The requirement
Your time records have to be contemporaneous. You write them down as the work happens, not reconstructed from memory weeks later. The Manual says each record must include, at a minimum, the date of the activity, the client name, the actual time spent including both the starting clock time and the finishing clock time to the maximum extent practical, and a description of the task performed (Assigned Counsel Manual, Chapter 5, pages 420 to 421).
Your eBill entries are not a time record
This is the part that catches people. Your eBill submission, and the category headings on it, are not specific enough to serve as your time record. The Manual states plainly that billing forms may not be used as time records. You need the underlying contemporaneous log, kept separately in the client file.
Keep it for six years
Time records live in the client file and stay there for six years after you submit the bill. An audit can reach back into that window, and if you cannot produce the records, the services are subject to recoupment. That means paying money back on time you actually worked, because you could not document it.
What an auditor is actually checking
The burden is on you to justify the hours billed. The auditor matches your bill against your contemporaneous records: do the start and stop times line up, is each task described, does the daily total hold together. Undocumented time gets pulled, no matter how real the work was.
Start and stop times are what people skip
"Met with client, 45 minutes" is weaker than "2:15 to 3:00, met with client re: plea offer." The Manual asks for the clock times to the maximum extent practical. Writing them down as you go is the habit that turns an audit from a scramble into a non-event.
How Plani helps
Plani captures time as it happens. Text it as you work, like "call with Rayburn 2:15 to 3:00, plea discussion," and it logs the date, the client, the start and stop times, and your description, contemporaneously, and holds onto all of it.
When the audit letter comes, you do not reconstruct anything. Ask Plani and it produces the spreadsheet an audit calls for: your entries for that client over the period, each with its start and stop times, task description, and daily total, ready to submit. Everything you logged is there, recorded at the time, which is what an auditor is looking for. The one thing it cannot invent is a clock time you never gave it, so tell it the times as you go.