Here's a breakdown of how this calculator works:

Inputs:

• Budgeted Internal Cost: The planned cost for internal resources (labor, salaries, etc.)
• Actual Internal Cost: The actual cost incurred for internal resources
• Budgeted External Cost: The planned cost for external resources (materials, software, etc.)
• Actual External Cost: The actual cost incurred for external resources

Outputs:

• Total Cost Variance: The difference between the total budgeted cost and the total actual cost. A positive variance means you're under budget, and a negative variance indicates you're over budget.
• Internal Cost Variance: The difference between the budgeted internal cost and the actual internal cost
• External Cost Variance: The difference between the budgeted external cost and the actual external cost
• Total Variance Percentage: The percentage difference between the total budgeted cost and the total actual cost. This provides a relative understanding of how much you've deviated from your budget

Let's say you budgeted $8,000 for internal costs and $2,000 for external costs on a project. After completion, you actually spent $9,000 on internal costs and $1,800 on external costs.

Using the calculator:

1. Enter 8000 in the "Budgeted Internal Cost" field
2. Enter 9000 in the "Actual Internal Cost" field
3. Enter 2000 in the "Budgeted External Cost" field
4. Enter 1800 in the "Actual External Cost" field
5. Click "Calculate."

The calculator will display:

• Total Cost Variance: -800 (You are $800 over budget)
• Internal Cost Variance: -1000 (You are $1000 over budget on internal costs)
• External Cost Variance: 200 (You are $200 under budget on external costs)
• Total Variance Percentage: -4% (You are 4% over budget overall)

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What is cost variance?

Cost variance (CV) is the difference between what you planned to spend on your project and what you actually spent.  It's a quick check to see if your project is on track to be profitable.

The formula to calculate CV is:

CV = BCWP - ACWP

Where:

• BCWP (Budgeted Cost of Work Performed): This is the total cost you planned to spend on the work that's been completed.
• ACWP (Actual Cost of Work Performed): This is the actual cost of that completed work.

If your CV is positive, you're spending less than planned (under budget). This is a good sign, indicating you are effectively managing your project budget.

Types of costs to consider

To pinpoint where your budget is going astray, it's helpful to break down CV into two categories:

• Internal costs (Labor): The money you spend on your team's time and effort (salaries, wages, benefits)
• External costs (Bills & Expenses): Everything else you pay for outside the company (materials, software, travel, freelancers)

Cost variance example

A digital marketing agency budgets $10,000 for a website redesign project, with a more detailed breakdown of costs:

After the project is finished, here's what they actually spent:

Let's see where the budget went off track:

Labor Cost Variance (LCV):

• Budgeted labor: $10,000
• Actual labor: $11,000
• LCV = $10,000 - $11,000 = -$1,000 (They overspent on labor by $1,000)

External Cost Variance (ECV):

• Budgeted expenses: $1,000
• Actual expenses: $1,050
• ECV = $1,000 - $1,050 = -$50 (They overspent on expenses by $50)

Total Cost Variance (CV):

• CV = -$1,000 (LCV) - $50 (ECV) = -$1,050

The project ended up $1,050 over budget. The main culprit? Labor costs.

This signals that the agency might need to:

• Consider adjusting rates for future projects: If labor consistently exceeds the budget, it might be time to revisit the pricing.
• Re-evaluate how they estimate labor hours: Were the original estimates too optimistic? Did unexpected tasks arise?
• Review their team's efficiency: Are there any bottlenecks or areas where work could be streamlined?

By breaking down cost variance into labor and external costs, you can better understand where your budget is being impacted.

Why is tracking cost variance important?

Cost variance is your project's financial watchdog, alerting you to budget problems and empowering you to make smart decisions.

Here's how:

• Pinpoint the problem: A negative CV is a clue. It helps you zero in on specific areas where costs are running high, whether it's due to inefficient processes, the wrong people on the job, or scope creep.
• Data-powered decisions: Armed with accurate CV data, you can confidently make informed decisions to adjust your budget, reallocate resources, or even renegotiate with clients.
• Budgeting expertise: By analyzing CVs across multiple projects, you'll gain a deeper understanding of your spending patterns. This will help you create more accurate budgets for future projects and avoid costly surprises.

How to track cost variance on autopilot with Scoro

Scoro makes it easy to track your CV in real time using its "Profit" tab within each project, giving you instant insights into your project's financial health.

Here's a step-by-step guide to calculating CV in your projects:

1. Create a detailed cost estimate

Start by creating a detailed project cost estimate in Scoro.

Click on the "Quotes" module, followed by "+New."

Then, use the quote builder to outline all the services you'll provide to your client.

For example, let's say you're a design agency quoting a design project for a client. Your quote outlines the following services and the internal cost to deliver each one:

• Research: 50 hours at $100/hour = $5,000
• Consulting 80 hours at $90/hour = $7,200
• Design: 100 hours at $60/hour = $6,000

This will give you a total internal cost to deliver the project of $18,200 based on internal labor rates for each member assigned to each service.

Which will look something like this in the quote builder:

2. Create a project and link the quote

Once the client approves the quote, you can turn it into a project by clicking "Create project" within the quote.

On the next page, you can set the project budget manually or use the quoted amounts.

This establishes the baseline budget that you'll track your actual costs against to calculate the cost variance.

Click "Save" when done.

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3. Track time and expenses

As your team works on the project, get them to track their time in Scoro. 

Your team can track their time in several ways:

• Timesheet: Log hours worked on tasks retrospectively
• Calendar Events: Automatically track time spent in meetings or appointments
• Real-time timer: Start and stop a timer while working on a task from the header menu

For example, one of the quickest ways to log time as you go is to start the time tracker using the stopwatch icon in your site header.

Bills or expenses can be recorded in Scoro with just a few clicks. To record expenses, click on the "+" icon in your site head and then "New expense."

Add each project-related expense, selecting the relevant project from the dropdown menu, as well as the supplier, author, currency, etc., and click "Save."

4. Invoice for work as you go

Then, create and send invoices to clients as you complete project milestones or at regular intervals (e.g., weekly or monthly).

In Scoro, go to the quote linked to the project you're working on and click "Create invoice," check "Select lines for partial invoicing," and click "Proceed."

You can then select the services or parts of the project for which you want to create an invoice. When you are done, click " Proceed."

This will open a new invoice. Check the details and click "Save."

On the next page, click "Send." A window will appear when you can compose your email to the client with the invoice attached.

5. Analyze cost variance using the "Profit" tab

Scoro's "Profit" tab helps you understand if your project is spending more or less money than planned, even though it doesn't directly say "Cost Variance."

It does this by showing you a few things:

• What you still need to spend: This is an estimate of how much more money you'll need to finish the project
• What you planned to spend: This is like your original budget for the project
• What you've already spent: This shows how much money has been used up so far

You can find it by clicking on the "Budget" tab, followed by "Profit" for any project.

Let's use the project shown in the image above as an example project to illustrate this further.

You can interpret the labor and external costs as follows:

• Labor cost variance: The project is currently projected to exceed its labor budget by $300. This is because the total estimated labor cost (combining the "Recognized to date" cost of $2,800 and the "To recognize" cost of $2,500) is $5,300, which is $300 over the initial budget.
• External cost variance: The project is currently under budget for external costs by $100. The "To recognize" external cost is $300, and when combined with the "Recognized to date" external cost of $600, the total comes to $900, which is $100 less than the budgeted amount of $1,000.

Overall, the project shows a potential labor cost overrun of $300, but this is offset by a $100 saving in external costs. This results in a net projected cost variance of $200 over the initial budget.

Track your project costs with Scoro

Maintaining control over project finances is crucial for success. Scoro's "Profit" tab empowers you to monitor and analyze your project's budget in real time, providing a clear picture of its financial health.

With Scoro, you can proactively identify and address cost variances, ensuring your projects stay on track and profitable. Say goodbye to financial surprises and hello to confident project management.

Experience the difference Scoro can make in your project financial management. Sign up for a free trial today.

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Understanding billable vs. resource utilization rates

Before calculating utilization rates, we need to explain the difference between billable and resource utilization rates.

While both utilization rates measure how your employee spends their time, they focus on different aspects of productivity.

• Billable utilization focuses on the percentage of time an employee spends on tasks that can be billed to clients or directly generate revenue. It’s a crucial metric for service-based businesses and project-oriented teams.
• Resource utilization encompasses all the time an employee spends on productive work, whether it’s billable to clients or not. This includes internal projects, training, administrative tasks, etc.

So, why should you care about both?

Billable utilization is your money meter. It shows how much of your team’s effort translates into revenue.  This is essential for gauging project profitability and spotting areas where you can improve your margins.

Resource utilization is your efficiency compass. It helps you spot hidden areas of optimization—maybe an employee is spending too much time on admin tasks, or perhaps there’s a training opportunity that could increase their billable hours.

By tracking both, you can get the full story of your workforce’s productivity, from top-line revenue to the nitty-gritty of daily tasks.

Utilization Rate Calculator

Here's a breakdown of how this utilization calculator works:

Inputs:

• Available Capacity: The expected total working hours for that employee in the same timeframe (e.g., 40/week, 160/month).
• Total Hours Worked: The actual number of hours the employee worked during the chosen time period (weekly or monthly).
• Total Billable hours: Hours spent on tasks directly linked to client billing or revenue generation.

Outputs:

• Billable Utilization %: The percentage of available time dedicated to billable work. This is crucial for understanding revenue generation.
• Resource Utilization rate %: The percentage of available time spent on any productive work, billable or not. This includes meetings, training, and other essential tasks.

Let's run through a couple of examples.

Example 1: Jane

Jane worked 38 hours last week, with 30 of those hours being billable. Her standard workweek is 40 hours.

• Billable utilization rate: (30 hours / 40 hours) * 100 = 75%
• Resource utilization rate: (38 hours / 40 hours) * 100 = 95%

This means Jane spent 75% of her time on revenue-generating work and 95% of her time on productive work overall.

Example 2: Team Utilization

You have a team of 3 employees:

• Employee A: 40 hours worked (32 billable)
• Employee B: 35 hours worked (25 billable)
• Employee C: 45 hours worked (40 billable)

To calculate team utilization:

• Total hours worked: 120 hours
• Total billable hours Worked: 97 hours
• Total available capacity: 120 hours (assuming each employee has a 40-hour workweek)

Which gives you:

• Team resource utilization rate: (120 hours / 120 hours) * 100 = 100%
• Team billable utilization rate: (97 hours / 120 hours) * 100 = 80.8%

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Utilization benchmarks

A high resource utilization rate (above 90%) indicates that employees are actively engaged in productive work, whether billable or not. This can be a positive sign of a busy and efficient team. 

However, consistently exceeding 95% might lead to burnout and reduced work quality. 

On the other hand, the ideal billable utilization rate varies depending on the specific role and industry. 

For example, "producers" such as consultants, designers, and developers primarily focusing on client-facing work should typically aim for high billable utilization to maximize revenue.

In contrast, managers, sales professionals, and support staff often have lower billable utilization due to the nature of their work.

Tracking utilization metrics with Scoro

Understanding and improving billable utilization, especially for client-facing roles, can dramatically increase your company's profitability.

You can track both billable and resource utilization using a work management platform like Scoro.

Scoro's “Utilization report" makes it easy to analyze your team's time usage.

To find the report, navigate to the "Reports" module and select "Utilization report."

And here's an example of what the "Utilization report" may look like once you get your team to start tracking their time.

How the "Utilization report" works:

• Time tracking: Employees track time on tasks, categorizing them as billable or non-billable.
• Data aggregation: Scoro collects this time data and calculates utilization rates based on the individual's available hours.
• Report generation: The report displays this data in an easy-to-understand format, including heatmaps and detailed breakdowns of where the time is being spent
• Data filtering: The report defaults to showing resource utilization (all work). However, you can easily filter to view billable utilization (client-related work only)
• Analysis: The report can be used to identify underutilized or overworked employees, adjust workloads, and improve overall resource allocation

We’ve detailed the process of creating a utilization report you can analyze in our "Employee Resource Utilization 101: Your Ultimate Guide."

Check out our other guides to learn more about utilization metrics and reports:

• Billable Utilization 101: Your Ultimate Guide
• Employee Resource Utilization 101: Your Ultimate Guide  

Or sign up for a free Scoro trial and start tracking your employee's utilization today.

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That’s why we created a project timesheet template you can use time and time again.

Download our project timesheet template

Click the links below to download the project timesheet template in your desired format.

• Google Sheets
• Excel

Why you should use our template

Taking control of your project’s profitability starts with understanding where your time and money are going. Our project timesheet template empowers you to do just that.

As your team works, have them input the actual hours spent on each task. The template automatically calculates the actual cost and the variance (over or under) from your initial cost estimate.

Regularly review the “Over/Under” column. If tasks are over budget, you can reallocate resources, adjust timelines, or make other strategic decisions to keep your project profitable.

How to use the template

To get started with the project timesheet template, first, fill in the project details section at the top. This includes entering the project name, manager’s name, link to your scope document, and hourly labor rate.

Next, in the main table, define all the tasks involved in your project. For each task, include its name and estimated hours. The template will automatically calculate the estimated cost for each task by multiplying the estimated hours by the hourly rate you entered earlier.

Once your project is set up, your team members can log their time. Direct them to the “Tracker” tab, where they can select their name, choose the task they worked on, enter the date, and input their hours spent.

The main project timesheet table will then automatically update with the actual hours logged by each team member. The template will also calculate the actual cost of each task and show whether it exceeds or falls short of your initial estimate in the “Over/Under” column.

Regularly reviewing the main table will allow you to monitor your project’s progress effectively. Pay close attention to the “Over/Under” column to identify tasks exceeding their estimated hours or budget.

Further Reading: Project Cost Tracking: A Beginner’s Guide

Tracking project time with Scoro

Our project timesheet template is perfect for keeping tabs on your project’s progress, especially small ones.

