Choosing the right time tracking tool for your accountancy business is pretty important. Otherwise, you can miss hundreds of billable hours, waste time on unproductive work, and lose money serving unprofitable clients.

There is a wide range of time tracking software for accounting, tax, and audit firms today. All with different pricing plans, options, benefits, integrations, reporting, and more.

What’s the right choice for your company?

To help you answer this question, we’ve compiled a list of the best 15 time tracking solutions for your team and highlighted their advantages, features, and pricing.

The Ultimate List of the Best Timesheet Software for Accountants

Time Analytics Best For: Accounting, tax, and audit SMBs Starting Price: $4.99 per user per month
Harvest Best For: Billing accounting services Starting Price: $12 per user per month
BigTime Best For: Large CPA practices Starting Price: $10 per user per month
Myhours Best For: Project budgeting Starting Price:  $6 per user per month
Bill4time Best For: Time based billing Starting Price: $27 per user per month
WeWorked Best For: Timesheets for accountants Starting Price: $15 per month (3 users)
Clicktime Best For:  Time scheduling Starting Price: $10 per user per month
Time Doctor Best For: Employee monitoring Starting Price: $70 per user per year
Toggl Best For: Consulting businesses Starting Price: $9 per user per month
Replicon Best For: Large accounting teams Starting Price: $6 per user per month
TimeCamp Best For: Timesheet management Starting Price: $7.99 per user per month
Scoro Best For: Team resource planning Starting Price: $28 per user per month
Clockify Best For Small CPA firms Starting Price:  $3.99 per user per month
Beebole Best For Small CPA firms Starting Price:  $3.99 per user per month
Avaza Best For: Full accounting projects tracking Starting Price: $11.95 per month (2 users)

Find out more about the benefits, features, integrations, and pricing of selected tools.

1. Time Analytics 

Best for time tracking and timesheet management of accounting, tax, audit and advisory SMBs. 

Key features

A. Time tracking

This feature helps accountants to track their time and increase productivity and service profits:

• Time tracking on each specified task, project and client
• Add or edit time manually
• Use of timer
• Mark hours as billable
• Add notes to each timer
• Billing and labor rates
• Automatic cost allocation to the projects
• Paid time-off tracking of attorney team (vacation, sick leaves)

B. Timesheets

• Detailed daily timesheet showing each time entry per project, client and task
• Weekly timesheet
• Timesheets reviews and edit by manager
• Timesheet filtering and export in excel

C. Time reporting

• Insight in billing efficiency and billable hours per clients and services
• Watch hourly rate based revenue per clients
• Watch what service line is the most profitable (e.g. accounting, tax, payroll, consulting, audit)
• Align your fees with time consumption

D. Team productivity and efficiency reporting

• Reporting on billable hours and non-billable for each employee
• Time utilization reporting
• Insights in overtime hours

E. Create transparent and accurate invoices

• Review all services and tasks your team did for clients
• Review billable hours for each client
• Export invoice to the Excel and make final adjustments

Support options

• In-app chat
• In-app tutorials
• Written help articles
• Email support
• Booking 1:1 live demo

Security

• Data hosted in – Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Hosting of the SaaS application in a Privacy Shield Certified or ISO 27001 certified data center.
• Amazon Web Services ISO 27001 Compliance
• Encryption with SSL encryption (HTTPS)
• Data back-ups every day

Pricing

Time analytics offers two plans:

• Starter: $4.99 per user, per month (billed annually) or $5.99 (billed monthly)
• Optimum: $6.99 per user, per month (billed annually) or $8.45 (billed monthly)
• Free trial: 14 days (No credit card needed)

If you have more than 50 users subscribed, Time Analytics offers a special pricing discount.

Pros of Time Analytics

• Easy to use and friendly interface
• Powerful reporting for team, projects, clients and activities
• Detailed timesheets
• Visual reports and dashboard

Cons of Time Analytics

• No freemium plan
• Chrome extension is still under development
• No integration with Quickbooks (upcoming)

2. Harvest

Best for expense control, billing and project budget management.

Money and time are the two main currencies in business, and Harvest takes these both very seriously.

Over 400,000 tracked hours and $13 billion from paid invoices over the last ten years, make it one of the most reliable time monitoring software offered. It’s a time tracking app that helps businesses grow.

Key Features

• Track expenses and time easily
• Automatically transform tracked time to revenue
• Add time tracking to Asana, Trello, Jira, and Slack
• Integrate with PayPal and Stripe for quicker payments
• Track time as you work or enter the hours all at once

Benefits

• Integrates with tools your team is familiar with for streamlined workflow
• Get visual summaries of your team’s time spending
• Get visual reports for easier project management

Pricing

• Free plan – limited to one user and two projects
• Pro –  $12 USD per user, per month; unlimited users and projects

Trial Period

Harvest offers a free 30-day trial.

