The Scenario
You're the billing administrator at a law firm. Monthly billing closes in two days. You need to pull every unbilled time entry across 12 active client matters — attorney name, date, hours, rate, description — into an Excel workbook so the partners can review before invoices go out.
The last person who held this role left a note: "the Zoho Books time report export doesn't include the billable rate, you have to cross-reference the project settings." That note is sitting next to a printed spreadsheet from four months ago.
The bad version:
- In Zoho Books, open Project 1, go to Time Entries, filter for unbilled, export CSV.
- Open the CSV in Excel, add the rate column manually by looking up the project rate.
- Repeat for all 12 projects.
- Combine 12 separate CSVs into one workbook sheet, fix the column headers that differ between projects, deduplicate any entries that appeared in multiple exports.
The partners review these entries line by line. If the rate is wrong, if a time entry is missing, or if a matter appears under the wrong client — that is a billing error that goes out on a real invoice.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It pulls all unbilled time entries across all active Zoho Books projects in one call — including rates — without the per-project CSV loop.
Export all unbilled Zoho Books time entries from the last 30 days to my Excel sheet — project, attorney, date, hours, rate — then add a subtotal row per project showing total unbilled hours and value
What You Get
- All unbilled time entries across all active projects in a single table.
- Columns: Project Name, Attorney Name, Date, Hours, Hourly Rate, Billing Amount.
- Only entries with billable status and no invoice attached are included.
- A subtotal row per project showing total hours and total billing value.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Some time entries have a rate of zero because the default rate wasn't set on the project
Export all Zoho Books unbilled billable time entries; for any row where the hourly rate is zero, look up the default rate from the project configuration in Zoho Books and use that instead; write the corrected rate into column E
You need the entries grouped by client matter with subtotals
Export all Zoho Books unbilled billable time entries, group by project name, insert a subtotal row per project showing total unbilled hours and billing value, and sort projects alphabetically
Some entries are from prior months and should be excluded
Export all Zoho Books unbilled billable time entries with a date on or after the first of this month only; exclude any prior-month entries even if still marked unbilled
Full pre-billing review in one shot
Export all Zoho Books unbilled billable time entries from the current month, replace zero rates with the project default rate, group by project with subtotals, sort alphabetically by project name, and flag any entry where hours in a single day exceed 8 by writing REVIEW in a notes column
The pattern: ask for the rate lookup, the grouping, and the flag in one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open an Excel workbook, then ask it to pull all your Zoho Books unbilled time entries across every active matter in one shot. See also how to bulk-create project tasks or return to the Zoho Books integration overview.