For consulting, agency, audit and engineering services firms where people are the product: timesheets that get filled, utilisation you can trust, project cost against budget and client billing that reconciles.
94%
Timesheet submission on time
Achieved by firms using daily worksheets with reminders instead of weekly retrospective entry.
Weekly
Project margin visibility
Cost to date against budget available every week rather than at engagement closure.
7 pts
Typical utilisation improvement in two quarters
From visible bench, allocation conflicts and unbilled time surfacing early.
One system
For timesheets, payroll and cost
Cost rates come from payroll data, so project cost does not depend on a second spreadsheet.
The reality on the ground
Every conversation with a people team in this sector surfaces the same handful of failures. Here is what they look like and what they cost.
Consultants fill a week of timesheets on Friday evening from memory, or on the following Tuesday after three reminders. The data that drives client billing, utilisation and project margin is therefore an approximation produced under time pressure by the people with the least interest in it.
Cost of leaving it: Billing leakage on every engagement and utilisation numbers leadership privately discounts.
The partner knows the fee. The cost of the team delivering it is assembled at the end from timesheets, salary data and expenses held in three places. By the time margin is known, the engagement is closed and the lesson is academic.
Cost of leaving it: Loss making engagements repeated because nobody saw the first one going wrong.
Who is available next month, who is double allocated, and who has been on the bench for three weeks are answered by a resourcing spreadsheet that one person maintains and everyone distrusts. Allocation conflicts surface after a client has been promised a start date.
Cost of leaving it: Bench cost carried silently and delivery commitments made against capacity that does not exist.
Reimbursable travel and out of pocket costs are claimed weeks after they occur, often without receipts matched to the engagement. The client invoice waits, or goes out incomplete and is corrected later.
Cost of leaving it: Slower cash collection and awkward conversations about costs the client did not expect.
Capability deep dive
Same platform, sector specific defaults. Each capability below arrives preconfigured, so your team edits rather than builds.
A day in the life
Software only sticks when the person using it saves time on their own work. These are the three roles that make or break adoption here.
Owns delivery, budget and the client relationship.
Monday
Reviews approved time for last week and sees cost to date against budget.
Tuesday
Approves two expense claims coded to the engagement, ready for the client invoice.
Midweek
Requests an additional analyst and sees who is genuinely available next week.
Closure
Submits delivery feedback for the team while the engagement is still fresh.
Balances capacity against a moving pipeline.
Weekly
Reviews allocation for the coming month and resolves two conflicts before they reach clients.
Weekly
Lists people on the bench beyond two weeks and matches them to pipeline engagements.
Monthly
Reports utilisation by practice and grade against target.
Quarterly
Uses hiring signals from sustained overallocation rather than intuition.
Wants time entry to be trivial and reimbursements to be fast.
End of day
Enters time against project and task in under a minute on mobile.
Travel
Photographs a receipt and files the claim at the airport rather than a month later.
Any time
Sees own utilisation and allocation for the coming weeks.
Pay day
Downloads payslip and reimbursement detail in one place.
Compliance and audit
Time records per engagement
Approved time entries retained per person and per engagement, exportable for client audit clauses.
Rate card and contract records
Signed contracts, rate cards and amendments held against each client engagement.
Expense documentation
Receipts attached to claims with approval trail, separated into billable and non billable.
Provident fund and professional tax
Contributions and state specific professional tax computed and filed from the payroll run.
Independence and conflict declarations
Periodic declarations collected and retained per employee where your practice requires them.
Data access controls
Client and engagement data visible only to allocated team members and designated roles, with access logging.
End to end workflow
One record per person, from the day they join to the day they leave. No spreadsheet handoffs in between.
Stage 1
Engagement setup
Client, engagement type, contracted value, rate card and budget recorded with the contract attached.
Stage 2
Staffing
Team allocated with percentage effort and dates, conflicts resolved before confirmation.
Stage 3
Delivery
Daily time entry and engagement coded expenses captured as work happens.
Stage 4
Approval
Engagement manager approves time and expenses weekly, locking the period.
Stage 5
Billing and cost
Billable time and expenses feed invoicing, cost accrues against budget for margin reporting.
Stage 6
Closure
Engagement closed with final margin, delivery feedback captured and team released to the pool.
Integrations and hardware
No rip and replace. HRMione sits alongside the systems and devices already on your floor.
Finance and billing
Work tools
Delivery
Rollout plan
A dedicated onboarding lead runs this with you. Nothing here needs your engineering team.
Week one
People and clients
Employee records, grades, cost rates, clients and active engagements imported.
Week two
Timesheets live
Daily worksheets rolled out to one practice with approval flow and reminders active.
Week four
Cost and utilisation
Project cost against budget and utilisation reporting validated against last quarter.
Day ninety
Firm wide
All practices on timesheets, payroll migrated and engagement feedback in the appraisal cycle.
Commercial fit
Most firms start with timesheets and allocation, because that is where the leakage is, then move payroll across at the next monthly boundary.
Typical headcount
Firms from 30 to 2000 professionals across consulting, agency, audit, legal support and engineering services.
Indicative spend
Priced per active professional per month, billed annually. Subcontractors can be included as active seats only while engaged.
Modules in the standard bundle
Case study
Situation
Timesheets were filled weekly from memory with roughly sixty percent on time submission. Engagement margin was known only at closure, and the resourcing spreadsheet regularly promised people who were already committed elsewhere.
What we did
Daily worksheets replaced weekly entry with a one minute mobile flow. Cost rates were derived from payroll, engagements were loaded with budgets, and allocation moved into the platform with conflict detection.
Result
Knowing margin while the engagement is running changed how we price. The timesheet compliance was the surprise, and it happened because entry finally takes a minute.
Straight answers
Our people hate timesheets. Why would this be different?
Because it is daily, mobile and takes under a minute against a short list of their own current engagements. Weekly retrospective entry is the reason compliance is poor, not the concept of time tracking.
We do not want internal cost rates visible to everyone.
They are not. Cost rates and margin are visible only to the finance and leadership roles you designate. Engagement managers can be given budget consumption without individual salary data.
We use a separate billing system. Does this conflict?
No. HRMione produces approved billable time and coded expenses ready for your billing system. It fills the gap between delivery data and the invoice rather than replacing your finance stack.
Some engagements are fixed fee. Does time tracking still matter?
It matters more. On a fixed fee engagement the only way to know whether you made money is to know the effort consumed against the budget, which is exactly what this gives you weekly.
Can we handle subcontractors and associates?
Yes. They can be engaged with their own rates, submit time against engagements and be paid through a payout flow rather than payroll, while still appearing in project cost.
Software Solutions
FAQ
Keep exploring
Thirty minutes, your own scenarios, a live sandbox already loaded with a workforce that looks like yours.
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