At the heart of transcription billing practices is what I call a billable unit. A billable unit can be any unit of measure agreed upon between the client and the vendor, to include but not be limited to:

Recorded minutes: The number of recorded minutes as reported by a dictation system or (in the case of digital handheld recorders) the job file information.

ASCII characters: Wikipedia definition of ASCII characters. In transcription, the reference is to ASCII printable characters.

Characters: A 65-character line is nothing more than characters divided by 65 to obtain a "line." The "visible black character line" is nothing more than counted characters that excludes those that cannot be viewed by the naked eye.

Gross Line: A gross line is defined as any number of characters taking up one line of type, regardless of the font or length.

Gross Page: A page containing any text as it would be printed on a printer.