A consulting timesheet should explain the business—not only collect hours
Basic time capture can answer who recorded 40 hours. A consulting firm also needs customer, project, phase, billable status, work note, approval, cost basis, bill rate, budget, and commercial-model context. The right depth depends on what managers will actually review.
Start with five decisions: invoice readiness, project budget intervention, utilization and staffing, project margin, and accounting reconciliation. Remove any requested field or report that does not support a real owner and decision.
Make daily entry fast and codes trustworthy
Employees should see only active, authorized projects and understandable internal codes. Support web and mobile entry, recent or favorite projects, expected hours, a clear incomplete-day indicator, and reminders aimed only at missing records.
A fast timer cannot fix an uncontrolled project list. Define who opens and closes projects, changes budgets, maps customers, updates rates, and corrects approved time.
Test each commercial model
For time and materials, demonstrate billable eligibility, rates, caps, notes, approval, and invoice support. For fixed fee, demonstrate full actual-time capture, budget burn, non-billable project time, effective rate, forecast remaining effort, and margin. For retainers, demonstrate recurring fee, included capacity, overage, and a multi-month service view.
If the vendor uses the same ‘billable hours × rate’ formula for every engagement, it does not yet support the operating question.
Require budget, forecast, and margin traceability
The system should preserve original and current budget, approved changes, actual and provisional hours, forecast remaining effort, effective-dated cost and bill rates, and project-specific expenses where applicable. A manager should be able to trace a margin change to people, hours, rates, or scope—not accept a black-box percentage.
Confirm who can see compensation-derived costs and whether less sensitive loaded rates can support project decisions. Test a historical rate change and a correction after approval.
Evaluate QuickBooks fit and reconciliation
If QuickBooks remains the financial system of record, document which records move, which system owns each field, and how exceptions are resolved. Demonstrate customer and project mapping, billable time, duplicate prevention, correction handling, and period control.
Ask for control totals. A sync status saying ‘success’ does not prove the accepted hours, projects, rates, and billable flags match the source.
Compare total operating cost—not subscription price alone
Include implementation, data cleanup, integrations, training, support, workflow administration, report maintenance, and the cost of duplicate spreadsheets. A broader PSA or ERP can be right when the firm needs the breadth and can govern it; a focused system can be right when time and project visibility are the immediate gap.
Run a 30-day pilot with one hourly project, one fixed-fee project, one retainer, real employees, a rate change, a correction, and an accounting reconciliation. Define acceptance criteria before the trial starts.
Use a concise vendor demonstration script
Ask every vendor to complete the same flow: create a project and phase budget, authorize employees, record mobile and web time, show an incomplete day, submit and approve, correct an approved entry, forecast an overrun, calculate utilization and margin, export or sync to QuickBooks, and reconcile the result.
Score the demonstrated workflow, employee effort, manager actionability, data ownership, security evidence, implementation work, and commercial terms. Do not score promises that were not shown.