But what if your project isn’t so simple? Maybe you have a large team with lots of moving parts, complex tasks that depend on each other, or multiple projects running at once. That’s when you need more than just a basic timesheet template.

Scoro is a complete work management software that goes way beyond time tracking. It’s built for teams that need more power and flexibility, offering a suite of features that can simplify and streamline your entire workflow.

To start monitoring project profitability, you need to set labor rates for each team member individually or for specific roles. Go to “Settings” > “Work and projects” > “Labor Cost.” 

You can set a default labor rate for users without a defined role, rates for specific roles, or rates for individual users.

You can also set a specific labor rate for each user by clicking on their name. In the “Active from” field, you can set a specific date when the rate becomes active.

Scoro will then automatically calculate your labor costs based on your team’s tracked hours, giving you an accurate picture of your project’s expenses.

There are multiple ways to track time:

• Log time after tasks: Ideal for focusing on the work itself, team members can easily add time entries manually after completing tasks or at the end of the day.
• Automatic time tracking for scheduled events: If your team’s work involves meetings or appointments, book them in Scoro’s calendar, and the time spent will be automatically logged.
• Real-time tracking: For those who prefer to track their progress as they work, Scoro’s built-in timer can be started directly from the task view or the top menu.

Real-time tracking is simple. Just click the stopwatch icon in the main header to start tracking time for any task or project.

All tracked time and calculated labor costs flow directly into the project’s financial data. This information is reflected in the “Budget health” tab under the “Budget” section of the project.

As your employees log their time spent on project tasks (either through real-time tracking, automatic tracking, or retrospective logging), Scoro uses this tracked time to plot the “Actual” line on the Burn-up chart, showing the real rate at which your budget is being consumed.

This tab provides a powerful overview of your project’s financial status, including:

• Total budget: The total amount of money allocated for the project, giving you your baseline budget.
• Used budget: The budget amount that has already been spent, helping you track expenses and identify potential overages.
• Estimate to Complete (ETC): The estimated cost to finish the remaining work on the project, providing crucial forecasting information.
• Estimate at Completion (EAC): The total estimated cost of the project when it’s finished, calculated by adding the used budget and the estimate to complete. This figure helps you anticipate the final financial impact of the project.

With this real-time information at your fingertips, you can make proactive decisions to ensure your project stays on track and within budget.

While our free project timesheet template is valuable for smaller projects, Scoro offers a more comprehensive and scalable solution for complex projects and growing teams.

By seamlessly integrating time tracking with project management, budgeting, and billing, Scoro provides a holistic view of your project’s health, empowering you to make data-driven decisions and optimize your workflow.

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Mavenlink, now known as Kantata OX, is a cloud-based software platform designed for professional services organizations. It provides tools for resource management, project management, financial management, team collaboration, and business intelligence to help businesses streamline operations and improve profitability.

Why do users consider an alternative?

We’ve spent hours speaking with Kantata OX’s existing and former clients. Here are some reasons they’re considering switching to another PSA platform.

• Not great for building estimates: Several former Kantata users have found the platform’s functionality lacking when it comes to building project estimates. They prefer external tools like Google Sheets and Excel spreadsheets, citing ease of use as a key reason.
• Limited integration with accounting systems: Integrations with popular accounting tools like Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, and Expensify are not deep enough to streamline the billing process, leading to manual work and potential errors.
• Lack of live, up-to-date data: Kantata OX’s lack of real-time data and reporting limitations force users to rely on manual workarounds, such as exporting data to spreadsheets and manually collecting information, leading to inefficiencies and potential errors.
• Difficulty customizing reports: While Kantata offers a variety of pre-built reports, users have reported that the platform lacks sufficient customization options. This limitation often forces them to export data and create manual reports, which can be time-consuming and delay access to real-time information.
• Scheduling issues: While Kantata offers high-level resource allocation capabilities, many customers have found its day-to-day resource scheduling features lacking agility and flexibility. This makes it difficult to adapt to frequent changes in project delivery, leading to outdated schedules and reactive adjustments.
• Lack of visibility into non-billable time: Kantata OX’s time tracking capabilities are primarily geared towards billable projects, making tracking and monitoring time spent on internal, non-billable initiatives difficult. This lack of visibility hinders resource allocation and project management for internal projects.

Best Kantata OX alternatives

Here are our picks for the five best Kantata alternatives out there.

1.Scoro

Scoro is an all-in-one project management software built for agencies, consultancies, and other professional services businesses.  

It provides complete visibility across projects, finances, and resources, allowing you to standardize processes, improve team collaboration, and optimize resource allocation.

You can explore five default dashboards, including ones based on your role. 

For example, the CEO/COO dashboard lets you easily track essential company metrics like revenue, profitability, sales pipeline performance, and resource utilization. 

Other dashboards include:

• Account manager/PM helps track project status and track KPIs like projects over deadline, team revenue, and team availability
  
• Specialist gives team members an overview of their hours, tasks over deadline, upcoming meetings and events, and active projects
  
• Profitability shares key financial metrics like revenue per period, projected profit, outstanding invoices, and individual project profitability
  
• Utilization helps project and operations managers understand  team capacity and track metrics like time spent by project, billable vs non-billable time, and utilization per period 

Whichever dashboard you choose, you can always track productivity metrics like billable vs non-billable time, financial metrics like budgeted income and project profitability, or project management metrics like team hours.

Or create your own custom data points, such as expenses by team or income per project. Best of all, all the information you see on your Scoro dashboard is live, so there’s no need to export and manipulate the data to get real-time updates.

Core use cases of Scoro

Here are three use cases Scoro is perfect for:

Project quoting & budgeting

With Scoro, you can build client proposals, estimate costs, and track profitability all in one place. So you can ensure projects are delivered on time and budget.

To help simplify project quoting and budgeting, you can add standardized products and services to Scoro.

Set their default costs, selling price, and role. Then, quickly generate quotes for standard offerings with pre-made templates.

This way, you can agree on the scope with the client, estimate the delivery cost, and set clear expectations for the internal team.

As your work goes on, you can track key budget metrics, helping you avoid scope creep.

For example, the “Quoted vs Actual” table lets you compare your estimates with actual results in real time, ensuring you’re not going over budget or underutilizing resources.

Project management

Scoro lets you create projects, plan resources based on team member availability, and track project progress within a single system.

After creating a project from a quote, Scoro helps you break it down into phases and tasks and visualize the process more clearly with various views, including a task list, Gantt chart, task board, and calendar views.

Here, you can also plan the project delivery timeline and delegate responsibilities to team members.

Each team member’s avatar even has a circular progress bar showing availability. Ensuring you allocate work only to those who can take it on.

Once your people have started working on their tasks, you can visualize project delivery timelines and track progress in the Gantt chart.

Plus, you can ensure the projects are profitable by comparing actual time and budget to estimates in the “Budget” tab.

Time tracking

Scoro’s time tracking features make it easy to see where your team’s time goes. This allows you to spot workflow inefficiencies, identify bandwidth issues, and track expenses accurately.

Your people can track time as they work using Scoro’s stopwatch feature, schedule time in advance for recurring tasks, or manually log time under each task.

They can even log their hours retrospectively in their timesheets. 

All logged hours get automatically recorded in each person’s timesheets. 

As you and your team track time, you’ll notice a progress bar at the top of each day. This gives you complete visibility into how much work each person has on their plate.

Once your team’s weekly tasks are recorded, you can approve (or decline) timesheets and get them ready for invoicing.

What you’ll love about Scoro

Scoro’s detailed reporting capabilities are perfect for operations managers who need complete visibility over processes and finances.

For example, Scoro’s “Revenue report” tracks yearly revenue based on quotes and projects, helping you analyze past performance and trends and carefully plan for the future.

To access it, open the “Reports” tab and click “Revenue” report. This data helps you answer questions like:

• How much revenue have we generated in a certain period?
• Which projects are the most profitable? 
• How much revenue are we guaranteed over the coming months?
• How much potential revenue do we have in the pipeline?

The “Pipeline” report lets you and your sales team hone in on your pipeline more closely. 

Based on factors like closing probability rates and estimated closing dates for each deal, the report shows you an average of costs, profit margins, and sums for each funnel stage.

This helps you improve forecasting and optimize capacity planning.

Finally, Scoro’s “Utilization” report lets you track utilization across entire teams and identify availability or bandwidth issues.

The summary column on the left gives a quick overview of each team member’s capacity, making it easy to see who can handle new tasks. 

The heatmap helps you identify when team members are available by day, week, or month.

Hover over a cell to see which projects someone spent time on. And how planned hours compare with actual time spent on projects or events. 

Core features of Scoro

• Visual work planning features like Gantt charts and availability heat maps allows you to assign work and keep track of progress easily
  
• Cost management dashboard gives you a 360 view of your finances, helping you keep track of costs and compare estimates to actual revenue
  
• Comprehensive reporting including utilization, finance, availability, margin, and custom reports
  
• Time tracking and timesheets to see where your people’s time goes and how to best optimize it
  
• Invoicing automates client billing and helps you get paid faster
  
• Sales and CRM lets you easily quote customers and manage your pipeline
  
• Integrations with tools you might already use like Asana, Jira, QuickBooks, Salesforce, and Zendesk

Pricing 

Scoro offers four paid plans:

1. Essential: $26 per user per month
2. Standard: $37 per user per month
3. Pro: $63 per user per month
4. Ultimate: Contact sales for pricing

You can also start with a 14-day free trial to test Scoro.

2. BQE Core

BQE Core is a firm management tool designed for architecture, engineering, and professional services firms. 

With this Kantata alternative, your reporting dashboard serves as your homepage. 

When you log in, you’ll see an overview of your most important metrics, like income or expenses, as configurable widgets. And since all dashboards are entirely customizable, you can add or remove widgets only to visualize the data you need.

You can also create specific dashboards for different projects, clients, or employees.

Some metrics you can track include: 

• Cash flow 
• Income vs. expenses
• Hours
• Staff workload 
• Employee allocation and staff utilization
• Employee performance
• Gross margin by client
• Due projects
• Sales funnel
  

Core use cases of BQE Core 

Here are three use cases BQE Core can help you with:

Project Management 

BQE Core is a project-based tool, as opposed to a client-based one. So all functionalities—like tracking time, expenses, resources, and progress—are centered on specific projects.

The platform offers a dedicated project dashboard where you can track the status of your projects and even monitor key financial metrics. 

Like amounts ready to bill, work-in-progress values, and overdue invoices.

This helps you monitor your company’s financial health without having to dig deep into a project page.

You can view individual project details, such as timelines, budgets, and invoices, by selecting a project from the row.

You can even add multiple phases and subphases to your projects, each with their own fee structures. This helps you better organize projects, forecast costs, and manage budgets.

Time and expense tracking

BQE Core offers a time and expense dashboard to simplify tracking for operations managers.

Like Scoro, users can track time as they go or enter it manually on their “Time Card”. They can also add details like whether it’s billable vs. non-billable, overtime, extra time, or comp time. 

Employees and contractors can also track their expenses from the “Expense Entries” screen. 

As an operations manager, you can also review submitted expenses by project, employee, or vendor from the “Expense Entries” screen.

After time entries and expenses are approved, it’s on to invoicing. 

Billing and invoicing

BQE Core lets you automate the entire billing process from importing time and expense data to generating and sending invoices. 

Select from one of the tool’s 20 standard templates to schedule automatic invoices, which adjust based on billable time and expenses. 

You can even set up a schedule for invoices based on fixed fees.

If you’re sending invoices manually, you can email them to a client or an internal team member, like a project manager, directly from within the tool.

You can even add ePayment options to your invoice so clients can pay you more easily, from anywhere in the world.

What you’ll love about BQE Core

One of BQE Core’s standout features is its easy-to-use time and expense tracking. Its straightforward user interface (UI) encourages quick adoption.

Additionally, having expense and time tracking on the same dashboard simplifies tracking information like employee hours, budget updates, and project costs.

Core features of BQE Core

• Project-wide dashboard lets you track the status of all projects and monitor key KPIs on one page for better oversight
  
• Project phases and subphases simplify project management and help you keep tasks within budget
  
• Interactive Gantt charts help visualize project phases across a 14-month period and even track budget spent
  
• Real-time insights that help analyze project profitability, employee allocation, and performance quickly
  
• Customizable reports and dashboards so you only see the data that’s useful to you
  
• Time and expense tracker to expedite payroll and invoicing
  
• Automated invoicing to ensure clients receive timely, error-free invoices
  
• Customizable APIs which let you integrate BQE Core with any third-party tool

Pricing 

BQE Core offers module-based pricing. For an exact quote, reach out to sales. 

3. Avaza

Avaza is a project and work management software for business consulting and professional services. This Kantata competitor lets you manage your operations at every step, from resource scheduling and time tracking to invoicing and team communications.

Avaza offers comprehensive visibility into business processes with more than 50 real-time reports you can customize to your needs. 

It also lets you automatically send these reports to stakeholders, saving you the hassle of doing it yourself.

Avaza reports are split into four categories:

• “Project Management” includes reports like project profitability, project summary, and schedule vs timesheets
• “Finance” includes reports like customer dashboard, revenue by month, and transactions by month
• “Expense” includes reports like expense details, expenses by customer, and expenses by employees
• “Exports” let you download key data like timesheet entries, expenses, and transactions

For example, the “Project Profitability Report” draws from your project data and shows you both an overview and detailed analysis of key project metrics, such as budget vs. actual costs or project margin.

Core use cases of Avaza

Here are three ways users like to use Avaza:

Visual Project Resource Scheduling 

On Avaza’s “Team Scheduling” dashboard, you can view your team’s schedule and days off, create and assign new tasks, and reassign or reschedule assignments on one interactive page.

Each person’s availability bar, shown at the top of each day, shows who’s booked and who can take on more work. 