3. BigTime

Best for automation and timesheet management  for large CPA teams.

BigTime is a time tracking app suitable for accountants, architects, engineers, IT-services firms, marketing firms, legal firms, and scientific and management consultants. It’s a professional service automation software that organizes all your company info in one place. It’s best suited for accountants who need extensive accounting features.

Key Features

• Timesheets, customizable views, user-driven presets/defaults, and smart lookups
• Expense tracking (billable and non-billable hours, equipment, mileage, reimbursable/non-reimbursable, etc.)
• Custom payment processing, invoicing, and billing
• Business reports and analytics
• Integration with other tools

Benefits

• Customized timesheets for accountants and clients
• Real-time insight into resource allocations
• Streamlines internal processes
• Focus on data without extra tools

Pricing

• The Express plan is $10 USD per month per user, with a minimum of five users.
• The Pro plan is $30 USD per month per user, with a minimum of five users.
• The Premier plan is $40 USD per month per user, with a minimum of five users.

Free Trial

BigTime offers a free trial of their timesheet software for accountants.

4. Myhours  

Best for project (time) budgeting for accounting and tax services.

Myhours is a free time tracking app that aims to unify all features you need to lead a successful accounting business. The software allows its users to get rid of their messy inboxes by streamlining projects from start to finish.

You can also track every step and important metric along the way. For example, you can set up a budget for a project and receive a warning if you are close to overstepping it.

Calculating your firm’s profit is one of the biggest advantages you will get from using Myhours..

Key Features

• Project and task organization
• Billable rate management
• Detailed time tracking
• Custom and appealing reports
• Timesheets and log approvals
• Email reports for clients

Benefits

• A sturdy, yet flexible invoicing system
• Task prioritization
• In-app report editing
• Detailed insight into all aspects of your business

Pricing

• Free plan
• Pro – $6 per user per month

Trial period

Myhours offers a 14-day free trial.

5. Bill4Time

Best for hourly based billing and billable hours tracking.

While Bill4time is primarily used in legal settings, we find that it’s also suitable for accounting firms. This handy tool provides online invoicing and payments and tracks both expenses and time per project. Additionally, it gives regular reports so you can stay on track with your business’s financial health.

Key Features

• 256K-bit SSL encryption and SSAE 16 Type II certification
• Creates detailed invoices
• Tracks time to capture revenue-loss
• Creates and edits invoice batches
• Guarantees data safety

Benefits

• Time tracking for CPAs and accountants
• Manages clients, projects, tasks, accounting, and reports
• Timesheet management system is perfect for CPAs, accounting, tax and audit firms
• Improves productivity
• Software support and integrations

Pricing

Pricing starts from $29 USD per user, per month for the Time and Billing plan, while the Legal Enterprise plan starts from $89 USD per user, per month.

Trial Period

Bill4Time offers a 14-day free trial.

6. WeWorked 

Best for timesheet management with reminders.

WeWorked timesheets for accountants provides timesheet approval, balance tracking, and billable projects calculation. It’s best suited for small to large businesses that can benefit from automatic time capture, mobile time tracking, and the monitoring of billable and non-billable hours.

Additionally, the software is intuitive, easy to use, and doesn’t require a tutorial or training.

Key Features

• Tracks time at your location or remotely
• Automatic reminds employees to fill their timesheets
• Reduces billing errors and tracks expenses from anywhere
• Available for browsers, iOS, and Android

Benefits

• Suitable for remote teams around the world
• Stay on top of the nature of your team’s projects
• Keep your data safe, secure, and encrypted

Pricing

Pricing depends on the number of users. It starts at $9.99 USD per month for three users and goes up to $79.99 USD per month for 100 users.

Trial Period

WeWorked offers a no-strings-attached free trial.

7. ClickTime 

Best for time scheduling for accountants.

ClickTime will help you easily organize, manage, and track your employee work time. It also provides you with reports on expenses to help reduce project costs and improve operations.

Offers overtime calculation, mobile time tracking, and offline tracking for easy management.

