In the sprawling terrain of service-based industries—where consulting, legal expertise, and creative freelancing shape the economic landscape—there persists a timeless yet hotly debated standard: the billable hour. For decades, professionals have quantified their labor in hourly increments, transforming abstract intellectual capital into tangible revenue streams. While some hail the practice as an equitable and flexible system, others caution against its inadvertent pitfalls. Yet despite evolving market dynamics and the rise of alternative pricing paradigms, the billable hour remains stubbornly resilient. This article, the first of a four-part series, lays the groundwork for understanding why billable hours continue to matter—and how strategic monitoring can redefine profitability and client trust.
The Billable Hour: Still the Default for Many
Despite growing discourse around value-based pricing and flat fees, the billable hour retains its foothold across numerous sectors. Its enduring popularity is not merely a legacy habit, but a pragmatic response to the inherently fluid nature of service work. Consultants who plunge into nebulous strategic terrains, attorneys navigating shifting legal precedents, and designers iterating on client feedback all benefit from the flexibility that hourly billing offers. Each hour becomes a modular unit of accountability, creating a ledger of labor that directly corresponds to effort.
This alignment between time spent and revenue generated is appealingly direct. For solo freelancers managing erratic project pipelines or boutique firms balancing multiple deliverables, it offers a consistent and straightforward metric. When properly monitored, billable hours offer a reliable framework for financial forecasting, workforce management, and client reporting.
The Advantages of Hourly Billing: Fairness, Flexibility, and Simplicity
The first and most compelling advantage of hourly billing is fairness. Unlike fixed-price contracts, which risk undervaluing intensive work, hourly models ensure that every ounce of effort is remunerated. This is particularly vital in projects vulnerable to scope creep or nebulous deliverables. When project demands balloon beyond initial assumptions, hourly billing prevents practitioners from absorbing hidden costs.
Secondly, the model is inherently adaptable. Some engagements evolve organically, with shifting objectives, spontaneous collaboration, or iterative changes. Hourly billing accommodates this evolution without requiring awkward renegotiations or sudden contract overhauls. It allows professionals to move fluidly through phases of work, tailoring their involvement to project needs in real time.
Moreover, the proliferation of intuitive time-tracking software has rendered the model more palatable than ever. From browser-based timers to mobile integrations, modern tools demystify the process of logging hours. Firms can implement role-based permissions, auto-reminders, and real-time reporting, turning what once was a cumbersome chore into a seamless, streamlined operation.
The Caveats: When the Clock Becomes a Cage
However, hourly billing is not without its detractors—and their concerns are neither superficial nor unfounded. Chief among the criticisms is the notion that hourly systems may inadvertently reward inefficiency. When revenue correlates solely with hours worked, the model can subtly encourage delays, protracted timelines, or excessive meetings.
Furthermore, it struggles to capture the true value of high-impact, low-time tasks. A freelancer who produces a game-changing campaign in 30 minutes may find their contribution underappreciated in financial terms. This misalignment can cause friction, especially when clients conflate hours with impact.
Clients, too, often exhibit a preference for predictability. The open-ended nature of billable hours can trigger apprehension, particularly among startups or budget-conscious firms wary of cost overruns. Without a clearly defined financial ceiling, hourly contracts can feel like a fiscal minefield.
Contextual Clarity: When to Bill by the Hour—and When Not To
Ultimately, the decision to employ hourly billing must be context-driven. Discovery projects, troubleshooting engagements, or undefined exploratory work often benefit from the elasticity of time-based compensation. In contrast, long-term retainers, repetitive tasks, or deliverables with well-scoped parameters may be better suited to fixed or value-based pricing.
Consider, for instance, a UX designer hired to conduct user research and wireframes for a startup’s nascent platform. The project’s fluid scope and evolving stakeholder input make hourly billing ideal. Conversely, a monthly retainer for social media content—anchored by consistent, repeatable tasks—might be more effectively managed with a flat fee.
The Pivot to Monitoring: Where Billing Meets Strategy
Regardless of pricing model, one truth remains immutable: time is a finite resource. This is where monitoring steps in—not merely as an administrative necessity but as a strategic imperative. Tracking billable hours with rigor transitions the practice from reactive accounting to proactive cost management.