Once you know who’s available, click “+ Add Assignment” to create a new task, set start and end dates, and assign it to the free team member.

The “Team Scheduling” view also helps you understand if your company can take on new projects. Or whether you need to hire more people to help you tackle the work you already have.

Quoting and estimates

With Avaza, you can go from sending client estimates to creating projects and sending invoices. There is no need to manually re-enter data at each stage or manipulate it, reducing the risk of errors.

Create and keep track of estimates from your “Quotes/Estimates” dashboard. 

You can even send the document in different currencies and languages, which is great for companies that work with international clients regularly.

Once a client receives your estimate, they can reject or approve it. 

After your client approves an estimate, you can convert it to a project to set the estimated amount as your project budget. And keep track of billable amounts for tasks.

Similarly, you can convert approved estimates into invoices to get paid more quickly.

Project and Task Management

On Avaza, you can view all your projects, along with key information like “End Date”, under your “Projects” view.

Hone in on individual projects by selecting one from the list. 

The tool automatically takes you to the “Tasks” tab. Here, projects are divided into sections (or phases), tasks, and subtasks. 

You can create and track tasks, log hours, assign work, and add subtasks to break things down into smaller steps. 

The “Tasks” page defaults to the “Vertical Task List” view. But you can also view your work using Kanban boards, Gantt charts, or a calendar layout.

Finally, the “Summary” tab within each project shows you various high-level details like project expenses (both billable and non-billable), task progress, and project timesheets.

What you’ll love about Avaza

In addition to project management, quoting, and resource scheduling, Avaza offers user-friendly time-tracking and timesheet software.

The interface is clean and easy to navigate. 

The tool also lets users track time however they’re most comfortable. For example:

• By using a timer icon at the top of your screen or directly from your task list
• Manually logging hours into your daily or weekly timesheets 
• Recording start and end times under your tasks 

Once you’ve logged your hours, Avaza uses the data to automatically calculate project costs, update project progress, and generate timesheet reports. 

The user-friendly time-tracking capabilities and seamless connection between the “Timesheets” module and other features (like project management) make it easy to standardize processes, save time, and reduce manual errors.

Core features of Avaza

• In-task comments allow you to communicate with your team in context
  
• Kanban, Gantt, and list views let you structure tasks and project phases in a way that suits you and your team
  
• Customer collaboration gives your customers insight into project progress and even lets them collaborate on tasks
  
• Visual resource scheduling simplifies assigning work based on skills, availability, and utilization rates
  
• Time and expense tracking helps you monitor your people’s time and project-related expenses in one place
  
• Quoting and invoicing allows you to set up estimates and invoices automatically and get paid more quickly
  
• Team Chat lets you have direct conversations with a coworker, create task or project-related group chats, and even share files all within Avaza

• Integrations with over 500 tools like Stripe, QuickBooks, Xero, Zendesk, and Salesforce

Pricing 

Avaza offers a free plan with limited features and three paid plans:

• Startup: $11.95 per month
• Basic: $23.95 per month
• Business: $47.95 per month

Productive

Productive is an agency management platform that aims to streamline your operations by integrating project management, resource allocation, and financial management into a single platform.

This Kantata alternative consolidates data from different sources like service rates, tracked time, and budgets to give you access to over 50 premade report templates.  

For example, the “Profitability by client” report tracks invoiced revenue minus staff costs and expenses. So you can understand which clients bring your company the most profit. And which ones may be costing you money.

Want insights into team performance? The “Scheduled vs. Worked per person, per project” report shows how much the actual hours differ from what you originally planned. 

This helps you spot which projects or tasks take longer than expected, so you can shift resources or tweak schedules as needed.

You can also create tailored reports that meet your specific needs by combining different data sets and metrics. This flexibility allows you to focus on the aspects of your business that are most important to you. 

Core use cases of Productive

Here are three main use cases for Productive:

Resource planning

Productive combines resource planning, time tracking, and time off management to help you forecast capacity, balance workloads, and make informed hiring decisions. All while promoting a healthy work-life balance.

In the “Resourcing” tab, you’ll see a visual breakdown of each team member’s availability and utilization per project for the next three, six, or twelve months. You’ll also see if someone’s taking sick leave, vacation days, or time-off. 

So you can allocate work accordingly. 

Want a bird’s-eye view of all ongoing and upcoming projects before allocating resources? Select “Projects” from the “Resourcing” drop-down menu. This layout groups your data by project, rather than people. 

Here, you can quickly understand which projects are underway, who’s assigned to them, and how long they’re expected to run.

This helps you ensure enough resources are allocated to projects so they can be delivered on time and within budget.

Time tracking

Productive offers five main ways to track time:

• Manually logging hours in weekly or daily timesheets 
• Using Productive’s desktop timer
• Creating entries directly from your Google or Outlook calendar
• Starting the timer from directly inside a task
• Pre-scheduling time bookings as you assign tasks to team members
  

As your people log their billable and non-billable hours, Productive updates your profitability and costs in real time.

How?

To start tracking time, team members first need to set their cost rates. This can be structured in ways like monthly or hourly, depending on their roles or the specifics of the project.

Want to see where your people’s time is going? You can access your company timesheets under the “Time” tab.

If a team member has tracked fewer hours than they were scheduled for on a specific day, their time will appear in red. 

You can easily follow up with them to ask about the discrepancy and ensure all time is accounted for accurately.

Once employees submit their timesheets, you can review and approve (or decline) them from the “Approvals” page. Ensuring accurate records for billing, invoicing, and payroll.

Project management

Productive helps operations managers manage resource allocation, utilization, and profitability by consolidating tasks, projects, and even documents on one page.

Your “Projects” page, found under the “Project Management” tab, lists all active or archived projects. 

It also displays key project and financial metrics like hours spent, open revenue, and margin for each one.

Head over to your “Tasks” page to track the progress of each task, organized by project. You can also monitor tasks’ assignees, due dates, and status.

Productive lets you view projects using seven different layouts. Including:

• Gantt view
• List view
• Table view
• Board view
• Calendar view
• Timeline view

This helps you maintain a clear overview of projects, monitor progress effectively, and spot any inefficiencies.

What you’ll love about Productive

Productive lets you manage your work from the prospecting stage to payments using all of its built-in modules. Like “CRM,” “Project Management,” “Resource Planning,” “Time Tracking,” “Reporting,” and “Financials.”

All of these features are included in its pricing plans, no add-ons or third-party tools necessary.

While this can slow down onboarding, Productive users appreciate the fast, efficient, and friendly customer support that helps streamline the process.

Core features of Productive

• Reporting library with over 50 report templates to give you instant access to critical data and analytics
  
• Tasks and projects helping you ensure projects stay on track and within scope
  
• Time-tracking and timesheets to simplify recording work hours and managing payroll accuracy
  
• Sales CRM helps you keep an eye on your funnel and forecast revenue
  
• Financial forecasting to optimize resource allocation, manage financial performance, and enhance profitability
  
• Invoicing created from your tracked time and associated costs to ensure accurate and timely client billing and payments
  
• Resource scheduling and real-time availability forecasting to make sure you have the right people on the right tasks, avoiding overwork or downtime
  
• Automations to reduce manual work and save time on repetitive tasks
  
• Integrations with top tools like Jira, Hubspot, Quickbooks, Xero, and BambooHR

Pricing 

Productive offers four paid plans:

• Essential: $9/month
• Professional: $24/month
• Ultimate: Contact sales for a custom quote
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote

You can try out the tool yourself with a two-week free trial.

5. BigTime

BigTime is a professional services automation (PSA) software that aims to simplify time and expense tracking, resource and project management, and invoicing. 

The tool offers four main report types:

• Time tracking to analyze timesheet data
• Invoicing to review billed and unbilled time, expenses, invoice amounts, and outstanding balances
• Payroll to evaluate staff utilization and team member’s billable time over a specific period
• Task lists to organize projects, including pending and completed tasks

You can toggle between these categories and select the pre-built reports you want from the list. For example, here’s what your “Invoicing” category might look like:

Like Scoro, BigTime allows you to set up custom reports.

You can add columns (like billable vs. non-billable status) and descriptions to your report for added context, but the process isn’t as flexible and intuitive as other tools.

Core use cases of BigTime

Here are three use cases BigTime can help you with:

Project Management

Projects are at the center of all your operations on BigTime. 

Most of the information you enter into the platform, from project budgeting to tracking billable hours, is assigned to a project.

Each project has its own dashboard, which shows key metrics like budget status, project health, and overdue tasks. 

The “Task” tab on your dashboard also includes a Gantt chart to help you see which are on track and spot potential bottlenecks.

Resource management

BigTime’s resource management tools give you visibility into your staff’s utilization and capacity and how it impacts company finances. 

As you track projects, the data feeds into two main reports: 

• “Utilization report” shows you key metrics like your team’s scheduled hours, tracked time, and capacity so you can identify under/over utilization
• “Availability report” gives you a straightforward breakdown of availability across your entire company, teams, or departments over months or weeks
  

Time and expense tracking

BigTime integrates expense and time tracking into a single tab to simplify the process and provide managers with accurate reporting. 

Users can track their hours using timers or manually enter them into their timesheets. 

The timesheet tool then tracks and displays various statuses for each time entry, such as input, billable, billed/invoiced, approved/unapproved/rejected, and posted/unposted. 

This helps you manage employee time, billable hours, and financial reporting more easily.

Finally, BigTime lets team members enter reimbursable/non-reimbursable expenses, expense types (like travel), and billable status.

Once managers or project teams approve the expenses, BigTime can automatically generate your “Project finances” report. 

This helps you monitor costs, ensure spending stays within budget, and identify areas for cost reduction.

What you’ll love about BigTime

BigTime makes tracking time easy for employees while still letting operations and project management teams access detailed time data.

For example, it lets you customize your timesheets by making certain information, like notes, required. 

You can also add additional columns to the table. Like project, task, pay item, and labor code.

This way, you have all the information you need to oversee project efficiency, profitability, and compliance with reporting standards. 

Core features of BigTime

• Projects and tasks break down work into smaller increments, helping teams stay on schedule 
• Dedicated project reports within each project tab keeps your information organized 
• Gantt charts let you visualize project timelines and milestones 
• Invoicing templates and automated invoice reminders help you get paid faster
• Expense tracking lets team members and contractors submit expenses for accurate invoicing and billing   
• Time tracking and timesheets provide detailed insights into where your team’s time goes 
• Custom and standard reporting on metrics like utilization, availability, and finances allow you to see where resources are well-used, identify gaps in scheduling, and manage financial health
• Integrations with your other tools like QuickBooks, Salesforce, Hubspot, Jira, and Lacerte

Pricing

BigTime has four paid plans:

• Essentials: $20 per user per month 
• Advanced: $35 per user per month 
• Premier: $45 per user per month 
• Foresight: Contact sales for pricing 

Choosing the best Kantata alternative

There are many alternatives to Kantata, each with its own unique use cases and specialization.

Scoro is perfect for operations managers who need a single tool to manage all aspects of their companies’ operations. 

Like easily and accurately tracking time, allocating resources, forecasting budgets, handling invoicing, and managing billing processes.

Start your free trial of Scoro today.

If so, you’re not alone. Time tracking tools are essential, no matter how many employees you have. 

Invoicing mistakes can lead to lost revenue and payroll headaches. Even worse, they can cause you to lose clients. 

But what’s the best way for employees to track client hours accurately? 

In this guide, we’ll explain how to keep track of employee hours so you can choose the method that’s best for your business.

The 3 best ways to track employee hours

In our experience helping thousands of businesses improve their time tracking accuracy, we’ve noticed that the tools and methods they use vary significantly depending on the size of their team: 

Let’s dive deeper into these methods and explore how they can benefit your business.

1. Spreadsheets: Best for small teams

For small teams, simplicity and affordability are key. Spreadsheets like Google Sheets or Excel are often the perfect fit for tracking employee hours. 

If you’re leading a small team, you likely appreciate solutions that are:

• Budget-friendly: Spreadsheets are free and readily available, eliminating the need for additional software investments
• User-friendly: Even without technical expertise, you and your team can easily set up and maintain a spreadsheet for tracking hours
• Flexible: Spreadsheets can be customized to your specific needs, whether you’re tracking time for client projects or internal tasks

While spreadsheets may not offer the advanced features of dedicated time tracking tools, they can be a great fit for businesses that bill using flat fees or retainers, where detailed time tracking isn’t always needed for invoicing. 

However, they may not be the most efficient solution for businesses that bill hourly, as they can be prone to manual errors and lack advanced features like automatic time tracking and reporting.

But even if you’re not billing by the hour, tracking time can still give you valuable insights into how your projects are running and how your team is spending their time.

For example, even with fixed fees, understanding how much time you spend on each project helps determine if you’re pricing your services appropriately and identify areas where you can improve efficiency.

Consider using our free project time tracking template to track your employees’ time. It’s pre-formatted and includes helpful formulas for calculating hours spent on client work.

While spreadsheets can be a helpful starting point for managing employee hours, they do have some downsides: 

• Manual data entry: Mistakes happen when entering data by hand, and these errors can affect payroll or client billing. Switching to tools that do the work for you as your team grows is a good idea.
• Lack of automation: Your team has to start and stop timers, which can be challenging for many employees. It can also lead to over- or under-charging clients. 
• Limited scalability: Juggling multiple spreadsheets can get messy and eat up time as your team gets bigger
• Basic reporting: Spreadsheets offer little in the way of fancy reports. Switching to tools that do the work for you can minimize mistakes and enhance productivity.

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2. Time tracking software: Best for growing teams

Your time tracking needs will naturally evolve as your team expands.

Tools like Toggl, Clockify, and Harvest offer a step up from spreadsheets with features like automatic timers, project categorization, and more comprehensive reporting.