Key Features

• Employee database, activity tracking, and time organization
• Expense tracking, billing, invoicing, and overtime calculation
• Vacation tracking and time tracking by client or project
• Export reports into different formats
• Simple to set up and use, no need for a training

Benefits

• Allows you to focus on work and clients, not administration
• Breaks up time according to tasks completed
• Timesheet reporting suitable for accounting and CPA firms
• Summarizes hours by client, project phase, or task

Pricing

Clicktime offers four pricing plans:

• STARTER – $12 USD per user, per month (includes easy time tracking, 70+ reports, and email reminders)
• TEAM – $16 USD per user, per month (additionally includes approval workflows, advanced billing rates, and time-off management)
• PREMIER – $28 USD per user, per month (additionally includes utilization goals, resource planning, and project budgeting)
• ENTERPRISE – Custom price (includes everything above plus single sign-on, named account manager, and custom integration)

Trial Period

Clicktime offers a 14-day free trial.

8. Time Doctor 

Best for productivity calculation based on app and screen tracking (employee monitoring).

Time Doctor is a time-billing accounting software. Time Doctor tracks how your accounting firm uses time, and it provides you with reports and analytics to improve performance.

The software integrates with over 60 tools to make your time management and organization of work activity easier.

Key Features

• Cloud, SaaS, and web-based time trackers
• Automatic time capture, monitors both employee activity and idle time
• Manage billing, invoicing, timesheets, and billable and non-billable hours
• Online punch card, tracks offline and mobile time
• Tracks employee salaries

Benefits

• Track and monitor your employee’s projects and tasks
• Offers the flexibility of managing multiple clients
• Helps your accounting firm grow into a company

Pricing

Time Doctor offers three different plans:

• Basic plan – $7 USD per user, per month
• Standard plan (most popular) – $7 USD per user, per month
• Premium plan – $20 USD per user, per month

Check out what is included in Time Doctor pricing plans.

Trial period

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial that doesn’t require your credit card info.

9. Toggl Track

Best for small and medium CPA firms.

Toggl Track is a simple yet compelling time tracker and timesheet app for accountants. Even though it’s so simple, it comes with impressive features like idle time detection and tracking reminders. If you have a small team, its free plan should cover your time tracking needs.

Key Features

• One-click timers for easy tracking
• Provides multi-device support
• Time tracking by client, project, or employee
• Billing, invoicing, and manages billable and non-billable hours
• Mobile and offline time tracking

Benefits

• Track employee productivity for specific projects
• Categorize tasks and generate weekly reports
• Especially useful if you’re paid by the hour
• Simple timesheet reporting

Pricing

Toggle Track offers four different pricing plans:

• The free plan is available for up to five users
• Starter – $10 USD per user, per month
• Premium – $20 USD per user, per month
• Enterprise – custom pricing

Read our article on what is included in each Toggl pricing plan.

Trial Period

Toggle Track offers a free 14-day trial.

10. Replicon

Robust system best for large accounting and tax teams. 

Besides time tracking, Replicon also provides an advanced project management solution with an abundance of features to organize your team’s workflow.

It will help you submit and monitor expenses, manage resources and employee attendance, set estimates and rates for different services, and much more.

Key Features

• Real-time data validation for dynamic routing
• A centralized platform that will allow you to stay on top of all services
• Capture project hours, in/out time, and apply rates for precise invoicing
• Pre-populated timesheets and GPS tracking
• Mobile timesheets and digital receipts

Benefits

• Streamline client billing with the invoicing module
• Use intuitive time capture to track billable and non-billable by project
• Avoid billing errors and project delays

Pricing

Pricing of features that include time tracking starts with $18 USD per user per month.

Trial Period

Replicon offers a full-access 14-day free trial.

11. TimeCamp 

Best for simple timesheet management.

Source: TimeCamp web

Time tracking for accountants has been made incredibly easy with TimeCamp — a free time tracker with accounting features. Besides staying on top of your deadlines and project times, TimeCamp will also allow you to keep track of your expenses and control the budget.

This intuitive software will track your time automatically or let you enter it manually.

Key Features

• Manage all projects in one place
• Keep track of the margin, budget, and expenses
• Control the payroll and manage administrative procedures
• Allocate budget to employees, clients, tasks, or projects
• Create invoices based on tracked hours

Benefits

• Accurate estimates for predicting future expenses
• Timesheet system management
• Track remote employees with GPS
• Create quotes, define taxes, and track billable and non-billable hours

Pricing

TimeCamp offers a free plan with unlimited users and projects.

Paid plans include:

• Basic plan for $7 USD per user per month
• Pro plan for $10 USD per user per month.

Trial Period

TimeCamp offers a 14-day free trial.

12. Scoro 

Best for team resource planning. 

Source: Scoro web

Scoro is an end-to-end service automation solution that will allow you to manage your entire team’s workflow. You can schedule and track work, manage projects, lists, and task boards. Scoro also provides you with real-time reporting dashboards.