Well-monitored time data empowers businesses to spot bottlenecks, reallocate staff, forecast accurately, and set performance benchmarks. It also fortifies client relationships, offering transparent insights into how resources are deployed. The mere act of presenting detailed hour logs can elevate a firm’s perceived professionalism and reduce friction over invoices.
Time monitoring isn’t about surveillance; it’s about stewardship. By viewing each hour as an asset to be optimized, rather than a commodity to be sold, professionals can transcend transactional thinking and begin managing projects holistically.
From Tracking to Transformation
When billable hours are meticulously tracked, a treasure trove of insights emerges. Firms can analyze which services consume the most time, identify underutilized team members, or isolate tasks that yield low returns. Over time, this data-driven introspection can inform strategic pivots—such as introducing automation, refining client onboarding processes, or realigning service offerings.
Moreover, tracking is essential for legal and regulatory compliance. Whether operating under the jurisdiction of labor unions, international tax agreements, or government contracts, businesses must often provide auditable time records. Failure to do so can result in penalties or contractual disputes.
The Erosion of Guesswork
Perhaps most critically, monitoring billable hours replaces speculation with clarity. No longer must project managers estimate how long similar engagements take; historical data illuminates patterns, enabling more precise proposals and timelines. The ability to forecast not only protects margins but also enhances client confidence.
In Summation: The Foundational Argument for Time Vigilance
As we set the stage for deeper exploration in this series, one theme becomes unmistakable: billable hours—when understood and leveraged correctly—offer far more than a path to payment. They represent a fundamental mechanism for aligning labor with value, managing client relationships, and stewarding limited resources.
The journey from traditional time-tracking to strategic time stewardship is neither trivial nor optional. It is, in many ways, the linchpin of profitability in modern service-based businesses. As we delve further into how and when to monitor time, the nuances of software selection, and the art of balancing billable with non-billable hours, remember that every minute tracked is not just a metric—but a decision, a commitment, and a signal of intent.
In the next article, we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of monitoring billable hours effectively—how to implement systems, cultivate team discipline, and turn raw data into actionable insight.
The Case for Vigilance – How Monitoring Billable Hours Boosts Efficiency and Builds Trust
In an era where data drives every meaningful decision, the ability to monitor time with precision has emerged as a quiet yet commanding force in the world of service-based businesses. Whether in consulting, law, marketing, or freelancing, where time is quite literally currency, the vigilant tracking of billable hours transcends administrative duty—it becomes a linchpin of operational integrity and strategic foresight.
By systematically monitoring hours worked, businesses gain a granular view of productivity, resource allocation, and task efficiency. This insight not only enables leaders to make better-informed decisions but also reveals patterns of underperformance or overextension that could otherwise remain invisible. Accurate time records act as a mirror to internal processes, allowing enterprises to course-correct in real-time rather than retroactively addressing inefficiencies.
Moreover, for client-facing operations, meticulous time tracking cultivates transparency and accountability—traits that engender trust and long-term loyalty. Clients are far more likely to continue partnerships when they feel confident that the time they’re being billed for reflects genuine, value-driven work. In industries where deliverables can be intangible, such clarity helps mitigate skepticism and protects against disputes or scope creep.
Finally, vigilance in monitoring serves as a defense against legal and financial risk. Proper documentation of billable hours can shield businesses in the event of audits, lawsuits, or client disagreements. It also ensures that teams are not working beyond their means or offering unpaid labor, preserving both morale and margins.
In this second installment of our four-part series on the strategic value of billable hours, we delve into how a disciplined approach to time tracking enhances internal efficiency, strengthens client relationships, and provides a critical layer of protection for modern service-based enterprises.
Monitoring as a Trust Catalyst
When a client receives an invoice that is clear, itemized, and backed by verifiable data, it transforms an otherwise transactional exchange into a moment of assurance. Trust in client-service relationships is not built on vague approximations or generalized hours; it’s built on transparency. Detailed time records do more than just bolster payment cycles—they preempt disputes by substantiating the work delivered.
Clients often view time-tracking reports as a window into a firm’s process, offering insight into what’s been prioritized and how resources are deployed. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the willingness to reveal the inner workings of a project can be a point of distinction. Zintego has emphasized this ethos in its approach to service transparency, helping businesses use reporting not just for internal audits but as a tool for dialogue with clients.
