It's about Time! Introducing Students to the Concept of Billable Hours and Improving Their Excel Skills By Creating a Spreadsheet to Track Their Time

ABSTRACT The concepts of billable hours and tracking time are a reality in public accounting. The purpose of this case is to educate students on the concept of billable hours and to improve the student's Excel skills through the development of a spreadsheet to track their time. Students were required to create the time-tracking Excel spread-sheet and to track all (personal and school-related) of their time for two weeks. Students were given pre/post tests and surveys and the results reflect that students significantly increased their performance in intermediate and advanced Excel skills, billable hours concepts and realize the difficulty in tracking time. Even though the students acknowledged the difficulty in tracking time, they did enjoy learning more about billable hours that they may encounter in their future professions.