Key Features

• Quoting, billing, and advanced reporting
• Advanced calendar and reminder system
• Manage budget, campaign, and contacts
• Cost-to-completion tracking, billing, and invoicing
• Enhances efficient team collaboration

Benefits

• Streamline projects and optimize time
• Monitor your team’s time use
• Insightful timesheet reporting for accounting firms
• Track productivity and profitability

Pricing

Scoro offers four pricing plans:

• Essential – $28 USD per user, per month
• Work hub – $42 USD per user, per month
• Sales hub – $42 USD per user, per month
• Ultimate – Custom pricing

Trial Period

Scoro offers a fully-featured 14-day trial, no credit card required.

13. Clockify 

Best for freelance accountants and small CPA firms. 

Clockify is a free time tracker that allows you to track billable hours, productivity, and employee attendance. The software itself is easy to use, and  the dashboard is flexible so you can customize it to your team’s needs.

Key Features

• Project management with billable hourly rates and estimates
• Accurate and effective across multiple platforms
• Granular reports that can be customized to your needs
• Specify time duration for each project
• Track employees’ hourly rates

Benefits

• Easy-to-use timesheets module
• Integrates with Pixie so you can track time directly from tasks
• Visualize time breakdown for different projects
• Filtering and grouping options for better organization

Pricing

Clockify offers basic features for free forever. Extra features are given in paid plans:

• Basic –$ 4.99 USD per user, per month
  • includes all FREE features, plus time for others, hiding time and pages, required fields, bulk edit, time audit, customized export, project templates, and historical rates
• Standard – $6.99 USD per user per month
  • includes all BASIC features plus lock timesheets, time approval, manager role, targets, reminders, import timesheets, task rates, time rounding, invoicing
• Pro – $9.99 USD per user, per month
  • includes all STANDARD features plus labor cost and profit, scheduled reports, budget and estimates, alerts, custom fields, force timer, GPS tracking, screenshots
• Enterprise –  $14.99 USD per user, per month
  • includes all PRO features plus single sign on, custom subdomain, and control accounts

Trial Period

Clockify offers a 7-day free trial so that you can try their extra features.

14. Beebole 

Best for timesheet management for small firms.

BeeBole is a timesheet management system for accountants working for both small and big companies. The software allows you to track time and control expenses with modules for departments and projects. It’s also GDPR-compliant and multilanguage.

Key Features

• Custom modules and timesheet approval
• Multiple currencies for billing costs
• Configurable reports and a team calendar
• Employee database, scheduling, and tracking
• Online punch card and offline time tracking

Benefits

• Track your team’s productivity with automatic time capture
• Calculate overtime, billable, and non-billable hours
• Manage payrolls, budgeting, and forecasting

Pricing

Pricing starts at 6.99 USD per user per month.

Trial Period

Beebole offers a 30-day free trial.

15. Avaza 

Best for full accounting projects management and tracking.

Avaza is an intuitive, easy-to-use, responsive project and task management system. Accountants love it for its ability to integrate with Xero, while managers get the most use out of its time scheduling and tracking, and expense management.

Key Features

• Cloud-based software for client-focused businesses
• Project management and collaboration
• Quoting, invoicing, and task tracking
• Kanban boards task lists, Gantt Charts, status views, priority views
• Easy data import and export

Benefits

• Project to invoice capabilities
• Effortless collaboration between team and clients
• Seamless integration with QuickBooks
• Provides timesheets suitable for accounting firms

Pricing

• Free – available with limitation to 1 user with timesheet/expense access
• Startup —$ 9.95 USD per month, with a limitation to 2 users with timesheet/expense access
  • Adding new users costs additionally $5 USD per user per month
• Basic — $19.95 USD per month, with limitation to 5 users with timesheet/expense access.
  • Adding new users costs additionally 5 USD per user per month
• Business — $39.95 USD per month, with a limitation to 10 users with timesheet/expense access
  • Adding new users costs additionally 5 USD per user per month
  • There is no limitation to active projects

Trial Period

Avaza offers a free trial.

How to choose the best time tracking tool for accountants?

To answer this question, you need to make a test of some of selected tools.

But, don’t waste your time before you make sure your selected tool contains some following features:

• Tracking time across predefined activities, projects and clients
• Tracking time by running timer od added manually
• Different types of time entry views – daily or calendar view
• Detailed weekly and daily timesheets with option of editing, filtering, exporting in Excel
• Cost rates, billing rates, cost allocation to the projects
• Manager role is important to make team hierarchy
• Powerful reporting showing billable and non-billable hours per team member, client or projects
• Reporting on revenues, cost and profit
• Highest security and privacy standards
• Perfects support options like in-app chat, email support, phone support, video and written tutorials
• Integrations
• Acceptable pricing including, plan variation, free trial, discounts)

If you want to try our product, a simple and efficient onboarding process is ahead of you.