Moreover, these reports hold intrinsic value during legal audits or compliance reviews. Whether prompted by internal audits, tax scrutiny, or regulatory checks, clear documentation of hours demonstrates integrity and procedural rigor—qualities that protect reputations and secure long-term contracts.
From Passive Logging to Active Analysis
While many firms passively record time for the sake of invoices, few leverage it as an analytical asset. Vigilant monitoring turns this passive activity into a reservoir of insight. Knowing exactly where each team member’s hours are invested enables strategic reallocation of time and energy.
Consider a digital agency discovering through time reports that senior strategists are spending disproportionate hours on administrative coordination. By flagging this early, leadership can delegate such tasks, restoring their experts to higher-value work. Similarly, firms can detect roles that are underutilized, indicating potential gaps in scope or internal miscommunication.
This kind of data-driven recalibration doesn’t just improve internal efficiency; it fosters morale. When employees see that their time is being valued, tracked fairly, and used to optimize workflows, it contributes to a culture of respect and ownership.
Financial Forecasting and the Early Warning System
Time monitoring is more than a retrospective activity—it’s a proactive shield against budgetary disasters. Projects often veer off course not due to dramatic scope changes but through unnoticed accumulations of small inefficiencies. Real-time tracking provides an early warning system, allowing managers to intervene before these inefficiencies ossify into overruns.
Imagine a consultancy working on a multi-phase digital transformation project. If early metrics show that one phase is consuming hours at an unsustainable rate, they can pause, renegotiate scope, or introduce additional resources before the overall project budget is breached. The ability to support renegotiation with concrete data—not fuzzy recollections—shifts conversations from defensive to constructive.
This vigilance also creates internal benchmarks. By analyzing how long specific deliverables take across similar projects, firms can adjust pricing, staff allocation, and even client expectations with greater accuracy. Over time, this leads to pricing models that are more aligned with actual labor and value delivered.
Legal and Regulatory Imperatives
For certain sectors, rigorous time tracking isn’t just prudent—it’s obligatory. Government contractors, legal practitioners, and firms engaged in cross-border projects often operate under stringent guidelines that mandate auditable time records. Noncompliance can lead to penalties, contract terminations, or reputational harm.
A firm that contracts with a federal agency may be required to justify every billed minute with contextual documentation. In this context, monitoring becomes a legal safeguard. It ensures that billing practices withstand external scrutiny and meet the evidentiary standards of auditors and regulators.
Internationally, differences in labor laws and tax codes demand even greater scrutiny. A team operating across jurisdictions—say, a project that spans the U.S., EU, and Southeast Asia—faces varied expectations around work hours, overtime, and rest periods. Consistent monitoring, paired with culturally aware project management, is the only viable way to navigate these complexities.
Leveraging Historical Data for Strategic Planning
One of the most underappreciated benefits of vigilant monitoring is its role in forecasting. Firms with robust time-tracking archives are uniquely positioned to make smarter decisions about pricing, proposals, and project timelines. Historical data transforms educated guesses into strategic projections.
For example, a freelance development agency that has tracked time on e-commerce site builds across multiple clients can identify patterns—common bottlenecks, average build times, or underestimated features. This insight allows them to provide future clients with timelines and pricing that are both competitive and realistic.
Moreover, these datasets help businesses identify which services deliver the highest return per hour. If UX design consistently yields higher client satisfaction and profitability per hour than backend development, the firm might consider adjusting its service portfolio or team focus accordingly.
Zintego encourages service providers to visualize these patterns using dashboards and reporting features. By aligning pricing with productivity, businesses protect their margins while continuing to offer transparent value.
Operational Precision Through Time Vigilance
When organizations monitor time with precision, operations shift from guesswork to geometry. Resource planning becomes calculable. Training needs emerge from measurable gaps. And client pitches evolve into consultative engagements backed by empirical insight.
This operational clarity also supports scalable growth. Smaller firms looking to expand must understand how their current resource deployment scales under pressure. Vigilant monitoring exposes friction points that may be negligible at five clients but untenable at fifty.
The Psychological Dividend
There is also a less tangible, but equally vital, reward: the psychological effect on team members. People who know their time is accounted for—not in a punitive but in a purposeful way—are more likely to take ownership of their roles. The act of logging time becomes a moment of reflection, reinforcing focus and agency.