Basic time tracking tools are a great fit for teams that bill clients hourly and don’t require the robust project management features offered by more comprehensive software, such as Gantt charts, resource planning, and project budgeting tools.

These tools provide a detailed breakdown of your employees’ time spent on each task or project, making it easy to create accurate invoices and ensure fair payment.

For example, Harvest offers a reporting feature that transforms your time tracking data into valuable insights. 

You’ll learn the total hours spent on each project, the remaining budget, internal costs, and more. 

So you can make more informed decisions about where to allocate budget and which employees to assign to which project.

But, while time tracking tools offer significant advantages over spreadsheets, it’s important to be aware of their limitations.

For example, Cosmonauts & Kings, a consulting firm, found that using Harvest for time tracking required manual data export and import into their billing software. This process was time-consuming and prone to errors, especially when employees updated their time logs.

3. All-in-one project management tools: Best for large teams

As your team expands and projects become more complex, you’ll find that standalone time tracking tools no longer cut it. 

You’ll likely face challenges like:

• Data silos: Time data scattered across different tools, making it hard to get a complete picture of project progress and profitability
• Manual data entry and reconciliation: Wasting valuable time transferring time data between systems, increasing the risk of errors
• Lack of visibility: Difficulty tracking billable hours, project budgets, and individual workloads, leading to missed deadlines and cost overruns

All-in-one project management tools like Monday, ClickUp, and Scoro solve these pain points by integrating time tracking directly into your project workflows. 

This means:

• Centralized time data: All your time entries are in one place, giving you a clear overview of project progress and resource utilization
• Automated time tracking: Eliminate manual data entry with features like automatic timers and timesheet reminders
• Real-time insights: Track billable hours, project budgets, and team capacity in real time, enabling you to make data-driven decisions and course corrections

Scoro is a powerful tool that covers the essentials of time tracking and offers advanced features designed for large teams and projects, such as detailed project budgeting, real-time financial reporting, and resource planning capabilities.

Let’s explore how.

Multiple ways to track time 

Your employees have different work styles and preferences, so when it comes to time tracking, one size doesn’t fit all. 

That’s why Scoro offers multiple ways to log time, allowing your team to choose the method that best suits their workflow and helps them stay productive.

Scoro offers three ways to log time:

• Add a time entry after working on a task: Employees who prefer to focus on their work without interruptions can easily add time entries manually after completing a task or at the end of the day. This flexibility is perfect for larger tasks spanning multiple hours or days.
• Schedule events for automatic tracking: If your team’s work involves a lot of meetings, appointments, or focused work sessions, they can book these events in Scoro’s calendar. The time spent on these scheduled activities will be automatically logged and added to their work reports, eliminating the need for manual time entry.
• Log time as you go: Your team can use the built-in timer in the task view or top menu to track time in real-time as they work. This is ideal for employees who prefer to stay on top of their time tracking throughout the day or for tasks that require continuous focus. Use the timer in the task view or top menu to track real-time time as you work. This is ideal for many small tasks.

For example, one of the quickest ways to log time as you go is to start the time tracker using the stopwatch icon in your site header.

Understand where your employees’ time goes

Scoro also lets you gain insights into team productivity and profitability by tracking time spent on billable vs. non-billable work with the “Detailed work report.”

To do this, head to “Reports” > “Work” > “Detailed” report and choose the period you want to evaluate. Make sure to select completed tasks and events only. 

By categorizing tracked time into billable (client work) and non-billable (internal work) activities:

You can evaluate your team’s time productivity and identify opportunities to reduce non-billable activities.

You can also get an overview of time usage by projects. This view summarizes the time spent on tasks and events linked to specific projects, helping you identify which projects consume the most of your team’s time.

Further Reading: Creating Activity Types in Scoro 

Effortless time billing for client projects

Scoro transforms time tracking into seamless client billing, ensuring you capture every billable minute. 

Here’s how Scoro streamlines the process:

1. Flexible time billing options: Choose the billing method that best suits your project needs:

• Actual duration: Bill clients based on the time spent on project-related activities
• Billable time: Define a specific portion of work as billable, separate from the actual duration, offering greater flexibility

2. Service prices vs. role prices: Choose between billing based on service prices (defined on quotes or product/service rates) or role prices (based on the assigned role’s selling price).

You can choose between role and service prices when estimating the cost of your projects and deciding on pricing.

You can also easily generate invoices directly from your tracked time, eliminating manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.

Tick the relevant time entries in the “Detailed” work report and confirm them with one click, then continue creating an invoice for your customer.

Further Reading: Time Billing in Scoro 

Budget and profitability tracking

This is where Scoro goes from essential to critical. You can use the “Project list” view to get budget and profitability insights about each project.

Think of this view as your mission control for all projects. It gives you a snapshot of each project’s financial health without digging deep into individual reports. 

For instance, a quick glance at the “Labor Cost” column reveals the total cost of your team’s time on each project. 

This is where your time tracking data transforms into crucial financial insights. 

By comparing “Labor Cost” to “Gross Income,” you can instantly gauge the profitability of each project and identify areas where costs exceed expectations.

Additionally, the “Delivery Margin” column, which shows the profitability percentage, quickly indicates how efficiently a project is being run. 

A low delivery margin might signal the need to adjust pricing, reallocate resources, or streamline processes to improve profitability.

Case Study: Agency eliminates unplanned overtime by 100% with time tracking

Bombs Away, a Netherlands-based agency, faced challenges managing projects, tracking time, and analyzing financial data with their previous spreadsheet-based system. 

This disjointed approach led to inefficiencies, employee burnout from excessive overtime, and a lack of visibility into their financial performance.

With Scoro’s precise time tracking capabilities, Bombs Away clearly understood how time was allocated across projects. This insight enabled them to optimize resource allocation, resulting in a 100% reduction in unplanned overtime.

Employees experienced improved work-life balance, and the company saw increased efficiency and profitability.
Check out our case study to learn more.

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Not only is it tedious, but it’s also prone to errors that can mess with your payroll and invoicing.

In this post, we’ll dive into five top-rated time tracking tools that integrate with QuickBooks, saving you time, money, and headaches.

Our pick for time tracking tools that work with Quickbooks

Now, let’s cover each one in more detail.

1. Scoro

Scoro is a powerful work management platform that combines project management, time tracking, billing, and reporting.

If you’re an agency or consultancy looking to streamline your operations and gain a holistic view of your projects, Scoro is your answer. It’s designed for teams that need to manage complex projects, track billable hours, invoice clients, and gain valuable insights into their financial performance.

Here are the key benefits of the Scoro and QuickBooks integration, focusing on how it can streamline your business operations:

• Reduced Errors and Improved Data Integrity: Automate the exchange of invoices, bills, payments, customers, products, and more between Scoro and QuickBooks, minimizing manual errors and ensuring your financial data is accurate.
• Customizable Data Flow Control: Choose between automatic and manual syncing to fit your specific workflow and review processes.
• Simplified Invoicing for Project Teams: Generate invoices directly in Scoro based on tracked time, expenses, and confirmed quotes, eliminating the need for manual reports and back-and-forth communication.
• Deeper Profitability Insights: Gain a detailed understanding of project finances, including cost and time estimates versus actuals, to identify areas for improvement and optimize pricing.
• Streamlined Collaboration Between Departments: Sync invoices and bills seamlessly between project management and accounting teams, reducing communication overhead and improving efficiency.
• Enhanced Visibility for Project Managers: Empower project managers to track payments, monitor project costs, and stay informed of financial progress without relying on separate reports from the accounting team.

Check out Scoro’s knowledge base article to learn more about how the integration works. And here’s the QuickBooks setup guide to get you started.

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Pricing

Scoro offers four paid plans:

• Essential: $26 per user per month
• Standard: $37 per user per month
• Pro: $63 per user per month
• Ultimate: Contact sales for pricing

You can also start with a two-week free trial to test Scoro.

2. Toggl Track

Toggl Track is a simple, user-friendly time tracking tool focusing on intuitive timers and project budget management.

Toggl Track is a time tracking tool designed for individuals and teams who value simplicity and ease of use. If you’re looking for a straightforward way to track billable hours, manage project budgets, and gain insights into your team’s productivity, Toggl Track is an excellent choice. It’s a popular option among freelancers, small businesses, and teams prioritizing intuitive time tracking and reporting.

Toggl Track’s QuickBooks Online integration streamlines your invoicing process, eliminating manual data entry and saving you valuable time.

Key benefits of using the integration include:

• Eliminate manual data entry: No more copying and pasting time entries, reducing errors and saving time.
• Quick invoice generation: Create invoices directly from Toggl Track’s Summary Reports with a single click.
• Streamlined workflow: Seamlessly transfer invoices to QuickBooks Online for further editing and sending.
• Improved accuracy: Ensure accurate billing by eliminating manual data transfer.
• Increased efficiency: Save hours each month on administrative tasks.

Check out Toggl Track’s knowledge base article for more information on their integration.

Pricing

Toggl has four plans, including a free option.

• Free: $0 per user per month
• Starter:  $9 per user per month
• Premium: $18 per user per month
• Enterprise: On request

There is a 30-day free trial.

3. Timely

Timely is an automatic time tracking tool that works silently in the background, capturing every minute you spend on work activities.

If you’re a team leader who wants to understand where time is going and optimize your resource allocation, Timely is a game-changer. It provides detailed insights into project timelines, team productivity, and individual work patterns, empowering you to make data-driven decisions.

Key Benefits of Timely’s QuickBooks Integration:

• Eliminate Underbilling: Prevent revenue loss due to underbilling by ensuring that all billable hours logged in Timely are accurately transferred to QuickBooks invoices.
• Seamless Two-Way Sync: Automatically sync billable hours and invoices between Timely and QuickBooks Online, reducing manual work and ensuring data consistency.
• Effortless Invoice Creation: In Timely, generate invoices for any time period or project and effortlessly sync them to QuickBooks for a streamlined billing process.
• Accurate Project Costing: Track project profitability more effectively by combining Timely’s time tracking data with QuickBooks’ financial information.
• Reduced Operational Overhead: Automate invoicing and payment reconciliation, freeing up valuable time for your team to focus on core tasks.

Check out Timely’s integration page for more information.

Pricing

Timely offers three paid plans:

• Starter: $9 per user per month 
• Premium: $16 per user per month
• Unlimited: $22 per user per month

All plans include a free trial.

4. Clockify

Clockify is a free and versatile time tracking tool that offers time tracking, timesheets, reporting, and basic project management features.

Whether you’re a freelancer looking to track billable hours or a large company managing multiple projects, Clockify’s flexibility and affordability make it a compelling choice. It provides essential time tracking, reporting, and project management capabilities without the hefty price tag.

Clockify’s QuickBooks Online integration seamlessly transfers time-tracking data from Clockify to your QuickBooks Online account.

Key benefits of using the integration include:

• Streamlined Time Tracking & Billing: Effortlessly transfer billable hours from Clockify to QuickBooks Online, eliminating manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.
• Accurate Invoicing: Ensure that your invoices reflect the actual time spent on projects. This will lead to more accurate billing and improved client relationships.
• Project Costing: Track time on specific projects in Clockify and send that data to QuickBooks Online for better project cost analysis and profitability tracking.
• Improved Reporting: Combine time tracking data from Clockify with financial data in QuickBooks Online to generate comprehensive reports on project progress, employee productivity, and overall business performance.
• Simplified Payroll: The integration can help streamline payroll calculations by automatically importing time data for businesses using QuickBooks Online Payroll.

Check out Clockify’s knowledge base article for more information on their integration.

Pricing

Clockify offers a free plan with limited features and four paid plans:

• Basic: $3.99 per user per month 
• Standard: $5.49 per user per month
• Pro: $7.99 per user per month
• Enterprise: $11.99 per user per month 

You can also try out all the Pro features for free for seven days.

5. Buddy Punch

Buddy Punch is a time clock and scheduling software that simplifies employee attendance tracking and payroll processing.

Buddy Punch has your back if you’re a business owner or HR manager who needs to manage hourly employees efficiently. It offers advanced features like GPS tracking, facial recognition, and PTO management, ensuring accurate timekeeping and hassle-free payroll.

Key benefits of Buddy Punch’s QuickBooks Online integration:

• Eliminate Manual Data Entry: Time tracked in Buddy Punch automatically syncs with QuickBooks Online, saving you hours of manual work and reducing errors.
• Accurate Payroll: Ensure accurate payroll calculations with seamless time data transfer, including regular hours, overtime, and PTO.
• Simplified PTO Management: Track employee time off requests and approvals directly in Buddy Punch, automatically syncing with QuickBooks Online for payroll accuracy.
• Streamlined Invoicing: Time tracking data from Buddy Punch can be used for client billing and project costing in QuickBooks Online, simplifying your invoicing process.
• Comprehensive Reporting: Combine Buddy Punch’s time tracking data with QuickBooks Online’s financial data for detailed reports on project progress, employee productivity, and labor costs.

Check out their website for more information on their integration.

Pricing

Buddy Punch offers four paid plans:

• Standard: $3.99 per user per month
• Pro: $4.99 per user per month
• Premium: $6.99 per month
• Enterprise: contact Buddy Punch for more information

All plans include a free trial.

Choosing the right tool for you

The ideal time tracking software for your business depends on several factors, including company size and industry.

Let’s delve deeper:

Company Size:

• Freelancers and Solopreneurs: If you’re flying solo, you might find Toggl Track or the free version of Clockify more than sufficient for your needs. Their simplicity and ease of use make them perfect for tracking billable hours without getting bogged down in complex features.
• Small Teams: Tools like Toggl Track, Timely, or Buddy Punch often balance features and affordability for small teams. They offer collaborative features, project tracking, and reporting options that can scale as your team grows.
• Medium to Large Businesses: For larger organizations with complex needs, platforms like Scoro or the paid versions of Clockify might be a better fit. These tools offer advanced features like resource management, budgeting, and detailed reporting to help you manage multiple projects and teams efficiently.