Our support includes in-app chat and written guidelines, booking 30-min live DEMO, email support and more.

Has the current crisis caused by the COVID 19 virus affected your business? 

Are the consequences already being felt or are more significant effects yet to come? 

How difficult is it to organize the work of an accounting agency from home in the right way?

And most importantly, is the decline in productivity and profit in the crisis is certain, can it be avoided or used to get a bigger piece of cake on the market?

Crises of various kinds will be more frequent in the modern crazy world, for sure.

However, it is easy to be smart and wise when something has already happened. Being better than others means thinking ahead, which is often not easy in business, but it is what sets you apart from others and rises to the top.

Therefore, it is important that we start thinking ahead from the beginning, set things right on time and automatically the chances of success are greater and more certain.

How to get a profit if you are an accounting agency?

Anyone who thinks that profit will come immediately, that just a little effort is enough and then in a relaxed manner sit in an armchair should skip this text.

You need to get into a street fight for profit at the right time in the right way.

Of course, everyone will wonder what the right time is and what is the right way?

How important is mutual trust?

Time is a relative term and a true general will feel when it is the right time to battle. However, even the best general cannot win without a well-trained army that accompanies him.

In order for the army to be well trained, the general must:

• constantly take care of them
• to provide the best conditions and 
• always to be there for them. 

In that way, the army will gain the general’s trust and will never leave him to lead the battle alone. It is not enough that the army only trusts the general, but it is also crucial that the general trusts his army.

The question is, how can a general trust all his soldiers, he is alone, and there are many of them?

In order for a general to trust his soldiers, he must know:

• how efficient each soldier is, 
• whether each soldier uses his time in the best way and 
• what it is that would make every soldier being even better.

P.S. The business world is no different from the battlefield. Every potential job is a path to battle. Every deal made is a small victory, every lost job is a small defeat. The ultimate goal is to win the war because you think on time and use the weaknesses of your opponent.

 Time Analytics, truth, or delusion?

The right time to start thinking about how to increase profit is not when the business reaches a point where you can’t breathe from the problems that are accumulating. The moment the first problems start to appear, we should throw ourselves into solving them.  

What is the right way to solve upcoming problems?

When the first problems occur, although they may not seem big and unsolvable at first if they are neglected they can become hopeless.

We want to present a solution to your problems and open the possibility to increase your profits.

Our solution, for our internal problems and of our clients’, and possibly of your own, is time recording software for accounting agencies. We put our expertise and experience into Time Analytics software, specialized for accounting agencies, as well as other service companies.

You must be wondering what Time Analytics software has to do with everything we’ve talked about so far.

The bottom line is that this solution can help you do the right things at the right time and thus improve your business.

HOW?

The key to any successful business is employees. If you have quality employees whose work you can to:

• plan
• track
• rate
• improve
• reward or penalize

then you are closer to the goal and away from potential problems.

Where is the hidden profit?

Every manager plans the work of his employees, but the question is whether he does it efficiently and how much time he needs for it. No matter how worn out, the saying “time is money” is true. 

Our solution is automated and enables the work of employees to be planned as efficiently as possible in a short period of time.

Each employee needs less than five minutes a day to enter the activities he has worked on into the software. You will agree that every employee can dedicate five minutes a day to something that can bring us great benefits.

If everyone follows the instructions and fills in the Time Analytics software regularly, the manager will have a complete picture based on the reports generated by the software according to the entered parameters, which refers to:

• unused employee time
• employee productivity
• areas where employees need additional education
• the possibility of searching for new engagements
• unprofitable clients, etc.

With the mentioned reports generated by the software, in addition to the quality of work of your employees, you also monitor the quality of your business and your revenue and expenses, and thus your profit. You can evaluate both employees and your own business.

Based on adequate reports, you will report appropriate conclusions, and based on adequate conclusions, we come to the answer to the question of how to get a profit if you are an accounting agency?

Of course, you can reward employees who stand out from others, while you can consider hiring those employees who don’t fulfill their responsibilities.

Now you’ve got the reports with a bunch of numbers and conclusions. But how to read them? 

The answer to that question we provide in the following paragraphs. 

KPIs for accounting business

As you may already know, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are figures that show you the past, present, and future of your business. By reading KPIs, you will understand the current state of your business. You can also see how well your company performed last year, last month, etc. You can see if your company improves or not, by comparing current KPI results with previous results. In addition, you will use them to make strategic and tactical decisions on the future of the business. Our time recording software will help you define and track KPIs.

