The Billing Realization Report

Realization is the share of the value you create that actually turns into billed revenue. You can log a perfect month of work and still leave money behind if that work gets discounted, written down, or never makes it onto an invoice at the rate it was worth. The Billing Realization report puts a single percentage on it, so you can stop guessing whether the firm is capturing the value of its time and start measuring it.

It compares two numbers for every person: the standard value of the work they performed (their hours at full rates) and the amount you actually billed for it. The gap between those two is realization, and watching it is how a firm catches revenue leaking out before it becomes a habit nobody questions.

How the Rate Is Calculated

Realization is a simple ratio: the amount billed divided by the standard value of the work, expressed as a percentage.

• Standard value is the work performed valued at full rates: the hours logged times the standard rate, before any discount.
• Amount billed is what you actually put on invoices for that work.
• Realization rate is billed ÷ standard value × 100.

If a person did $10,000 of work at standard rates and you billed $8,800 of it, their realization rate is 88%. The other $1,200 is value that existed but never turned into a bill. Realization doesn’t measure whether you got paid (that’s collection); it measures whether you billed the work at what it was worth.

The 88% Benchmark

The report is built around an industry benchmark of 88% or higher. That is the target line the chart draws, and it’s the number to read your own results against. A realization rate at or above 88% means the firm is capturing the great majority of the value it produces. A rate well below it means a meaningful slice of your work is being billed at less than it’s worth, and the report is telling you where to look.

The benchmark is a target, not a verdict. There are good reasons to bill below standard value (a flat fee, a courtesy reduction, a write-down on work that ran long). The point of the 88% line is to make those choices visible and deliberate rather than letting them accumulate unnoticed.

Write-Downs and Write-Ups

The gap between standard value and what you billed has two directions, and the report tracks both.

• A write-down is the amount by which billed value fell below standard value: the work was worth more than you charged for it. Write-downs are the usual cause of a realization rate under 100%, and the column shows exactly how much each person’s work was discounted.
• A write-up is the rarer opposite: billed value came in above standard value, pushing realization over 100% for that person.

Reading the write-down column tells you not just that realization slipped but where and by how much, which is the difference between a number that worries you and a number you can act on.

Reading the Report

Each row is a user, with their hours, their default rate, the amount billed, their write-down, their write-up, and their realization percentage. Four summary figures lead the report: Standard Value (the full-rate worth of all the work), Amount Billed, total Write-Downs, and the firm’s overall Realization Rate.

A bar chart shows realization by person with the 88% Target drawn across it as a reference line, so anyone falling below the benchmark is obvious at a glance. Scan for the bars that sit under the line: those are the people, or the kinds of work, where the firm is leaving the most value on the table.

Filtering and Exporting

You can set a date range for the report (it defaults to All Time) to look at realization for a particular month, quarter, or year. Export the whole report to Excel or PDF for a partner meeting, a comp review, or a year-over-year comparison of how well the firm is capturing the value of its work.

Who Can See It

The Billing Realization report is available to your bookkeeper and your legal staff (attorneys, paralegals, and legal secretaries), with your Owner and Administrator always able to see it. It reads from your tasks and invoices, so it always reflects the work and billing recorded to date.