Industry:

• Growing Agencies and Consultancies: Scoro is specifically designed for these industries, offering features that streamline workflows, such as estimating and budgeting, project templates, client management, detailed reporting, and integrated billing.
• Professional Services With Small Teams: Tools like Timely or Toggl Track are popular among professional services firms. They provide accurate time tracking for billable hours and project-based work.
• Construction and Field Services: with GPS tracking and facial recognition, Buddy Punch is well-suited for industries with field workers. It can help ensure accurate time tracking for employees working at different locations.
• All Industries: Clockify is a versatile tool that can be adapted to various industries. Its flexibility makes it a good choice for businesses with unique time tracking requirements.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution beyond time tracking to manage your entire project lifecycle, we encourage you to try Scoro. With its robust features, seamless QuickBooks Online integration, and focus on agency and consultancy-specific needs, Scoro could be the key to unlocking greater efficiency, profitability, and growth for your business.

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Not only do spreadsheets waste time, but they also waste money: billing errors and limited visibility into resource utilization often result in lost revenue.

In this guide, we’ll look at some of the best time tracking software for consultants to help you ditch the spreadsheets and increase your profit margins.

What makes a good consultant time tracking tool?

A consultant time tracking tool should have the following key features and functionality:

• Multiple ways to track time: The ability to track time via desktop timer apps, mobile apps, offline tracking, time batching, or manual entry.
• Flexible rate setting: You may need to set different hourly rates for different types of work, clients, or team members.
• Utilization & capacity planning: Reports not just on hours worked but on how effectively time is allocated through timesheets.
• Work management integration: Integration with project and work management tools allows time entries to be connected to tracking specific projects, tasks, milestones, etc., giving better visibility into where time is spent.
• Integration with billing/invoicing: The time tracking tool should integrate smoothly with billing and invoicing software. This will help you bill clients easily based on tracked time and agreed-upon rates for either standard clients or retainers.
• Reporting for actionable insights: The ability to create reports on time usage, billable vs. non-billable time, utilization rates, etc. Better data leads to better resource planning.
• Integrations with accounting tools: Seamless connectivity with platforms like QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, and Xero will help streamline your financial workflows.
  

5 Best time tracking software to consider

Here’s our list of some of the best time tracking tools for consultants.

1. Scoro

Scoro is a powerful business consulting software and effective time tracking tool that allows you and your team to have complete control over how time is spent and tracked.

For example, Scoro lets you track time in three ways: in real-time, retroactively, and by scheduling events for automatic time tracking. 

Scoro’s real-time tracker is perfect for accomplishing multiple tasks throughout the day. To access the time tracker, click on the “Tasks” module when you begin working on an assignment. There, you click “Start time tracker” on any task to begin tracking time for it.

Alternatively, you can start a stopwatch from the top menu at any point by clicking on the stopwatch icon and selecting your task.

You can also log time retroactively after a task is complete. To do so, open the relevant task in the Scoro Tasks tab and add a time entry using the Add button.

Or, you can head to your “Timesheet” under the Task module and log time.

This comes in handy if you forget to track your work in real time or would prefer to upload it once you have completed it manually.

Lastly, you can schedule events for automatic time tracking under the Calendar tab. Once a meeting is booked in your Scoro calendar, its duration will be booked and logged once it’s complete—no manual entry is needed. 

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What you’ll love

Scoro makes time-billing seamless with automated invoicing based on tracked employee time. Teams can capture every billable hour worked, ensuring you get paid for all time invested in client projects.

You can choose to approach time-biling in one of two ways: Invoice the customer based on the actual duration of the activities, or use billable time as a separate indicator.

To invoice the customer directly based on time tracked, head to the “Time-billing” tab and toggle the “Bill time tracker entries “button. Scoro then automatically considers the time tracked as billable to the client.

Using billable as an indicator might be a better fit for projects that involve non-billable tasks. 

This allows you to manually determine which time can be billed to the client, and which should not. To do this, toggle “Use billable time” within the same “Time-billing” tab.

You can also use simple time-billing, found under the “Work and projects” tab, then “Activity types.” There, you can select activities to transfer them to an invoice automatically. 

You can click “Add new project,” which will create a new product with the same name as the activity type, or you can click “Choose from existing ones.”

Scoro also lets you create invoices within the “Work” report. You can filter out the relevant activities and tick the ones you would like to compile an invoice for. Once you select the right projects, you can click “Create invoice.”

All of these tools make time tracking and invoicing one seamless process.

Core features of Scoro you’ll like

• Multiple time tracking methods allow you to track time as you work retroactively or schedule it in advance through planned meetings and work sessions.
• Flexible rate setting allows you to set role-based prices, multiple hourly rates for team members, custom billing rates for clients, and more.    
• Utilization & capacity planning allows you to view reports on billable hours, utilization rates, and workload capacity to optimize resource allocation.
• Project management integration connects projects and tasks, providing visibility into where time is being spent.
• Integrations with billing/invoicing tools draw data from time logs to generate invoices.
• Reporting for actionable insights allows you to create custom reports based on time usage, utilization, billable vs non-billable hours, and more. 
• Integrations with accounting tools like QuickBooks Online and Xero seamlessly prevent billing errors. 

Pricing

Scoro has four plans:

• Essential: $26 per user per month 
• Standard: $37 per user per month
• Pro: $63 per user per month 
• Ultimate: Customized enterprise pricing 

You can also try Scoro free for 14 days.

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2. Toggl Track

Toggl Track lets you track “time entries” in multiple different ways: using a running timer, manually, in calendar view, or by adding on to a previous time entry.

The running timer can be turned on at any point and customized to be labeled with a description, specific project, or tag. To turn it on, click the “Play arrow button” in the top right-hand corner within the Timer tab.

Alternatively, you can retroactively enter time entries into the mobile and desktop app by clicking the + button.

You can add and edit existing time entries in the “List” view in just a few clicks. Tick the time entries you’d like to edit and hit “Bulk edit.”

This allows you to choose how to record your working hours and adjust previously logged time when needed.

What you’ll love

Toggl Track is the perfect consultant time tracking software for consultants who need an intuitive way to capture every billable minute across projects.

With Toggl Track, you get a centralized dashboard showing your team’s tracked time data across specific projects.

You can quickly identify budget overages in the “Projects” tab and make resource allocation decisions. 

You can see a high-level overview of total hours logged and compare forecasted hours per project.

In the “Project time tracking chart,” you can view “Total time tracked” (solid green), “Time estimate” line (purple, dashed), “Period end date” (solid purple), and “Trendline” (gray).

The “Project billing amount forecast” shows “Billable amount (solid green), “Cost amount” (light green filled area), “Project Fixed Fee” (purple, dashed), “Period end date” (solid purple), and “Trendline (gray).” 

Core features of Toggl Track you’ll like

• Multiple ways to track time allow you to log time in real time, or retroactively add or edit previously logged time. You can also use Qr codes, automatic time tracking triggers, personal desktop activity tracking, and more.
• Flexible rate setting lets you create custom billable rates and labor costs for accurate invoicing.
• Exportable reports allow you to view time tracked by individual, project, task, or description. You can then create an invoice from the time reports.
• Integrations allow you to track time in 100+ online tools 

Pricing

Toggl Track has three main plans:

• Free
• Starter: $9  per user per month 
• Premium: $18  per user per month 
• Enterprise: customized pricing 

The Premium plan comes with a 30-day free trial.

3. Timely

Timely can passively track activity in calendar apps and documents to log time without manual entry using their tool automatically. Each time entry is called a “Memory.” These are uploaded to a daily timeline inside Timely. 

Each Memory shows you the specific web or desktop app you worked in, with the title of the document or page you visited.

This is ideal if your time tracking must include specific details about the tasks and projects.

You can also drag-and-drop Memories and create and edit time Memories.

Memories can appear as logged and ignored. You can mark “memories” or time spent working on a task or a specific project, or you can ignore or hide them.

This allows you greater control over billable hours that will be invoiced.

What you’ll love

Timely is an automatic time tracking solution that seamlessly records time spent in apps and provides detailed insights into how your team spends its time.

For example, Timely’s “People Dashboard” lets you see your team’s logged time. You can see these hours logged compared to each staff member’s capacity to track potential overages and burnout.  

From here, you can assess whether team members have missing hours or have clocked overtime hours by using the filters “Missing hours”  or “Overtime” ”. 

Then, you can notify groups based on missing hours or overtime by clicking on the bell icon in the top right corner. 

Core features of Timely you’ll like

• Automatic time tracking eliminates manual logging and guarantees accuracy.
• Dashboard visibility into capacity utilization and margins improves overall project success.
• Project- and client-level reporting helps inform billing and resourcing.
• Track billable rates to assess ongoing costs and utilization.
• Assign work hours to team members and log time for others to stay on track.

Pricing

Timely offers several pricing tiers:

• Starter: $9  per user per month 
• Premium: $16  per user per month 
• Unlimited: $22 per user per month 

Timely also offers 14-day free trial.

4. Clockify

Clockify is a 100% free time tracking software built for consultants. It simplifies tracking billable and non-billable time across projects to calculate profitability.

From the main “Dashboard” view, you get a high-level overview of all tracked time data. Here, you can view overall billability per project and individual employee time tracking, cost, and profit.

For an even more detailed view of each individual time tracking, you can assess the “Timesheet,” which shows a live breakdown of time tracked per project.

In this view, you can also retroactively add time for yourself or other team members, depending on permissions. Click “Teammates” in the top right-hand corner to search for a team member. Then, you can manually add time to work on a specific date.

Under the “Reports” tab, you can view time tracked per project, including per-user rates.

This allows you to analyze metrics like billable ratios, utilization rates, and earned revenue. You can also export reports as PDFs or Excel sheets.

What you’ll love

Clockify lets you set both billable and cost rates for each employee. For example, set an employee’s hourly rate to $100/hr. When you track 2 hours on a task and mark it as billable, Clockify will show $200 earned for that entry.

You can set these custom billable rates and cost rates depending on the type of project you’re working on. By heading to “Settings,” you can include this information as well as the name of the project, client, and even sign it a specific color for easy viewing. 

You can then view total billable amounts per project over custom date ranges in Clockify’s reports.

Core features of Clockify you’ll like

• Multiple time tracking modes allow you to track time via manual time entry, timers, online/offline tracking, and integrations with calendar apps like Google and Office 365. 
• Rate setting allows you to define hourly rates for projects
• PM integrations with tools like Asana and Trello allow you to connect time spent to specific tasks  
• Invoicing allows for smooth billing workflows.
• Custom kiosks allow you to clock in remotely, track employee breaks, and view daily activities.  
• Approve and track time off requests, define holidays, and track available days and hours.

Pricing

• Free
• Basic: $3.99 per user/month
• Standard: $5.49 per user/month
• Pro: $7.99 per user/month
• Enterprise: $11.99 per user/month

5. Harvest / Harvest Forecast

Harvest makes it incredibly easy for distributed teams to track time no matter where you’re working.

For example, you can start timers on your mobile devices when meeting clients out of the office. Everything syncs automatically with the web dashboard.

The desktop app runs quietly in the background so you can stay focused and not toggle between apps constantly.

To access this, go to the “Time” tab and click “Timesheet.” Then, click the “Start” button on the specific task you want to track time for. 

What you’ll love

Harvest is a simple and intuitive time tracking software that helps you log and assess hours worked across projects.

The “Team” dashboard provides an at-a-glance view of time logged across team members for custom date ranges. You can easily compare total logged hours with overall team capacity. 

Here, you can also see billable hours worked compared to non-billable time. The dark blue bar shows hours that are billable for a project, while the light blue shows time that is not billable. Plus, the red bar indicates overages so you can respond in real time to time.

You can also drill down into specific projects to assess whether they’re progressing on time by clicking on the “Reports” tab at the top of the dashboard. Here, you can view the total hours tracked, billable vs. nonbillable time, and un-invoiced amount.

Click the “Detailed Time” tab for an even more granular look. You can mark time logged against clients and individual tasks as invoiced or un-invoiced. 

These tools help you stay within budgeted hours and staff capacity and ensure profitability. 

Core features of Harvest you’ll like

• Project management integrations with popular tools like Asana, Trello, Jira, and more prevent you from having to Toggl Tracke separate apps.
• Multiple ways to track time allow you to track working hours however you prefer. 
• Flexible rate setting allows you to set up multiple custom hourly rates that can be applied to different clients, projects, tasks, team members, etc.
• Project management integrations with tools like Asana, Trello, and Basecamp allow you to remain on task.
• Reporting for actionable insights allows you to assess time usage, utilization rates, profitability, and more.
• Integrations with accounting tools allow for smooth communication between accounting platforms like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Sage Intacct.

Pricing

Harvest has two plans:

• Free
• Harvest Pro: $10.80 per user per month

The Harvest Pro plan offers a 30-day free trial.

What’s your time tracking tool?

The best consulting time tracking software helps you stay on track of billable and nonbillable time, accurately invoice clients, manage projects, and ensure success. 

Unlike other platforms, Scoro is an all-in-one time tracking tool that allows teams to track time in multiple ways, set custom rates and capacity plans, and ensure profitability across all projects. 

Sign up for Scoro’s free trial to check it out—no credit card required.

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That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the seven best timesheet software for employees.

Our pick for the best online timesheet software

Now, let’s cover each one in more detail.

1. Scoro

Scoro is an end-to-end work management tool that gives professional services teams real-time visibility into time spent and project costs to maximize profit margins. 

Its simple-to-use timesheet makes time tracking and meeting essential project KPIs effortless for project teams and managers. 

To get started with timesheets with Scoro, navigate to the “Tasks” tab and select “Timesheet.”

To log time under an existing task, all you need to do is enter the numbers in the corresponding slots and press Enter.

Do you prefer to log time as you work or schedule a time block in your calendar in advance? 