Since the main resources of your accounting company are your employees, i.e. their working time, the basic KPI is total spent hours. You should track the total amount of spent hours per each employee, as well as per client, activity, project, and service line. You should also track the number of total number of spent hours in a day, a week, a month, a year. In addition, the total number of spent hours should be compared from period to period, whether it is the day, a week, a month or a year. 

After you get information on total spent hours, you may derive most of the rest of the necessary KPIs for accounting companies. We divided the rest of them into three groups:

• Financial KPIs
• Marketing KPIs
• Productivity KPIs

Financial KPIs

Using Time Analytics software enables you to track the following financial indicators per client, employee, and service line:

• % of billable hours in total hours: how much of your work is billed to the client? Using this financial indicator, you see how well the company’s resources are utilized in providing services. In addition, you can see if you are providing free services to the client. In addition, you can see how much time an employee spends on internal company activities (administration, preparation of invoices and agreements, sales activities etc.).  Usually, a high % of billable hours in total hours means that employees are productive and that most of his/her work is billed to the clients. However, in some cases, certain % of non-billable hours is necessary (for example, senior managers need to spend some time identifying and communicating with potential new clients)
• Revenue per hour: whether you are engaged by the client by a fixed or variable fee, this is one of the key KPIs to analyze the profitability of engagement. 
• Costs per client (service line): you already know the revenue that you generate from each client/service line. But do you know the costs of each client/service line? Our time recording software helps you to simply calculate the costs of each client (service line). The costs are based on the costs of salaries and other indirect costs related to employees. 

Marketing KPIs

Using our time recording software for consultants enables you to analyze the position of consulting company on the market:

• A total number of clients: does your number of clients increase month to month, year to year? You may already know that is much less costly to keep a current client than to acquire a new one. What is your CRM strategy?
• An average number of service lines per client: do you perform cross-selling? Do your largest clients know what types of services you may provide? If you spend a lot of time with the CEO and other managers of the client. You sit with them in conference rooms, on business lunches. You talk with them all the time on the phone, exchange many e-mails and SMS messages. Use this time to discuss their business, try to provide them advice on running a business. In that way, the client will look at you not as a specialist, but as a generalist. You will become his special strategic advisor. The client will then realize that you may provide an extensive portfolio of services 
• The total number of hours spent on sales (marketing) activities: how much time you and your senior managers spend finding new clients? Maybe you need to put more hours on sales activities. Or maybe you need to change your approach, to spend working hours more efficiently.

Productivity KPIs

Crucial accounting firm productivity KPIs you need to track using time recording software are:

• total spend hours per employee: are employees overwhelmed with work? Who carries the most of workload? Are they under risk of burnout? Which employee has some free working time to help other colleagues?

• Structure of an employee’s working activities: what do your managers do? Are they able to delegate routine activities to consultants? How much time do they spend finding new clients? Are they overwhelmed with administrative and reporting tasks? By looking at the structure of the working activities of employees you can identify new working positions that need to be opened. 

• Overtime: compare total planned hours with total spent hours on a project. If much more time is spent than it was planned, you should analyse the reasons for it. 

• Number of engaged employee’s per client: did you plan project execution well? If there are too many accountants on the same assignment, maybe planning was not efficient or opposite.

• Revenue/profit per employee: does employee bring more money to you than you pay him/her?

Looking for additional profit as an accounting agency?

Again, profit is not something that will just come. If you use Time Analytics software, it is not guaranteed that you will make a profit. First, you need to understand in the right way the reports that the software generates.

This is where the chance for additional profit lies.

We will return to the beginning of our text again.

• Has the current crisis caused by the COVID 19 virus affected your business? 

• Are the consequences already being felt or are more significant effects yet to come? 
• How difficult is it to organize the work of an accounting agency from home in the right way?
• And most importantly, is the decline in productivity and profit in the crisis is certain, can it be avoided or used to get a bigger piece of cake on the market?

Every crisis is a serious matter, but you don’t necessarily have to get out of a crisis as a defeat once.

Why not turn the crisis to your advantage?

Our solution can help you become an absolute winner when everyone loses. 

Crisis vs. additional profit?

When a crisis occurs, anyone who does not have all the strings in their hands will largely neglect the needs of their existing clients. The main occupation will be its own company. 

• Organization in a new situation, 
• Work from home, 
• Responsibilities, 
• Control of employees, 
• Communication, etc.

Rarely will a manager neglect his company in the described situation and turn only to Clients, but the crisis has not only affected you but everyone, including your Clients.

But …

A situation in which you have the strings in your hands turns things in your favor and here is the answer to the question of looking for additional profit. When everyone is busy with their own company, you will be able to dedicate yourself to finding new clients.

