A Guide to Time Tracking for Consultants and Professional Services

What is time tracking?

Time tracking is the process of monitoring and logging work hours. There are many forms of time tracking:

• An employee might record the hours they personally spend on a task  
• An organization might track employee hours with weekly timesheets 
• A freelancer or consultant might track their own time and use this data when creating invoices 

You may choose to manually log hours (e.g., Richard includes a note in his task to say it took three hours to complete) while others might use a time tracking app to automatically add working hours to a task.

Time tracking is a highly beneficial activity as it provides clear insights into how resources are being used. If you work in professional services, these insights are crucial in determining what is required to meet a client’s objectives.

Why is time tracking for consultants important?

Time tracking for consultants is particularly important — rather than clocking in for a 9 to 5, a consultant will likely charge by the hour. Without a standard weekly timesheet, it’s vital that these employees have some way of recording their professional efforts. That way, you can decide on an appropriate price for your services.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of time tracking for consultants. 

1. Accuracy

When consultants track time, they get an accurate record of how much effort is being spent on a particular project or client. This data is more reliable than human memory, as people may forget how long a previous task took. By tracking time automatically, consultants can also eliminate the possibility of forgetting to start a timelog when they begin work on a task. 

Accurate time records provide real insights into consultancy activities and are a key tool for future resource planning. For example, if previous data shows that an initial research task for a new business usually takes five days, consultants can factor that in when creating a task list for a newly signed client.

2. Transparency

Sometimes, a client may have an issue with a consultant’s fee and may require more detailed information on why a service costs a certain amount. Timelogs and other time-related records are extremely useful for this purpose. 

By showing clients a detailed breakdown of how much time is spent on each task, they can clearly see where their money is going. There is more transparency between the two parties, which leads to a greater sense of trust.

3. Visibility

If you’re a project manager overseeing a team of consultants, you need to know how each member is performing. By tracking the working hours of each consultant using individual timesheets, managers will be able to see how long each person spends on specific tasks. This will naturally vary from person to person but if there is a massive discrepancy between two individuals, it may require further investigation. 

Let’s look at an example: David logs 14 hours for a task that took Sarah two hours. Is Sarah rushing through tasks or is David taking too long to complete them? Maybe David doesn’t have access to a tool that Sarah uses to cut down on manual administrative work? This shows how a simple time record can enhance visibility in a professional services company, helping project managers to spot potential roadblocks early and address them before they escalate.

4. Profitability

Consultant hours tracking is also important for profitability. As consultancy firms usually charge an hourly rate for their services, it’s vital that every hour is accounted for. If consultants fail to record billable activities, they essentially end up working for free and their organization will lose out. 

For example, Alex might only log the hours they spent designing a client presentation and not the hours spent on research before actually writing the presentation text. All these hours are billable and should be included on a client invoice to maximize profitability in a professional services company.

5. Efficiency

Automating the time tracking process is an easy way for professional services firms to instantly boost efficiency. With automatic time trackers, employees won’t have to waste time manually logging hours or filling in weekly timesheets. Similarly, project managers won’t have to write up weekly or monthly reports as they will be automatically delivered to their inbox. 

Automated time reports are also highly useful for consultants who want to deliver regular updates to project stakeholders. Rather than scrambling to retrieve new data to present on a weekly basis, they can automate these insights and share them instantly with clients or senior supervisors. Ultimately, when consultants track time, they save time. 

Professional services firms might choose to invest in time and billing software for consultants to simplify the time tracking process and reap all the potential benefits it has to offer.

How to track time

So, let’s say you’re new to the world of time tracking. How do you do it? Is it as simple as pressing start on a stopwatch? Not exactly. 

Here are a few simple steps to get you started:

Step one

First, you need to clarify what tasks you’re actually tracking hours for. As a consultant, you need to be transparent about the effort spent on specific tasks. It’s not a case of saying “7 hours worked on Monday.” You need to assign your hours to a particular purpose within a client project. 

For example, you could break your Monday down into the following:

• Client research: 3 hours
• Competitor research: 2.5 hours
• Analyze survey data: 1.5 hours

Step two

Next, you need to decide when you’ll track time. Will you enter a manual log of working hours at the end of each day or week? Will you use an automatic task timer and pause it for lunch and other break periods? 

Time blocking is a useful productivity tip here — create daily calendar blocks for important tasks so you can work without distraction.

Step three

Finally, you need to decide what tools you’re going to use to track time. Will you opt for a paper timesheet or a digital Excel spreadsheet? Or do you require a more robust platform? 

If you’ve decided to opt for a cloud solution, you can now move to the next stage: choosing the appropriate time and billing software for consultants.

Time tracking software for professional services

When researching the best time tracking software for consultants, you should carefully consider the features offered. Which features are an absolute necessity for your team and which ones are simply nice-to-haves?

Here are some key features that would benefit your professional services team:

• Flexible timelogs: A good time tracking platform will give you the ability to track your time both manually and automatically. Try manually adding hours to a timelog, then switch to a live timer that automatically tracks your time to see which method works best for you.
• Customizable timesheets: If you need a quick overview of weekly tasks, digital timesheets are a great tool. You should be able to configure your timesheet to automatically add all tasks assigned to you. Editing tasks, time entries, and additional categories should also be seamless.
• Automated reports: You should choose a time tracking platform with automation, enabling you to schedule regular reports to share with clients and other stakeholders. Separate billable and non-billable tasks, and sync with your finance system to simplify the invoicing process. 
• Dashboards: With custom-built dashboards, you can get a bird’s-eye view of all client projects. This way, you can track budgets, individual and team efforts, and project progress at a glance. You can also create individual dashboards for each client or project.

Wrike’s time tracking software for consultants includes all the above features and much more. Want to explore further? Start your free two-week trial today.