With Scoro, you can track time as it happens and schedule blocks of time for recurring tasks.

However you and your team choose to track your hours, the time entries are instantly reflected in the timesheets.

As you do this, you’ll notice the progress bar at the top of each day changing to reflect the status of each task.

These bars highlight your team’s capacity throughout the week and make capacity, utilization, and overtime visible through intuitive color coding.

• Yellow sections represent hours scheduled but not yet completed for each day. As tasks are worked, yellow turns to blue
  
• Blue indicates logged time entries marked as done—aka worked hours now in the books
• Red means overscheduled capacity based on scheduled vs logged hours

As you scroll through your task list and log new entries, the total bar fixed to the right provides an at-a-glance view of hours remaining and overtime accrued.

Seeing this workload distribution and overtime alerts you to over-allocation early, allowing for proactive workload rebalancing.

With Scoro, you can also lock time sheets to ensure more accurate reporting and invoicing. For example, a sales manager could submit their hours at the end of the week, and then the head of sales can review and lock them to prevent further edits.

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What you’ll love

Scoro timesheets make it easy for team members to log time and for managers to get an overview. However, Scoro’s strength lies in aggregating that data into powerful reports.

For example, the “Summary work report” feature, which you can find under “Reports,” gives you an overview of how much work has been done.

You can see a breakdown of all hours logged by each team member, the time spent on various activity types, and the division between billable and non-billable hours for projects.

The “Detailed report” gives a complete breakdown of all the events in the calendar and all the tasks marked as done (or a time entry under a task marked as done) during the selected period.

This allows you to analyze and evaluate your team’s time usage in countless ways.

Let’s say you want to drill down into project efficiency. 

You can use the work report to compare the planned time vs. actual time spent on a project, providing insight into the accuracy of your scope estimation for your employees and clients.

Alternatively, if you’re aiming to enhance productivity, you can analyze the time data to pinpoint which tasks are taking longer than expected

For example, you can spot who’s regularly going over their planned time, showing who’s efficient and who might need help with their workload management.

Finally, you can customize the view to highlight only the information you need by adding columns like “Project deadline,” “Estimated duration,” “Total to do,” “Total done,” and “Progress.” 

Logged hours in Scoro automatically feed into the reports and dashboards as your team works. No exporting, uploading, or compiling disconnected spreadsheets is needed!

Core features of Scoro you’ll like

The basic time tracking features of Scoro include:

• Three-time tracking options, including real-time, retrospective, and automatic tracking for more accurate timesheets
• Time locking to confirm and lock submitted timesheets, preventing employees from modifying the records, helping you prevent errors in invoicing and reporting
• Billable vs non-billable hours tracking lets you differentiate between client and internal work, so you can track profitability and team productivity better
  
• Role-based pricing so you can set different hourly rates for team members, ensuring accurate billing for each person’s work
• Automated invoicing based on time spent and costs incurred
• Expense tracking to track purchase orders and supplier bills
• Integrations with accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage and calendar tools like Google Calendar
• 50+ report templates covering productivity, utilization, revenue, cost, profitability, and sales

Pricing

Scoro offers four paid plans:

1. Essential: $26 per user per month
2. Standard: $37 per user per month
3. Pro: $63 per user per month
4. Ultimate: Contact sales for pricing
   

You can also start with a two-week free trial to test Scoro.

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2. Clockify

Clockify is a free time tracking software with a straightforward and user-friendly timesheet to track employee time.

To set up timesheets, you need to create a project first. All you have to do is input the project name and, optionally, assign it to a client for more accurate billable hours tracking.

Next, under the “Timesheets” tab, click “+ Select project” and select your new project from the list. 

Now, you can manually enter your daily hours on that project.

Team members can copy last week’s timesheets for recurring tasks or save their current timesheets as a template for future entries.

Do you prefer just to track time as you go? 

You can use Clockify’s “Time Tracker” to record your hours as you work. Your time entries will automatically get added to your timesheets.

When the timesheet is ready, employees can submit it to their managers or the workspace admin for approval. While the approval is pending, people can still change their time entries.

But once you approve a timesheet, the entries are permanently locked, so no one can make further edits. Not even admins.

You can also lock timesheets manually on Clockify so team members can’t make any retroactive changes past a certain date. 

This keeps your records accurate and reliable to keep your billing consistent and ensure accurate data across different systems.

What you’ll love

Clockify’s “Reports” feature uses the information from your timesheets to create basic reports that help you understand how your people spend their time.

You can view your information by billability or project. It shows your team’s top activities, time spent on each, and all the unique projects they’ve worked on.

The “Reporting” feature in Clockify might not delve as deep as some more advanced timesheet tools. But it gives you the essentials of your time data to plan work and manage expenses more effectively. 

The whole platform has a low learning curve, so you don’t have to spend more time mastering the tool than you do on revenue-generating work.

Core features of Clockify you’ll like

• Automatic time-locking secures your timesheets and saves you time by allowing for scheduled time-locking 
  
• Timesheet templates let team members load common activities each week so they don’t get bogged down by manual time entries
  
• Tracking alerts let you know if a team member has logged too much or too little time so you can keep everyone’s work hours on track
  
• Audit trail gives you a written record of all the changes made to timesheets so you can maintain record transparency for audits and reviews
  
• Automatic reminders to let your people know to log, submit, and approve time
• Integrations with over 80 web apps so you can connect Clockify to all your tools

Pricing

Clockify offers a free plan with limited features and four paid plans:

• Basic: $3.99 per user per month 
• Standard: $5.49 per user per month
• Pro: $7.99 per user per month
• Enterprise: $11.99 per user per month 

You can also try out all the Pro features for free for seven days.

3. Myhours

Myhours is a flexible time billing software designed for teams to automate employee timesheets, analyze project costs and time, and manage team productivity.

The timesheet dashboard has two main views, the “Weekly view” and the “Daily view,” which cater to different tracking needs.

When you sign up, Myhours takes you to your timesheet’s “Weekly view” by default.

Here, you can manually input your hours for each client, project, and task, giving you flexibility in managing your time entries.

To access the “Daily view,” select “Daily view” from the top-right-hand corner.

In this view, you can track your hours in real-time as you work, ensuring the most accurate logging. Just select the “Start” button for quick tracking.

If you want to add log details before you start tracking, click the “Add time log” button. You can write a description, add a tag, or input an expense amount. 

The data you input in your timesheets then feeds into detailed analytics.

The “Timesheet” report organizes your time-tracking data in a table grid for easy overview and analysis:

Under “Settings,” you can display more columns like total costs, billable amount, and project budget in your report.

This makes it easier to dig deeper into how money and time are spent on each job or client. This will allow you to identify which activities consume more resources than expected and adjust your project strategy and resource allocation accordingly.

The “Economy” report, available only on the Pro plan, clearly compares your labor expenses with your billed earnings.

It also presents five key financial metrics, including total costs and balance, highlighting areas affecting your bottom line.

This report lets you understand whether projects, clients, or tasks are constantly generating loss or profit. So you know what to change to maintain profitability.

Finally, the “Detailed” report shows you all the time data you and your team recorded within your chosen period. All the way down to the log descriptions.

You’ll also see the total hours and billable amount for each project per day, per team member. 

Like with the “Timesheets” report, you can customize the detail level and columns within this report. So you’re sure that nothing falls through the cracks when it’s time for invoicing or performance reviews.

What you’ll love

What sets Myhours apart is its comprehensive billable settings. 

It lets you set individual rates for each team member, project, or task. This is especially useful if you regularly work with contractors.

You can get incredibly specific here, ensuring your timesheets and client billings are as precise as possible. 

For example, if you work with employees and contractors on the same project, Myhours lets you set different rates for each. 

Say your employees’ rates are $50/hour and contractors at $70/hour. With Myhours, you can apply these different rates within the same project.

Core features of Myhours you’ll like

• Detailed timesheet reports filtered by team member, client, project, or task for a more in-depth logged time view
• Timesheet approvals so you can review and approve (or reject) team time sheets with pending/approved/rejected status filters
• Time locking to prevent inconsistent reporting
• Billing rates per client, team member, project, and task for more accurate invoicing and reports
• Favorite time logs to simplify tracking time for recurring tasks 
• Timeline view on daily timesheet views to help you visualize your working day and quickly notice any gaps in tracked hours

Pricing

Myhours is free to teams of up to five users and offers one paid plan:

• Pro: $8 per user per month

You can try out all the Pro features for free for 14 days.

4. Jibble

Jibble is a free timesheet management system that can be used to track employee time. But it’s unique in that it also supports teams that require on-the-ground presence, like construction crews, restaurant employees, or healthcare workers.

The tool provides daily, weekly, and monthly team timesheet views. When you start, Jibble automatically takes you to the “Weekly Timesheets” view within the “Timesheets” tab.

Here, you can see the daily work hours for each team member during the week, with their weekly totals at the end of each row.

If workers log overtime, their daily hours appear red, making it easy to spot and manage extra hours worked.

You can toggle to your “Daily Timesheets” view for a comprehensive breakdown of each day’s activities.

Click “Weekly Timesheets” and select “Daily Timesheets” from the drop-down menu.

Want to get even more granular? Click on their daily time entry to view their tracked hours, payroll hours, breaks, and activities, all at a glance.

The monthly view, on the other hand, offers a color-coded summary of time-related data. The shades of blue indicate the amount of work done each day. The darker the blue, the more hours logged.

This visual cue helps you quickly gauge who’s been busiest over the month.

If you need to review overall time management, head to the “Reports” tab for basic insights on how your team tracks time, breaking it down by activities, projects, or clients.

The timesheet data you gather on Jibble isn’t as detailed as what you might find on other tools like Scoro or Myhours. 

But you can still easily filter this information by locations, schedules, and activities for a clearer view of where and how your team spends their time. 

This kind of insight can come in handy for coordinating on-site work and keeping track of hours for different jobs or clients.

What you’ll love

What Jibble lacks in extensive reporting, it makes up for with its granular time tracking settings. 

The paid plans of this timesheet management tool allow you to set up multiple custom rules for overtime, breaks, and even specific pay period settings.

You can even distinguish between tracked hours and payroll hours in Jibble. You can make your payroll hours the same as tracked hours or adjust them based on your customized settings.

This means more accurate timesheets and payroll.

Core features of Jibble you’ll like 

• Live location tracking to view your workers’ traveled routes in real time while on the clock so you ensure they are where they need to be for each job
• Timesheet approval and locking are available on paid plans to maintain accuracy and prevent after-the-fact changes to logged hours
• The ability to clock in and out from any device or tool, including mobile, tablet, or via Jibble’s Microsoft Teams and Slack bot
• Main dashboard with a detailed tracked hours chart, who’s in/out widget, and location markets for better visibility 

Pricing

Jibble’s timesheets and time-tracking features are free for unlimited users. The tool offers three paid plans with more advanced features:

• Premium: $2.49 per user per month 
• Ultimate: $4.99 per user per month
• Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing

You can try out all the paid features for free for 14 days.

5. Everhour

Everhour is a time tracking tool for employees that can be used as a simple standalone solution, or integrated into your current project management tool.

When you start using Everhour, the tool prompts you to set up your first project, client, and associated tasks.

This hands-on approach means you get set up immediately and don’t need to navigate the tool to find your starting point.

As you set up your first project, you can mark it as billable, add an hourly rate, and even set a budget.

This is handy for monitoring your project’s financial health from the start. 

You can log your hours under the “Time” tab. There are three ways to do this:

• Select “Start timer” to track your work in real-time
• Input your hours into the corresponding cells

Click “Add time” under your week’s timesheet for a more detailed entry.

As you track your team’s time, you can directly relate it to your budget, seeing if you’re spending more hours than planned and need to adjust your strategy or if you’re right on track.

Everhour’s “Time” section combines your personal timesheets and time tracker widgets in the same view. Your people can also see the status of their timesheets, whether approved or pending, right at the top. 

On the other hand, the “Timesheets” menu of your “Team” tab shows you the total project hours of your entire organization.

You can filter your results by approval status, team groups like HR or Operations, and single team members.

Once you’ve sorted your timesheets, you can access granular data on key metrics like time and budget, working hours per week, and average project time under the “Reports” tab.

The tool offers six report dashboards tailored for various project and team management aspects.

These pre-made dashboards include:

• “Projects Budget” lets you quickly check the progress of your projects’ budgets, how much is spent, and how much is remaining
• “Projects Costing” compares each project’s billable amount with its labor costs so you always know what a client owes you, what you owe your employees, and how much profit you’re making
  
• “Team hours” showcases project and time off hours, overtime tracking, and an allocation bar for quick visualization of each person’s capacity
• “Billability vs. Utilization” shows you how much of each employee’s time is being utilized, along with the costs and profits associated with their work
• “Payroll” gives you a breakdown of your people’s regular and overtime hours, time off, and gross pay
• “Clients Profitability” compares the amount you bill clients for in each period with its costs so you know which clients are profitable and which ones aren’t
  

And if you need something more specific, Everhour lets you create your own custom reports, giving you total control over how you view and interpret your team’s data.

For example, you could create a “Project milestone report” and view your remaining time budget per each workflow stage.

What you’ll love

Everhour takes your timesheet data and gives detailed insights into client billing and project profitability. So, you know exactly how your time investments translate into financial outcomes.

For example, the “Clients” page groups multiple projects under a single client, giving you a centralized view of the remaining overall budget and a summary of pending invoices.

The “Projects” page goes more in-depth, offering insights into each individual project.

Here, you can see who’s working on what, the billing methods for each project, and how much of the budget has been utilized, making it easier to manage multiple projects and their costs.