Things need to be put in place here. Clients won’t immediately run into your arms, they will first turn to their well-known partners, but when their answer is missing, it is your turn. 

It is the moment when you take the lead, the moment that separates you from the competition, and the moment when you know that you have managed your company well.

Does it make sense?

Final remarks

The essence is very simple.

• Is Time Analytics an expensive solution?
• How much can you gain and how much can you lose?
• What is the opportunity cost of not using the Time Analytics solution?

There is a saying that says, it is better to do something and regret so than to regret that you did not even try.

If you decide on the first variant, we are sure that you will not regret it, but that you will raise your business to a higher level.

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How to increase profit if you are a consultant?

What are your greatest problems in managing a consulting company? You consume hours and hours solving problems of your clients, but do you have time for solving your own? Are you disciplined enough to take your own medicine, the one you prescribe to your clients?

Do you have time for business development? How much time do you spend finding new clients and partners? How much time do you spend thinking about the future of your business? Are you feeling that you spend too much time on operating stuff? What is your time frame in planning: five years, a year, a month, a day, a minute, a second? Do you feel that you do not have time for strategy, as you are overwhelmed with merely tactical issues? 

As a general of your army, do you have time to get up on a hill and see how the battle goes on? Or you are losing your nerves in rough trench warfare?

Do you sometimes feel that you are the coach of the team, as well as a leading scorer, assistant, and a main defensive player? Consultancy is not a one-man show, you need to build a team on which you can rely on. Even Michael Jordan needed Pippen to win championships. John Lennon needed McCartney to form The Beatles.

As a captain of your consulting ship, do you know which direction it sails? Or you are too busy rowing below the deck with the rest of the crew?

Do you feel that you’ve got control over your business?

• Do you know for each employee on what project/client he/she is engaged in? 
• How do you assess the work of your consultants?
• Are your employees satisfied? Are they ready to go the extra mile, an extra inch on each project? Do you have problems with employee turnover?
• Are clients satisfied with the services provided?
• Are services provided efficiently?

And finally, bottom – line:

Are you satisfied with your profit?

If these questions give you nightmares, well, you are not the only one.

Since we come from a consulting background (finance and tax advisory), we are facing the same internal problems as you are. In addition, many of our clients come from the service industry. Therefore, we may know a thing or two about managing service companies. In the following text, we would like to present you with our solution that will help you:

Take back control over your business. And over your time.

Bring more money at home. Plus fewer headaches.

What is our solution then?

Our solution, for our internal problems and of our clients’, and possibly of your own, is a time recording software for consultants. We put our expertise and experience into TimeAnalytics software, specialized for consulting companies, as well as other service companies.

In the following paragraphs, we are going to show why time recording software will help you solve many of your management issues.

P.S.: You may say that you are a boutique advisory firm with too few employees to implement a time recording software. However, our solution is applicable for both boutique firms and large-scale consultancies. Just because you are small does not mean your problems will not (eventually) get you strong headaches. Also, you will not be small forever. You have to prepare for times of scaling. Read Sun Tzu’s Art of War: solve great problems while they are still small and manageable. Or in his very own words:

Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small. The difficult things in this world are better to do while they are easy, the greatest things in the world are better to do while they are still small. For this reason, sages never do what is great, and this is why they achieve greatness.

Current global coronavirus pandemic made many companies organize work – from – home regime. Some experts believe that the current epidemic may accelerate the trend of remote work. Time recording software can enable companies to organize this new type of working regime more efficiently. Using the software, managers can coordinate the work of remote employees in a more structured and transparent manner.

What is the root of all problems?

Before we explain our time recording software and how it can help your consulting business, let’s take a step back. What is the key resource of each consulting practice? It’s not the fancy office space, nor your ERP system, nor your brand new computers. It’s your people, your employees. 

You need to find a way to not only choose the right people but to make sure everyone works in a way that’s the best for him and for the consulting team.

How a time-recording software help you do that? Well, remember the words of Peter Drucker, the father of modern business management:

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Our time recording software enables your employees to fill in quickly and simply the hours spent on different clients, projects and activities. By providing total hours spent by employees on clients, activities, projects and service lines, their work gets measured and quantified. You get a simple dashboard on the basis of which you can make management decisions and lead your people more effectively.

Now you’ve got the numbers. But how to read them? The answer to that question we provide in the following paragraphs. 

Define KPIs

As you may already know, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are figures that show you the past, present and future of your business. By reading KPIs, you will understand the current state of your business. You can also see how well your company performed last year, last month etc. You can see if your company improves or not, by comparing current KPI results with previous results. In addition, you will use them to make strategic and tactical decisions on the future of the business. Our time recording software will help you define and track KPIs.