At its best, monitoring doesn’t function as surveillance but as stewardship. It’s a gesture that says: your hours matter, your effort is noted, and your time deserves strategic placement.
Time-Smart Tactics – Practical Strategies for Tracking Hours
In an economy increasingly reliant on intellectual capital and bespoke services, the ability to measure time with precision is no longer a secondary concern—it is an indispensable facet of sustainable operations. For solo freelancers and scaling agencies alike, mastering the craft of tracking billable hours transcends rote administration; it becomes a linchpin of profitability, client satisfaction, and strategic clarity. In this third installment of our four-part series on billable hours, we delve into tactical strategies that equip professionals with the tools and habits necessary to monitor time with dexterity and intent.
From adopting powerful digital tools to codifying internal protocols, these techniques are not mere operational niceties—they form the backbone of a sophisticated, insight-driven business model. When implemented consistently, they empower professionals to sidestep time leakage, sharpen client reports, and align deliverables with real effort. Here are the first four of seven high-impact strategies to sharpen your time-tracking methodology.
Adopt Robust Time-Tracking Tools
The days of logging hours in spreadsheets, scribbled notes, or post-meeting emails are rapidly waning. In their place, a new cadre of intuitive, integrated, and mobile-friendly tools offers a seamless alternative—one that prioritizes user experience, data granularity, and interoperability. Whether you’re managing a team of consultants or operating as a solo creative, the right platform can transmute a clunky administrative task into an elegant workflow.
A prudent time-tracking solution should include features like start-stop timers, calendar integrations, and real-time dashboards. Mobile support ensures that even off-site engagements or inspiration-fueled bursts of work are logged in real time, reducing the cognitive load of retrospective reporting. Team permissions are also critical, allowing managers to oversee, audit, and optimize productivity without creating a culture of surveillance.
Selecting the right tool requires a thoughtful vetting process. Prioritize platforms that blend with your existing ecosystem—whether that’s Slack, Trello, or your accounting software. Evaluate their UI/UX design to ensure that the app won’t become another digital bottleneck. Zintego, among others, has championed this category by offering multi-device accessibility and robust export capabilities for both soloists and teams.
Establish Clear Internal Policies
Even the most sophisticated tool is impotent without clarity around what it’s meant to capture. Ambiguity is the silent saboteur of time management. Establishing a codified internal framework for billable and non-billable hours is crucial. Without it, team members—or even the business owner—may unwittingly underreport valuable efforts or misclassify tasks.
This begins with a philosophical delineation: what activities directly create value for the client and should therefore be considered billable? Is email correspondence with the client included? What about team brainstorming sessions or prototype iterations? These decisions must be standardized and disseminated.
An effective policy goes beyond definitions. It dictates when entries must be recorded—preferably in real time or at the end of each workday—and outlines escalation paths for ambiguous cases. Onboarding materials and internal manuals should reflect these standards to ensure that everyone, from junior associates to project leads, operates from a shared lexicon.
By turning policy into practice, companies reduce the risk of audit inaccuracies, build consistency into their data streams, and reinforce a culture of mutual accountability.
Use Detailed Task Categorization
Raw time entries are of little value if they fail to illuminate where time is truly spent. That’s why task categorization is not an administrative flourish—it is an analytical imperative. When entries are logged under broad, nondescript labels like “Client Work” or “Meetings,” the opportunity for strategic refinement vanishes.
Instead, adopt a system of granular classification. Break projects into functional areas such as copywriting, front-end coding, quality assurance, or client calls. Use consistent labels or numerical codes, especially in platforms that allow tagging or custom fields. This uniformity enables both micro-level scrutiny and macro-level trend analysis.
Internally, this data allows you to benchmark performance, understand where overruns occur, and allocate future efforts more wisely. Over time, patterns emerge that inform hiring decisions, service offerings, and internal workflows.
Review Your Data Regularly
Time-tracking data is only as powerful as the insight extracted from it. A common mistake among busy professionals is to treat time logs as a compliance exercise—something to complete, not analyze. But nestled within these datasets are potent truths about productivity, profitability, and personnel alignment.
Set aside regular intervals—monthly, biweekly, or at the end of major projects—to comb through your logged hours. Look for outliers: tasks that consistently take longer than expected, projects with high time-to-value ratios, or employees whose efficiency fluctuates significantly. These aren’t just metrics; they’re indicators of strategic misalignment or areas for upskilling.
