Unfortunately, clients and contractors alike for the most part still seem to insist on continuing the fallacy that is hourly payment. While it may appear to be

Unfortunately, clients and contractors alike for the most part still seem to insist on continuing the fallacy that is hourly payment. While it may appear to be the obvious and "safe" thing to do because it seems measurable - and because "everybody" does it - it's measuring the wrong thing entirely. Neither the client nor the contractor are actually interested in time wasted but that's essentially what you get if you bill by the time that went into creating some sort of output. With time-based billing the contractor has the perverse incentive to spend more time, rather than becoming better and more efficient at what she does (which in turn would benefit the client as well because becoming better means being able to deliver higher quality work in less time). The client on the other hand has an equally perverse incentive to reduce the hours that go into achieving a result, rather than putting emphasis on the agreed upon outcome. Therefore I suggest to stop obsessing about time or trying to verify timesheets and rather focus on the outcome: What's the desired outcome? What's that outcome worth to the client? What value does that outcome create? Can the contractor put a price tag on that outcome at which there's both a net benefit to the client and profit for the contractor? Admittedly, that's much easier said than done, which is why many contractors and client still fall back to the "safe" default of billing by the hour. In that case, both parties involved usually rely on experience, trust and business ethics. You can't build a sustainable business by fleecing or cheating your clients and you can't build a successful client-supplier relationship on distrust either. Still, in order to become better at measuring outcomes rather than time wasted we need to start thinking in terms of outcomes in the first place.