A consultancy sells time, and most of the argument is about whose time went where. We build the timesheet, billing and document systems that settle it, and we make them work from a client site as well as they work from your office.
Every consultancy has a timesheet system and somebody who chases it. The chasing happens because entry is slow. We build capture that takes seconds on a phone, with the jobs a consultant worked on this week already at the top and a running total they can see. Approval sits with the project lead rather than an administrator two steps away. Once the week is closed, the numbers are firm enough to invoice from, which is the only test that matters.
Rate cards get complicated. Fixed fee on one engagement, a daily rate on another, capped hours on a third, and expenses handled differently across all of them. We build those rules into the billing system, so a draft invoice comes out of approved time with the right rate already applied and a partner reviews it instead of assembling it. The same data answers the harder question. You can see how much of each person's week was billable, and which projects are eating hours nobody quoted for. A fixed fee going wrong shows up while there is still time to talk to the client.
You hold material for clients who may compete with each other, and that is the thing most likely to end a relationship when it goes wrong. We set up a workspace for each engagement, grant access to the people doing that work, and set it to close when the work closes. Files sync to the laptop and keep working on a train or in a client basement with no wifi. When a consultant leaves, one request removes them everywhere, and you can show a client exactly who had access and for how long.
Every firm reports utilisation and very few define it the same way twice. Hours against a forty hour week, against contracted hours, or against hours net of leave, training and sales time: the same timesheets produce four different percentages, and the argument that follows is about arithmetic rather than about the business. So we fix the denominator in the system, print it on the report, and hold it steady long enough for a trend to mean something. The target is a separate decision with a failure mode worth naming. Set it higher than the pipeline can feed and people do not become busier, they start booking internal work to a client code, and the measurement you built all of this for stops being true.
The gap between doing the work and being paid for it is where consultancies quietly lose money, and it is invisible on a utilisation report. Approved time that has not been invoiced is an asset getting older, and it should be reported that way: unbilled value by engagement and by week, oldest at the top. Most firms seeing that list for the first time find an engagement nobody has raised an invoice on since the spring. Write-offs deserve the same honesty. When hours are cut at invoicing, record the cut against the engagement rather than editing the timesheet down, so the estimate, the time actually spent and the amount recovered all survive into the next proposal you price.
Seconds on a phone or in a browser, with this week's jobs already at the top, a running total in view, and a draft day prefilled from the calendar for the consultant to correct rather than compose.
Fixed fee on one engagement, a daily rate on another, capped hours on a third, retainers that roll over and a currency that is not yours. The rules live in the system so a partner reviews an invoice instead of assembling one.
Receipts photographed at the airport rather than found in a jacket in March, coded to the engagement, and split properly between what is recharged to the client and what the firm absorbs.
Billable and non billable hours by person, project and week against a denominator defined once, with cost rates alongside them, because margin per engagement is the number that changes decisions.
Who is free in March, who is committed, and what a proposal will need if it lands. Provisional bookings against unwon work, so the pipeline and the schedule stop being two separate conversations.
One workspace per engagement with access that ends when the engagement does, and walls between clients who compete. One request removes a leaver everywhere, and you can show who had access and for how long.
Where you already run time, billing and resourcing, we build against it rather than through it, and we say plainly when its rate engine cannot express the deals you actually sign.
An invoice should be posted from the records the time was approved in and never retyped. We keep that boundary clean, so changing accountants later is not a rebuild of how you track work.
The cheapest evidence of what somebody did on Tuesday, and the right use of it is a draft the consultant corrects. Reading them to audit people is a different product and a worse one.
Cost rates, start dates, leave and contracted hours. These set the denominator under every utilisation figure you publish, which is exactly why they cannot live in a separate spreadsheet.
Engagement letters, change notes and signed scopes held against the engagement with a version history, so the question of what was agreed in March has one answer rather than three inboxes.
Your people work on client laptops, client networks and client tenancies. We design around that rather than pretending it away, and we keep their data where their contract says it lives.
Not the whole firm. Take a single team, run the new capture alongside whatever exists for a month, and compare. If entries do not get faster, nothing else in the plan is worth buying.
Costs nothing and changes every report after it. Firms routinely find two definitions in active use, which means the numbers on two different slides have never been comparable.
Usually the first visible win. It takes a week out of every month end and it forces the rate card rules nobody had written down into the open.
A single report, built in days, that tends to find money already earned and never invoiced. It is also the cheapest argument for funding the rest of the work.
Only by asking less of them. The systems people actually use capture time close to where the work happens, prefill from calendars and previous entries, and take seconds on a phone at the end of a day. If your current tool needs ten minutes on a Friday, the problem is the tool, and adding reminders to it will not change the outcome.
Yes, and it is usually the number that changes decisions. It requires cost as well as time against each engagement, and the discipline of recording non-billable work honestly. Firms that build this are often surprised by which clients are actually profitable, which is the point of building it.
It should, and the invoice should be built from the same records the time was recorded in rather than retyped. We integrate with the package you use for the ledger and keep the boundary clean, so changing accountants or software later does not mean rebuilding the way you track work.
Often not, and we will say so. For many firms the right answer is a good off-the-shelf product configured properly, with a small piece of integration where it meets your other systems. Bespoke earns its place when the way you work is genuinely different from the products on offer, and that is a question worth answering before spending anything.
Partly, and the honest limit is worth stating. A calendar tells you a meeting happened and who was in it, which is enough to draft a day for somebody to correct in seconds. It cannot tell you that forty minutes of that meeting belonged to a different matter, and it says nothing about the two hours of drafting afterwards. So we build it as a draft rather than a submission: the day arrives prefilled, the consultant fixes what is wrong, and the entry is theirs. Fully automatic capture, keystroke counters and screen sampling produce numbers nobody will defend in front of a client, and they cost more in goodwill than the minutes they save.
We will not give you a number, because the number means nothing until the denominator is agreed. Utilisation against a forty hour week, against contracted hours, against hours net of leave and training, and against a notional annual total all produce different figures from identical timesheets. Agree the denominator first, publish it on the report, and only then compare. The second half is how a target behaves. Set it above what the sales pipeline can actually feed and people do not become busier, they start booking internal work to a client code, and you lose the one measurement the whole system was built for. A slightly low target everybody records honestly is worth more than a high one nobody trusts.
As two separate facts, because collapsing them hides the thing you need to see. Approved time sits as work in progress and it ages, so a report of what is unbilled by engagement and by week is usually the fastest way to find a partner who has not raised an invoice since February. When time is written off at invoicing, we record the write-off against the engagement rather than quietly reducing the hours, so the original estimate, the time actually spent and the amount recovered all stay visible. Firms that write off inside the timesheet lose their own history, and the next proposal for that kind of work gets priced from a fiction.
No, but it decides how the tools are built. Assume a locked client laptop, a guest network that blocks half of what you need, and a policy that forbids client data leaving the client tenancy. Time capture then has to be a phone app or a browser page that works on a personal device, carrying a job code rather than anything about the client business. Documents are a separate question, and the safe default is that client material stays where the client put it, with your systems holding the record of the engagement rather than a copy of their data. Firms that quietly sync client files to a general drive find out during a procurement review.
We are happy to answer any questions you have and help you work out which of our services fit your needs.