Use these insights to refine your quoting methodology. Historical data allows you to price future engagements with more accuracy, reducing the risk of undercharging or overcommitting. For teams, such reviews can be the basis for performance coaching, process redesign, or capacity planning.
Moreover, these reviews should be democratized. Encourage team members to reflect on their own data, sparking a culture of continuous improvement. When employees see time logs as a mirror—rather than a microscope—they’re more likely to engage proactively with optimization efforts.
In the next segment of this article, we will explore three additional tactics that round out this strategic approach: the importance of setting daily goals, using automated reminders and timers, and aligning time-tracking with project milestones. Together, these practices complete a comprehensive, scalable system that transforms time from a slippery commodity into a leveraged asset.
By embracing these methods, freelancers, agencies, and consultancies alike can transcend the drudgery of traditional timekeeping. Instead, they gain access to a dynamic, intelligent mechanism that undergirds strategic decisions, enhances client value, and fortifies financial resilience.
In the final part of this series, we’ll confront the philosophical dimension of billable hours: how to strike equilibrium between tracked and untracked time, and why knowing when not to bill is as important as knowing when to start the clock.
Total Time Visibility – Operationalizing Billable Hours for Growth
In the world of service-based entrepreneurship, time is more than a ticking metronome—it is the pulse of profitability, the invisible spine of deliverables, and the root metric upon which decisions, trust, and value are founded. Yet too many businesses focus solely on billable hours, failing to consider the full constellation of time-related data that defines their operational ecosystem. In this final installment of our series, we step back and examine how holistic time management—spanning billable, non-billable, and communication-related hours—can serve as the fulcrum for sustainable growth.
The Hidden Costs: Why Non-Billable Hours Matter More Than You Think
There’s an enduring fallacy among many freelancers and boutique firms that only billable hours count. However, internal tasks—those that slip into the shadows of administrative chores, strategic planning, training, or client acquisition—still consume real labor and impact your bottom line. To ignore them is to miscalculate your true capacity and warp your pricing logic.
Non-billable hours are the silent siphons of profitability. They include internal meetings, onboarding new staff, marketing your own services, or troubleshooting internal systems. These tasks may not directly generate income, but they draw from the same reservoir of time and energy. Left untracked, they make your calendar appear deceptively open, leading to overcommitments, team burnout, and erratic margins.
Smart businesses treat non-billable time as a diagnostic lens. By tracking these hours with the same granularity as client-facing work, companies gain an unfiltered view of where their resources truly go. This enables better forecasting, more accurate proposals, and a fuller understanding of project ROI.
Toward Better Pricing Through Time Comprehension
Let’s say a graphic design firm discovers that 20% of their week is consumed by internal feedback loops, creative reviews, and revisions—none of which are traditionally billed. By quantifying this, they can make pricing adjustments to better reflect the real costs of delivering exceptional work. Their new quotes might not only account for the hands-on design time, but also the unseen scaffolding that upholds project excellence.
This is where time tracking evolves into a form of strategic introspection. Every moment recorded offers insight not just into productivity, but into the undercurrents of business health. Patterns emerge, capacity becomes legible, and pricing gains integrity.
Strengthening Trust Through Transparent Client Communication
One of the perennial struggles in client relationships is the divergence between perceived and actual effort. Clients often see the finished product but not the incremental labor that shaped it. Transparent communication around hours spent—especially in comparison to original estimates—can bridge this gap.
By proactively sharing time usage reports and contextualizing scope changes, businesses eliminate suspicion and enhance mutual understanding. Let’s say a consultancy agreed to 30 hours for a market research report but ended up clocking 45 due to unforeseen complexities. Presenting real-time data, coupled with a narrative explaining the deviation, turns a potential confrontation into a constructive dialogue.
This level of openness not only preempts disputes but also elevates professionalism. It reframes billing not as a necessary evil, but as an ongoing alignment exercise—ensuring that both parties remain on the same page about value creation.
Use Real-Time Insights to Course-Correct Early
Communication around time also doubles as a reputational amplifier. Businesses that exhibit this level of transparency position themselves as accountable, detail-oriented, and trustworthy—qualities that drive not just retention, but referrals.