Core features of Everhour you’ll like

• Ability to track time off and automatically integrate it with timesheets for better resource allocation and more accurate payroll
  
• Time estimates for each project and individual team members so you can see the time spent and what’s left
  
• Timesheet approval in a unified dashboard for more accurate records
  
• Automatic reminders to inform employees of long-running timers or remind them to track time
• Auto-stop timer so you can set timers to stop at the end of the workday and prevent over-tracking of hours
• Browser extension to track time from your browser with a single click
• Time logs for keeping accurate records of changes and estimates made to task times

Pricing

Everhour is free for teams of up to five people. It offers one paid plan:

• Team: $8.50 per user per month

6. Accelo

Accelo is a work management platform for professional services businesses. It aims to be an all-in-one system and offers billing, project management, and even retainer management.

On the “Time” page, you can log your hours, see your daily and weekly timesheets, and get an overview of your time.

Accelo offers an automatic time capture feature to help team members create more accurate timesheets.

Let’s say you’ve assigned a task with a two-hour budget to a team member, set to start on June 2.

In Accelo, this task will automatically appear in their “Weekly” timesheet view. This feature streamlines time tracking for your team, ensuring the task is front and center right when it’s scheduled to begin.

This feature includes email and meeting capture, automatically logging time spent on client communication and scheduled appointments. 

You can also track your time manually in your “Weekly” timesheet view.

Here, you’ll also see your total hours for each day and task.

Your “Timesheet Overview” shows all the hours tracked for your chosen period, including the company and activity details, billable and non-billable time amount, and the corresponding cost.

By default, account administrators can view the total hours tracked across the entire organization, broken down by company and activity, offering a broad perspective on time utilization.

This helps you keep tabs on overall productivity and resource allocation.

What you’ll love

Accelo aggregates your time data to create comprehensive reports on logged time, expenses, and overall team performance metrics for each project.

This information is in the “Insights” tab under a project.

Core features of Accelo you’ll like

• Detailed time entry mode to prompt users to fill in detailed time logs, giving you a clearer picture of how time is being spent on tasks
• Automatic time capture for more accurate tracking of time spent on emails, messages, and calls
• Advanced time rounding rules so you can bill more accurately
• Timers and stopwatch warnings so employees don’t overtrack or forget to log their hours
  

Pricing

Accelo offers four paid plans:

• Professional: $50 per user per month (minimum seven users)
• Business: $70 per user per month (minimum seven users)
• Advanced: $90 per user per month (minimum 10 users)
• Elite: Contact sales for pricing

A seven-day free trial is available.

7. Hive

Hive is a project management software with a built-in timesheet system to help your team stay organized while you track your work.

To start logging your hours and accessing your timesheets, you’ll have to enable the “Time-tracking” and “Timesheets” functions from the “Apps” page.

You can record your hours automatically using the time recorder in each action card or task when you’re done. 

You can find your tasks under the “Projects” dashboard.

Open the action card you’re working on and click the “Record” button to log your time.

You can also retrospectively add your hours to each task by clicking “Add time.”

From there, you can set a date, select the person you’re logging the hours for, choose a time category, and even add a task description.

The time you record gets automatically logged into timesheets. 

You can find your timesheets on the “Time” page under the “Timesheet” tab.

To add a new time entry directly from your timesheet, click “+ Add time” and select your project from the drop-down menu.

Next, you can input the number of hours you’ve worked on each project into the cells for the relevant days.

You’ll see the total of your project hours under the “Total” column on the right.

The number on the left of the “/” is the amount you’ve tracked, while the number on the right is the estimated hours. 

Having this comparison laid out visually on each row helps you easily see if you’re on track or overworking.

What you’ll love

On Hive, you can view your time tracking and timesheet analytics from the tab you use to manage each workflow.

To access your timesheet reporting, click the clipboard icon on your “Timesheet” top right-hand side. Then, select “Reporting.”

Here, you can configure your data only to view information for a specific frequency, time period, and key metrics like hours, billable amounts, and utilization rates.

You can even filter the information by user, timesheet approval status, and task category.

So, for example, if you’re a project manager, you might set up a bi-weekly report to track the billable hours logged by each team member. 

This way, you can quickly ensure that all client work is accurately invoiced and team members aren’t exceeding their allocated hours.

You can enable the premium “Hive Analytics” add-on for more in-depth time reports from your “Apps” page.

The “Time Analytics” folder gives you four unique dashboards:

• Timesheet Overview offers a detailed view of timesheet approval and submission status by user, hours logged by team members, and total project hours recorded
• Resourcing Overview presents a breakdown of the total hours and time-off, resourced by each employee as well as a summary of each person’s utilization
• Time-tracking Overview shows you key metrics like total hours tracked and estimated, users tracking time, hours tracked per project, and estimated hours per project
• Utilization report includes in-depth information on both estimated and actual utilization data, in addition to remaining availability and how many hours people are from their targets

Core features of Hive you’ll like

• Dedicated timesheets reporting for quick overviews of time allocation across projects and tasks
• In-depth time reporting for comprehensive information on each member’s hours, utilization, and distance from targets
• Timesheet approval to ensure all logged hours are reviewed and authorized before being finalized
  
• Timesheets approvals log for tracking the approval status of timesheets, adding an extra layer of accountability and transparency to time management
• Timesheets autofill to automatically record hours for faster timesheet completion, reducing manual entry errors and saving time

Pricing

Hive offers a free plan and three paid plans:

• Starter: $5 per user per month
• Teams: $12 per user per month
• Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing

Pick your timesheet tool

These timesheet tools have some features in common, like flexible timesheet views, basic time reporting, and timesheet approval and locking functions.

But not all of them will give you everything you need to boost profitability, standardize operations, and optimize team utilization in a single cohesive platform.

Scoro’s agency and consultancy management software is designed to provide complete visibility across projects, finances, and resources.

It’s an all-in-one solution, not just another siloed tool in your stack.

To really see its impact, why not give it a whirl? Test Scoro with a free trial—no credit card or strings attached.

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Are you still juggling all of that in spreadsheets? 

Because if so, you deserve better. 

A capacity planning tool can help you accurately predict project volume, understand utilization and capacity, and optimize resources. 

Which tool is right for you? We’ve tested some of the top tools and are here to show you the best.

What is a capacity planning tool?

A capacity planning tool is software that helps businesses forecast future resource needs and plan to have enough capacity to meet demand.

Capacity management software will help you:

• Predict client demand and project volume in the future (e.g. forecasting you will take on X number of new projects next quarter)
• Assess if you have enough team members, consultants, creative resources, and support bandwidth to handle the predicted workload
• Continuously monitor workloads and adjust consulting/creative/support resources needed as client demand fluctuates
• Make informed staffing, hiring, and subcontracting decisions to scale up or down to meet demand

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Features to look for when researching capacity planning tools

This will depend on your needs. Generally, consultants should consider the following criteria when choosing the best project management software:

• Resource forecasting: Ability to predict future workload and resource needs driven by historical data
• Capacity analysis: Identify gaps where demand exceeds available capacity
• Utilization tracking and optimization: Visibility into resource utilization rates to identify bottlenecks
• Reporting: Visual dashboards and views comparing capacity to demand forecasts.
• Integrations: Connectors to client management, documentation, and financial tools commonly used by consultancies

7 capacity planning tools to consider

Let’s take a look at some of the best tools for capacity planning.

1. Scoro 

Scoro is an all-in-one professional services automation platform with robust resource management and capacity planning capabilities.

Central to workload optimization is Scoro’s “Planner “tool for distributing tasks across teams based on availability and utilization rates.

The “Planner” provides an overview of your team’s schedules, availability, and capacity to easily assign work and balance utilization. Toggle between “Days,” “Weeks,” and “Months” views to understand how your team’s capacity develops over the long term. 

It is divided into two sections – unassigned tasks on the left panel and a calendar view of your team’s schedules on the right.

Assigning tasks on the Planner view is as easy as dragging and dropping the tasks from the unassigned panel onto a team member’s schedule. Break the tasks into as many chunks as needed and create a lot of granularity, or stick with high-level planning for ongoing retainers. 

A progress circle around each user’s profile photo gives an at-a-glance look at their current availability, ensuring you always have a clear picture of current and future team capacity.  

Filters allow capacity analysis by the user, skill set, project types, or other attributes. With user tags, you can filter for specific skills to assign work accordingly.

Scoro’s dedicated “Utilization report” compares historical and projected workloads over custom periods like days, weeks, or months to forecast upcoming demand versus capacity.

The “Utilization report” uses color coding and progress bars to indicate over- and under-utilization rates for easy visibility into current and future gaps.

It incorporates a demand forecast based on task timelines to provide visibility into potential future utilization. 

Filter the granular view by time, users, projects, and other attributes to analyze where capacity falls short of demand.

Sorting by skill set allows you to see if you can re-allocate work from over-utilized team members to similar team members with availability. If not, you can make smart hiring decisions based on actual or forecasted needs. 

With reporting for capacity and utilization for historical and current data and future forecasting, you have everything you need to make smarter, data-driven decisions about project volume, team bandwidth, hiring, and more.

What you’ll love

Scoro’s “Reports Library” has everything you need to address overservicing, low profit margins, and poor resource allocation. 

Operations managers will love the “Detailed” work report. This report allows you to drill down further into resource utilization and efficiency. 

To see utilization details, go to “View” and then check the box for “% of utilization.” Then, group the list of work by “Weeks” or “Months.” Finally, set your secondary grouping option to “Users.” 

You’ll be able to see all of your team members and their weekly utilization calculated based on tracked hours vs. available hours. 

This makes it easy to see who’s overworked and who’s underutilized. You can also add filters to see utilization percentages for billable vs. non-billable tasks to ensure your team’s time is going toward the highest profitability tasks. 

Or group by “Users” and then “Activity Types” to drill down even further into exactly where each team member is spending their time.

You’ll also find report templates for: 

• Time usage by project
• Profitability by project or client 
• Margin by project  
• Pipeline forecast by upcoming months
• Team availability by upcoming months 

You can also build your own dashboards. feat. CEO Attila Probáld said that before Scoro, “we tracked revenue, cost, and margin. Now, we track much more data and can easily create dashboards and forecasts depending on our needs — almost everything is measurable!” 

As a result, they were able to grow their agency from €0 to €550k while saving an hour per day per employee on internal work.

For example, here’s what Scoro’s default CEO dashboard looks like:

Core features 

• Resource planning tools allow you to understand resource needs and optimize utilization now and in the future
• Utilization reports and metrics show you exactly who needs more work, who’s overworked, and when future capacity gaps might occur  
• Utilization forecasting helps you estimate future utilization, letting you know when you should take on additional projects
• Time tracking provides accurate insight into where your team’s time actually goes for more accurate forecasting and profitability reporting
• Real-time reporting keeps your team productive and profitable to understand capacity, optimization, and more
• Integrations with other communication, documentation, CRM, and financial tools ensure everything stays aligned and up-to-date

Pricing

Scoro has four plans:

• Essential: $26 per user per month 
• Standard: $37 per user per month
• Pro: $63 per user per month 
• Ultimate: customized enterprise pricing 

You can try Scoro free for 14 days.

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2. ResourceGuru 

ResourceGuru offers visual and easy-to-use capacity planning and resource management tools to help you monitor your team’s availability, utilization, and optimization. 

From the “Schedule” view, get at-a-glance visibility into your team’s workloads. Each team member has their own row where you can quickly monitor or adjust upcoming work. 

The thin green or red capacity bars at the top of each column show who’s overbooked (red) and who has more capacity (green).

From here, you can easily understand your team’s long-term capacity, allowing you to quickly assess workloads and adjust projects as needed. 

When forecasting upcoming projects, the “Schedule” also makes it easy to assess which resources may be available for upcoming projects — or when you might need to hire. 

Use the “Search or filter” bar in the left-hand column and choose “People.” Then add filters based on department, job title, location, skills, and more to find the right resources for the job. 

The “Schedule” view will automatically remove anyone who doesn’t meet the criteria, so you can see who’s available and when.

This makes planning future work easier and efficiently ensures optimal resource allocation.

What you’ll love

ResourceGuru shines in its reporting features. Its powerful reporting tools help you quickly analyze total team utilization, scheduled time, and availability metrics. 

Start in the “Resources” tab of the “Reports” view. At the top, you’ll find high-level metrics. Below, see these metrics broken down by resource to understand who’s fully booked and who might need more work.

You can also use the “Filters” function to drill down into capacity of certain teams or job types. This can make it easier to see which teams need the most support, and where you might need to hire next.

Core features 

• Project forecasting reports allow you to predict volume and resource capacity accurately 

• Visual resource scheduler gives a birds-eye view of your team, projects, and capacity

• Clash management and waiting list features prevent overscheduling and improve gap and capacity analysis

• Centralized resource pool makes it easy to find the right person for the job — and keep your favorite freelancers on speed dial

Pricing

Resource Guru has three paid plans:

• Grasshopper: $5 per person per month
• Blackbelt: $8 per person per month
• Master: $12 per person per month

A 30-day free trial is available.

3. Productive 

Productive is an all-in-one agency management software that provides resource capacity planning tools to manage current and future work.  

The “Resourcing” view is your high-level dashboard to understand what’s taking up your team’s time. 

Zoom in or out on your timeline for weekly or monthly views. Use the arrows to see the current timeframe or look into the future. 

Availability indicators at the top of each team member’s row show you the total number of hours booked for each day, plus a completion bar demonstrating their utilization. If a team member is overbooked, their availability indicator turns red. 

From here, see at a glance what workloads look like and what your team’s capacity is for new projects is both now, next, week, next month, and even months into the future. 

You can get more data from this view by customizing your “Fields.” 

In the view header, go to the “Fields” dropdown. Select from dozens of additional data sets to add to this view, such as: 

• Availability
• Scheduled
• % Billable / Worked Hours
• Cost 
• Overtime 
• Tentative Schedule 
• and more

Use the “Fields date range” to see this data calculated for the current week, month, or any custom date range you choose. 