In previous paragraphs, we kind of already mentioned one KPI. Since the main resource of your consulting firm are your employees, i.e. their working time, the basic KPI is total spent hours. You should track the total amount of spent hours per each employee, as well as per client, activity, project and service line. You should also track the number of a total number of spent hours in a day, a week, a month, a year. In addition, the total number of spent hours should be compared from period to period, whether it is the day, a week, a month or a year. 

After you get information on total spent hours, you may derive most of the rest of the necessary KPIs for consulting companies. We divided the rest of them into three groups:

• Financial KPIs
• Marketing KPIs
• Productivity KPIs

Financial KPIs

Using Time Analytics software enables you to track the following financial indicators per client, employee and service line:

• % of billable hours in total hours: how much of your work is billed to the client? Using this financial indicator, you see how well the company’s resources are utilized in providing services. In addition, you can see if you are providing free consulting services to the client. In addition, you can see how much time an employee spends on internal company activities (administration, preparation of invoices and agreements, sales activities etc.).  Usually, a high % of billable hours in total hours means that employees are productive and that most of his/her work is billed to the clients. However, in some cases, certain % of non-billable hours is necessary (for example, senior managers need to spend some time identifying and communicating with potential new clients). In order to manage this KPI you can implement easy and free time tracking software for consultants.
• Revenue per hour: whether you are engaged by the client by the fixed or variable fee, this is one of the key KPIs to analyze the profitability of engagement. Also, this KPI provides you with information for pricing strategy, whether you want to renegotiate the terms with current clients or you are planning to negotiate new engagement.   
• Costs per client (service line): you already know the revenue that you generate from each client/service line. But do you know the costs of each client/service line? Our time recording software helps you to simply calculate the costs of each client (service line). The costs are based on the costs of salaries and other indirect costs related to employees. For example, the costs of one employee are 100 EUR per hour. If that employee spends 10 hours on providing services to certain clients alone, the total costs of the client are 1.000 EUR. Costs of client/service line can be tracked in total amount and in amount per hour.

Marketing KPIs

Using our time recording software for consultants enables you to analyze the position of consulting company on the market:

• A total number of clients: does your number of clients increase month to month, year to year? You may already know that is much less costly to keep a current client than to acquire a new one. Do you have problems with customer attrition? What is your CRM strategy?
• An average number of service lines per client: do you perform cross-selling? Do your largest clients know what types of services you may provide? You spend a lot of time with the CEO and other managers of the client. Sitting with them in conference rooms, on business lunches. Talking with them all the time on the phone, exchange many e-mails and SMS messages. Use this time to discuss their business, try to provide them advice on running a business. In that way, the client will look at you not as a specialist, but as a generalist. You will become his special strategic advisor. The client will then realize that you may provide an extensive portfolio of services 
• The total number of hours spent on sales (marketing) activities: how much time you and your senior managers spend finding new clients? Maybe you need to put more hours on sales activities. Or maybe you need to change your approach, to spend working hours more efficiently.

Productivity KPIs

Crucial consulting firm productivity KPIs you need to track using time recording software are:

• Did total spend hours per employee: are employees overwhelmed with work? Who carries the most of workload? Are they under risk of burnout? Which employee has some free working time to help other colleagues?

• Structure of an employee’s working activities:  what do your managers do? Are they able to delegate routine activities to consultants? How much time do they spend finding new clients? Are they overwhelmed with administrative and reporting tasks? By looking at the structure of the working activities of employees you can identify new working positions that need to be opened. For example, you may realize that you need a person for administration activities. You may also realize that you need reporting or controlling specialist. Or you may see that you need to organize a new  service sector

• Overtime: compare total planned hours with the total spent hours on a project. If much more time is spent than it was planned, you should analyze the reasons for it. Maybe you underestimated the necessary workload for a project. Or engaged consultants were not productive enough

• The number of engaged consultants per project (client): did you plan project execution well? If there are too many consultants on the same assignment, maybe planning was not efficient. Or if just one employee is engaged in a critical project, maybe you should provide him/her support of other colleagues
• Revenue/profit per employee: does the employee bring more money to you than you pay him/her?

Final remarks

After reading our text and if you are still not convinced that your consulting business needs time tracking software, the words of the famous French General Napoleon may help you:

Perhaps I owe my success to mathematical conceptions; a general must never imagine things; that is the most fatal of all

Each day, you as a manager need to make many decisions on your team and projects which will decide the very fate of your business. These decisions should be based on facts and numbers (or mathematical conceptions, as Napoleon said), not solely on your intuition, your gut.

In the end, you may say that our software cannot solve all problems of your consulting firm. That is true. But, our solution can be a reliable management tool.

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