Centralization: Why Time Data Belongs in Your Project Management Stack
All the vigilance in the world won’t matter if your time data remains isolated from your broader operational workflow. This is why integrating time tracking into your project management ecosystem is essential. When hours, tasks, and deliverables live within the same interface, coordination becomes seamless.
Project management platforms like Asana, Trello, and Monday.com now offer native or integrative time-tracking features—some of which can pair with invoicing software such as Zintego to automate billing. These tools allow for role-based visibility, notifications, and even capacity planning. A manager can immediately see which projects are over budget, who is underutilized, or which deliverables are stalling due to unforeseen bottlenecks.
The result is not just administrative ease, but organizational coherence. Teams waste less time switching between platforms, and leaders make faster, more confident decisions rooted in empirical data.
Holistic Visibility Enables Strategic Growth
Total time visibility means moving beyond the myopia of what can be billed. It means constructing an environment where every hour—whether spent strategizing, designing, emailing, or training—is acknowledged as part of the value production chain.
This level of insight transforms how businesses scale. For example, a digital agency that maps both billable and non-billable time can determine when to hire, which services require more automation, and whether client engagements are genuinely profitable or just superficially busy.
Furthermore, understanding time holistically allows teams to set more humane internal policies. You can design buffers between high-intensity tasks, rotate responsibilities to prevent fatigue, or build in more sustainable cadences for delivery.
From Micromanagement to Empowerment
Critics may conflate time tracking with surveillance. But in its evolved form, time visibility is the opposite—it’s an engine for empowerment. When staff see how their hours contribute to outcomes, when they understand the full anatomy of a project’s lifecycle, they become more engaged and autonomous.
Imagine a junior developer who realizes that her code commits represent just one node in a web of tasks that include QA, client feedback, and deployment logistics. With this awareness, she can anticipate downstream needs, work more collaboratively, and contribute beyond her original scope.
When time is made visible, so too is impact.
The Payoff: More Control, Better Margins, Greater Freedom
At the heart of all this effort is a desire for autonomy—over your business, your workflows, and ultimately, your time. Monitoring how hours are distributed is not an act of bureaucracy, but of self-mastery. It’s how you build a business that respects both labor and limits.
The dividends are immense. Profit margins expand as waste shrinks. Client satisfaction rises with every touchpoint of clear communication. And internally, teams operate with less friction and more foresight.
In Closing: Time as Compass, Not Just Clock
Time is not just something to measure; it is something to steward. Businesses that track it holistically do more than operate efficiently—they evolve intelligently. They grow with clarity, price with confidence, and build relationships rooted in mutual respect.
As we conclude this four-part series, one truth has become irrefutably clear: mastering the mechanics of billable hours—from the granular to the grand—offers a transformative advantage. Whether you’re a solo freelancer looking to reclaim your evenings, or a growing firm aiming to scale sustainably, how you manage time is how you shape your future.
Final Thoughts
In the competitive arena of service-based work, where credibility is earned minute by minute, monitoring billable hours transcends its traditional role as a clerical task—it evolves into a strategic discipline that safeguards reputation, enhances performance, and nurtures trust. Vigilance in time tracking does more than streamline invoicing or keep projects on track; it cultivates a culture of accountability and precision. For consultants, freelancers, legal professionals, and other time-bound specialists, every hour logged with intention becomes a data point that speaks to productivity, reliability, and value.
Moreover, systematic monitoring allows businesses to identify operational inefficiencies, recalibrate scope creep in real-time, and refine pricing models with empirical backing. It protects against underbilling and legal discrepancies, especially in retainer-based or complex multi-phase projects. From a client’s perspective, transparent time logs provide clarity and justification for costs—instilling confidence and mitigating potential friction. In an era where clients are more informed and cost-conscious than ever, this transparency becomes a differentiator, setting ethical professionals apart from those who operate on ambiguity.
By embracing time monitoring as a cornerstone of operations, service providers can align their internal workflows with client expectations and market demands. The consistent act of tracking is not just a form of retrospection—it becomes a predictive tool that helps forecast project loads, assess team performance, and improve future engagements. Ultimately, a business that treats its time as a precious, measurable resource is one that commands respect, earns loyalty, and builds enduring relationships. As this series continues to unfold, one thing becomes clear: true value is not only measured by what we deliver—but by how well we understand the time we invest to deliver it.