Accelo
Professional services automation combining CRM, project management, time tracking, and billing for accounting firms.
Bill4Time
Website: www.bill4time.com
Bill4Time at a glance
- Best for
- Firms holding client funds in trust
- Pricing model
- Per user per month, tiered by feature set
- Deployment
- Cloud, with iOS and Android apps
- Regions
- United States
- Key integrations
- QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Stripe
Last reviewed . Pricing and features change frequently — confirm current details with the vendor.
Bill4Time is a cloud time and billing platform for professional service firms, covering time tracking, invoicing, payment processing, and trust accounting for firms that hold client funds.
How accounting firms use it
Time is captured against clients and matters, invoices generate from recorded hours at applicable rates, and payment is collected online. That much is common to the category.
What differentiates it is trust accounting. Firms taking retainers or holding funds pending disbursement must keep those balances segregated from firm income and must not recognise them as revenue before the work is done. Most time and billing tools have no concept of this, leaving firms to track trust balances in a spreadsheet — which is precisely the arrangement that produces compliance failures.
Key features
Time entry works from web and mobile with timers or manual entry, supporting multiple billing rates by staff member, client, or matter. Expenses can be recorded against engagements alongside time.
Invoicing generates from approved time and expenses with configurable templates, and online payment collection is built in.
Trust accounting maintains client fund balances separately, records receipts and disbursements against them, and prevents drawing on funds not yet earned. Reporting distinguishes billable from non-billable time and tracks realization by staff and client.
Who it’s best for
Small and mid-sized professional services firms needing a dedicated time-to-invoice workflow, and particularly firms holding client funds in trust where the segregation requirement is a compliance matter.
Firms without trust obligations will find Harvest or BigTime equally capable and often better suited. Practices wanting billing alongside workflow and client management should look at Karbon, Canopy, or Mango.
Bill4Time FAQ
- What is trust accounting and why does it matter?
- Where a firm holds client money — retainers paid in advance, funds held pending disbursement — those balances must be tracked separately from firm income and cannot be drawn on before the work is performed. The requirement originates in legal practice but applies to accounting firms taking advance fees, and getting it wrong is a professional conduct issue rather than merely an accounting error.
- Does it integrate with QuickBooks?
- Yes, with QuickBooks Online and Desktop, syncing invoices, clients, and payments so the ledger remains the accounting system of record while time capture and billing run here.
- Is it built for accounting firms specifically?
- Not exclusively — it serves professional services broadly and has particularly deep adoption in legal practice, which is where the trust accounting emphasis comes from. Accounting firms holding client funds benefit from that heritage; those that do not may be paying for capability they will not use.
- What are the main alternatives?
- Harvest and BigTime cover time and billing without trust accounting. Practice management platforms such as Karbon, Canopy, and Mango include billing alongside workflow and client management. Firms whose only distinguishing requirement is trust accounting should weigh whether that alone justifies a separate system.
Bill4Time Alternatives
Other time & billing tools for accounting firms, ordered by how much of Bill4Time's functionality they cover.
Anchor
Autonomous billing platform automating the entire billing cycle from engagement letter to payment collection for accounting firms.
BigTime
Time tracking, project management, billing, and resource planning software built for accounting and consulting firms.
BQE Core
Professional services automation platform combining time tracking, billing, project management, and accounting in one solution for accounting firms.
Cone
Proposals, billing, and payments platform for accounting firms with engagement letter automation, recurring invoicing, and integrated time tracking.
Clockify
Free time tracking software for teams of any size, offering timesheets, project tracking, reporting, and invoicing capabilities with generous free tier.