Glossary
Time rounding
Also called: billing increment · rounding increment · minimum billing increment
Time rounding is the practice of converting tracked work time to a fixed billing increment — commonly 6, 10, or 15 minutes — before pricing it. A rule of 'round up to the next 15 minutes' turns a 32-minute task into 45 billable minutes; 'round to nearest' turns it into 30.
Last updated October 13, 2026
Common increments
Six-minute increments (a tenth of an hour) are the legal and accounting convention and make decimal maths trivial: 0.1 hours each. Fifteen-minute increments (a quarter hour) are common in creative and consulting work. Some agencies use 30 minutes for meetings and 15 for everything else. Any increment is defensible if it is applied consistently and disclosed.
Up, down, or nearest
Rounding up always favors the provider and is standard for minimum charges ('a 15-minute minimum per email'). Rounding to nearest is neutral over many entries. Rounding down favors the client and is rare. Apply the rule per entry, not per invoice total, and never round the same minutes twice — once at tracking and again at invoicing — or the error compounds.
Disclosure
Put the rounding rule in your terms and on the invoice ('time billed in 15-minute increments'). Clients rarely object to rounding they knew about; they object to rounding they discover.
Worked example
Tracked 1 hour 7 minutes. 15-minute round-up → 1.25 h. 6-minute round-up → 1.2 h. Nearest 15 → 1.0 h.
In Hoursmith
Hourly time pulled into a Hoursmith invoice is rounded in 15-minute increments; fixed-fee allocations, custom lines, and expenses are never rounded.