A method and system for billing for time spent in an instant message session by a service person for a project for a customer. A name of a sender of an instant message is retrieved from the instant message. The sender is the customer. The service person is a recipient of the instant message from the sender. The name of the sender is correlated to the project based on the name of the sender being listed in project settings previously defined by the service person. Responsive in part to an inability to identify the project based on one or more key words in the instant message, a second project on which the service person has most often worked is determined and a charge to the second project is determined for labor of the service person based on time spent by the service person in the instant message session.