and engagement

Set up each client with projects for the work you do, such as monthly bookkeeping, cleanup or advisory, and tasks underneath. Start a timer or log a date and duration afterwards, and mark each entry billable or not. Saved timer shortcuts restart recurring work in one click.

Rates and rounding set once

Set a rate per project, per team member, or both, or on a task such as cleanup or advisory. Task rates come first, then the most specific project or team member rate. Choose account-wide rounding, nearest or up to 6, 15 or 30 minutes, to match your engagement letters. Reports, CSV exports and invoice lines all use the same amounts.

Review, then create the Wave draft

Pick a client and date range to see every outgoing invoice line with the hours, rate and notes behind it. Edit a line description for that invoice only, then create the draft in your Wave business. Nothing reaches the client until you approve and send it from Wave.

Invoiced time is locked

Entries on a Wave draft are linked to that invoice and their hours and amounts are frozen, so they cannot be edited, deleted or billed twice. Reports filter by client, project or team member and export to CSV when a client asks for detail.

A month-end billing run in Swell

1

Connect your practice's Wave business

Connect the Wave business you invoice your clients from. During setup Swell brings in its customers, and you match each one to a client or add it as a new one.
2

Track the month

Log client work as you do it: billable hourly work, out-of-scope requests, and fixed-fee work as non-billable time.
3

Review by client

Filter the report by client for the month, check hours against each engagement's budget, and fix entries missing a project or note.
4

Create each draft

Open the invoice review for each hourly client, confirm the lines and rates, and create the draft in Wave. Bill fixed fees in Wave as you do today.
5

Send from Wave

Approve and send the invoices in Wave. The entries behind them are now linked and locked in Swell.

What to look for in time tracking for accountants

The features that decide whether tracked hours turn into accurate invoices and useful engagement data:

Billable and non-billable time: A billable flag on every entry, so internal work and fixed-fee hours are recorded without landing on an hourly invoice.
Rates per engagement and person: Different rates for different kinds of work and different staff, applied automatically rather than from a rate column.
Rounding that matches engagement letters: If you bill in 6- or 15-minute increments, the tracker should round the same way on every report and invoice.
Invoices in the system you already use: Invoice drafts created from the tracked entries in your own accounting system, without export and re-entry.
Locked invoiced time: Entries tied to the invoice they were billed on, so later edits cannot change what a client was charged.
Hours per client over time: Reports by client and project, exportable to CSV, so fee reviews start from actual hours instead of memory.

When Swell is not the right fit

Swell is deliberately narrow. Look elsewhere if any of these apply:

You invoice your own clients from QuickBooks, Xero or practice management software. Swell only creates invoices in Wave.
You want time tracked inside your clients' Wave businesses. Swell connects to the one Wave business you invoice from.
You need workflow, deadline or client-portal features. Swell is time tracking and invoicing only, with no task management.
You bill in a currency other than US dollars. Swell's rates are in USD and it will not create a Wave invoice for a business in another currency.
Staff need to submit weekly timesheets for approval before invoicing. Swell does not have an approval workflow yet.

Questions from accountants

Do I need Wave Pro to use Swell?

Yes. Wave lets third-party apps connect only to businesses on Wave Pro or with a Wave Advisors subscription, so the Wave business you invoice from needs one of those. You can sign up and explore Swell during the 14-day trial before connecting.

Can Swell track time for fixed-fee clients?

Yes. Track the work as non-billable time against the client's project. It will not appear on an hourly invoice, but reports show the hours per client and project, so you can compare them with the fee. Set a budget in hours on the project to see how much of an allowance is used.

Can staff track time in the same account?

Yes, on the Team plan. Invite staff by email as members, admins or owners. Members track and manage their own time; owners and admins see account-wide reports and create invoices. Set a rate per person, or per person on a project, when staff bill at different levels.

Does Swell connect to my clients' Wave accounts?

No. Swell connects to one Wave business per account: the one you send your own invoices from. It creates invoice drafts there for the time you bill your clients. It does not read or change your clients' books.

How much does Swell cost for an accounting practice?

Solo is $15 a month for one person. Team is $29 a month including three users, then $7 per additional user, so a practice of five people pays $43 a month. Both plans include a 14-day trial, and there is no free plan.

Bill this month's client hours from Swell

Connect your Wave business, track a few days of client work and create your first invoice draft during the 14-day trial.