Time allocations and long-term capacity planning all in one place make it easy to conduct a gap analysis, optimize your resources, and ensure you always have the right staffing level for upcoming projects.

What you’ll love

The “Reports Library” in Productive allows teams to manage demand forecasting, utilization optimization, and long-term capacity planning. 

For example, look at the “Forecasted billable utilization by month” report. 

The chart shows your team’s utilization as a graph, with the percentage of utilization shown along the left-hand side. Below, you can see how much available time your team has compared with the amount of scheduled client work, sorted by month. 

With forecasted utilization, you can take action before a problem begins. Click on an overscheduled month to see which team members are over capacity or which projects are being overserviced. 

You can also view by “Placeholders” to see how much upcoming work has yet to be assigned to an available team member. 

As a result, you can make informed hiring decisions based on true demand, accurately analyze gaps, and ensure team members are being adequately utilized.

Core features 

• Capacity heatmaps show you exactly who’s available and what everyone’s workload looks like 
• Future forecasting tools allow you to monitor resource allocations for upcoming work and ensure the needed coverage
• Placeholders let you scenario plan and make better hiring decisions 
• Automations help optimize workflows and automatically keep team members in the loop
• Reporting library with 50+ templates puts data behind all of your decisions

4. Float

Float offers a simple, visual solution to resource and capacity planning all from one dashboard, the “Project Plan.” 

On the “Project Plan,” you get a Gantt-chart-style project tracker, broken down by tasks assigned to each team member. From the same view, you can also see everyone’s workload and overall capacity. 

The colored boxes on the Gantt chart view show everyone’s workload or time off. Larger project phases are shown across the top row, while individual tasks and assignments are displayed in the column of each team member.

To see team member’s overall capacity, click and drag over any date range in the calendar or use the date range dropdown in the left sidebar. 

Then, use the toggle to select “Show utilization in hours” or “Show utilization in %.” to see their capacity.

Sort your results by “Unscheduled Time,” “Role,” or “Department” to see who’s taking on too much and who you can reallocate project tasks to. Drag-and-drop tasks to reassign them, and keep your projects moving forward while optimizing team member utilization.

What you’ll love

Float’s “People” report is perfect for operations managers who need to drill down into their team’s utilization, forecast overservicing, and better understand capacity. 

You’ll find it in the “Report” section — toggle to “People.” 

From here, you’ll see a bar chart showing your team’s total capacity, scheduled work by billable and non-billable time, tentative projects, time off, and more. 

When you’re ready to zoom in on this data, you can see these details broken down by individual employees, departments, projects, and more in the table below.

This table gives you insight into the following: 

• Individual capacity 
• Scheduled hours
• Billable vs. non-billable tracked time
• Time off for the given period 
• Overtime worked
• Scheduled hours/capacity 
• Utilization % 

With both high-level and detailed data in one view, you can quickly assess capacity, optimization, overscheduling, and more.

Core features 

• Custom work hours and billable rates help you understand each person’s capacity — even if they’re all different
• Time tracking lets you monitor budget, scheduled vs. logged hours, and workload in real-time
• Tentative tasks and placeholder roles to see the impact of every possible scenario
• Reporting gives you data into forecasted capacity and profitability based on project budgets
• Searchable team member profiles detailing skills, experience, job title, and more allow you to allocate resources effectively

Pricing

Float has three pricing plans: 

• Starter: $6 per user per month 
• Pro: $10 per user per month 
• Enterprise: custom pricing available based on needs

Float offers a 30-day free trial of either of their paid plans.

5. Runn

Runn is a resource capacity planning software designed for teams who need built-in scenario planning and powerful forecasting features. 

The “People Planner” dashboard shows your entire team’s availability and utilization, allowing you to assess your capacity for upcoming projects and balance workloads quickly. 

You’ll see every team member as a column across a timeline view from here. You’ll be able to see at a glance whether a given team member is at capacity, overscheduled, or has availability — and if so, when and how much.

These at-a-glance details allow you to monitor upcoming utilization and prevent bottlenecks. 

Runn also allows you to forecast how different versions of upcoming projects might impact your team’s workload and utilization. 

From the “Project” planner, you can create a tentative project coming down the pipeline or even multiple versions with different scopes or start dates. Once you’ve added your tentative projects, turn on “Charts.” 

Then, turn on the “Tentative” toggle in the header to see the impact of all your tentative projects, or toggle them on and off individually from the project row to see how different scenarios will impact your team.

From here, it’s a snap to see how projects coming down the pipeline will impact your team’s workload and utilization. Use this data to see when to hire additional support, which new projects to take on, and to identify capacity gaps as projects are confirmed.

What you’ll love

A key feature of Runn is the ability to forecast future hiring needs accurately through “Placeholders.” 

These allow you to see combined future resource needs that have yet to be assigned, letting you make informed staffing, hiring, or subcontracting decisions to meet demand. 

When looking at future capacity and workload in the “People Planner”, see how much of the scheduled work is assigned to “Placeholders,” which either needs to be re-assigned or hired for. 

To forecast future hiring needs, toggle on “Weekly Summary,” then filter by “Person Type: Placeholders.” 

The Placeholder group capacity bar will then show the number of FTE required for each week to manage your upcoming work.

With this view, you’ll have concrete data on exactly who you need to hire to optimize utilization and keep projects profitable and on time. 

Core features 

• Visual capacity forecasting charts help you keep workloads balanced over time and scenario plan for the future
• Team member tags allow you to sort and filter your employees always to find the right person for the job
• People and project placeholders give you real-time data on exactly who to hire, when, and for how long
• Reporting dashboards on capacity, pipeline, and utilization lets you keep an eye on future workload and resourcing needs while also optimizing current utilization

Pricing

Runn has a free plan and two paid plans: 

• Free: up to five users with unlimited projects
• Pro: $8 per user per month
• Enterprise: custom pricing for custom requirements 

A 14-day free trial of Runn’s Pro Plan is available.

6. Forecast

Forecast is an AI-powered capacity management tool for teams that want to optimize resource allocation and improve project forecasting.

The “People Schedule” tool is an interactive Gantt chart that visually represents team member availability and utilization over time. The utilization heatmap, which uses red and green shading to show whether team members are over- or under-allocated, shows whether they are over- or under-allocated.

Click any team member’s name to see what projects take up their time. 

Seeing a lot of red? 

You can drag-and-drop any project or task to move it to another time or reassign it to a team member with more capacity.

Real-time updates to utilization and availability clearly show where work needs to be done and how to optimize resources. 

You can also allocate potential projects using “Soft allocations” and “Placeholders.” 

“Soft allocations” let you hold space for tentative projects or demands, allowing you to see potential changes to capacity and utilization. 

“Placeholders” let you assign a task to a general role if you’re unsure who will take it on. 

Toggle on “Use win probability” to analyze resource demand and allocation based on the probability of winning tentative projects.

From here, you’ll see your most probable capacity needs and all possible scenarios, clarifying your upcoming demand and which roles you need to hire for additional support.

What you’ll love

One of Forecast’s key features is the “Capacity Overview,” which provides teams an analytical heat map to visualize resource capacity. This considers the probability of pipeline wins and compares current versus needed resources.

The color-coded heatmap shows total availability, placeholder projects, and soft (tentative) and hard allocations. 

You’ll automatically view team members in groups by role, but you can also filter down into the individual level, or use the “Filter” function to add specific grouping.

With all your capacity data and demand forecasting shown at a glance, you gain essential insights into upcoming resource demand. This allows better planning and allocation ahead of time to deliver projects smoothly, now or months down the line.

Core features 

• Capacity overview dashboard gives you detailed insights in future demand, resource allocation, capacity, and more. 
• Project win probability strengthens demand forecasting by seeing how likely each scenario is
• Staffing recommendations from internal AI tools help you quickly find the right people for each job
• Utilization reports let you keep a birds-eye view of your whole portfolio and improve efficiency

Pricing

Forecast offers custom pricing based on the number of users you need. Their “Core” plan starts at 25 users.

7. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan provides visual work management tools for small teams, allowing for resource optimization and long-term capacity planning. 

In the main “Team View,” you’ll see everyone’s assigned tasks and projects in a timeline view. You’ll automatically have a “Team view” with your entire team, but you can also create “Team views” for individual departments.

This can make it easier to see exactly which teams are overworked and who you might need to hire to meet client demand. 

Within “Team view,” use the magnifying glass icon in the lower right-hand corner to toggle between zoom levels. 

Weekly and monthly views are perfect for short-term planning and continuously monitoring current workloads to optimize resource allocation. 

The three-month view and annual view highlight only your largest projects, giving you a high-level look at project volume in the coming quarters.

Toggl Plan’s high-level data allows you to keep all your planning in one place for easier coordination and accurately assess if you have the right support bandwidth to handle upcoming workloads.

What you’ll love

Operations Managers will love Toggl Plan’s “Availability Overview.” It provides an at-a-glance view of your team’s availability, capacity, and utilization for any upcoming time period. 

The colored bar visualization displays the percentage booked and the number of hours available for each person. Red indicates someone is overbooked. Hovering shows further details like total working hours and workload.

From here, you can easily visualize workload distribution. Drag-and-drop tasks to reallocate work and immediately see availability adjustments.

This provides a quick way to adjust work based on upcoming capacity, and allows you to ensure tasks are properly allocated for efficient resource optimization.

Core features 

• Visual team scheduler lets you identify capacity and availability for up to one year. 
• Drag and drop scheduling let you assign and re-allocate work based on project timelines or team capacity
• Notifications and tags make communication and collaboration simple
• Integrations with Slack, Google Calendar, Toggl Track and more let you manage calendars, communication, and time tracking seamlessly

Pricing

Toggl Plan has two plans:

• Team: $8 per user per month
• Business: $13.35 per user per month 

A 14-day free trial is available for the Team plan. 

Which tool is right for your team? 

Finding the right capacity planning tool brings a lot of data to consider. 

Operations managers need to focus on forecasting and modeling future workloads alongside optimizing and balancing staffing needs based on various scenarios. 

While you could try to do that in a spreadsheet, a proper capacity planning tool will save you so much time and headaches and make your forecasting a lot more accurate. 

If you’re ready to implement an end-to-end solution designed for agencies and professional services, try Scoro. Scoro has everything operations managers need to forecast client demand, make data-driven decisions, and optimize your resources as your business grows.

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The answer is probably a lot if you’re an operations manager at a growing consultancy. 

Spreadsheets for timesheets, spreadsheets for project phases and planning, spreadsheets for reporting… the list goes on. 

Why not use a single tool that can streamline, automate, and optimize these processes? 

We reviewed the top project management tools for consultants to find the best tools for every team and need. 

What is consultancy project management software?

Project management software for consultancies provides an integrated digital platform for planning and managing all aspects of client projects, from tasks and resources to timelines, billing, and reporting.

A project management tool should help you:

• Gain visibility into project health and consultant utilization in real-time
• Make data-driven decisions on resourcing, hiring, and process improvements
• Scale rapidly as the business grows its portfolio of client engagements

How to choose the best consultancy project management tool

This will depend on your needs. The best project management software for consulting firms generally includes the following features: 

• Phase-based project planning: Ability to structure client engagements and projects into higher-level phases and add detailed tasks if needed
• Resource management: To help you assign consultants/teams to phases to manage utilization across multiple clients. Plus, the ability to forecast workloads
• Time tracking: Easily log hours against project phases and tasks with rates set
• Dashboards and data visibility: Get high-level visual overviews of multiple client projects rather than task lists. Easily monitor KPIs on budgets, utilization, etc
• Billing and invoicing: Generate invoices based on project rates and phase time logs. Flexible templates
• Integrations: Seamlessly connect with client management, documentation, and financial tools you already use

The 7 best project management tools for consultants

1. Scoro 

Scoro is one of the best, end-to-end client and consulting project management tools that makes managing different project types a breeze for consultancies. 

Whether you’re managing fixed fees, time and materials, or retained services projects, Scoro makes it easy to monitor project health, improve utilization, and more. 

Start with the “Project list” view to get a high-level portfolio overview, rolling up key data for each project such as project progress, current profit margin, labor costs, and so on for each project.

If any of the numbers show cause for concern, you can dive deeper into the project level to detect what’s causing delays or eating into your margins.

Here, the summary bar gives you an instant real-time overview of the project time and monetary budget. Below, click on “Gantt” in the “Tasks” section to see a detailed map of the project phases. 

The Gantt chart helps to track the project timeline visually, with tasks and milestones mapped out. You can quickly detect what’s over the deadline and adjust the timelines by simply dragging and dropping the tasks around.

To delve deeper into profitability, click the “Budget” tab. The “Burn-up” chart helps you understand if you can deliver within budget at the current pace. 

The “Quoted vs. Actual” table helps you track estimated time, income, and costs against actual numbers in real-time to detect where you’ve over or underestimated easily.

This granular analysis is powered by Scoro’s unified time and expense tracking. Your team can effortlessly log hours for each phase via the tracker, tasks, and calendar.

Simply click the stopwatch icon in the header bar to open the “Time tracker” tab.

From there, click an existing task and then click “Start time tracker,” or create a new task and click “start time tracker” from there. 

Either way, you can effortlessly track time and assign them to granular tasks and high-level project phases for profitability and utilization clarity.

What you’ll love

Scoro’s extensive “Reports Library” allows you to monitor all project, client, and resource management aspects. 

Go to “Reports,” and you’ll see templates sorted down into six categories: “Productivity,” “Utilization,” “Revenue,” “Cost,” “Profitability,” and “Sales.” From here, you can drill down into the most important metrics for your current projects. 

For example, go to the “Utilization Report” to track your team utilization and balance workloads. You’ll see a summary bar of each team member’s availability and capacity and a utilization breakdown by days, weeks, or months. 

To better understand the utilization forecast, click “View options” and then click “Include utilization forecast.”

This will give you an overview of possible utilization, helping you to more accurately plan upcoming work and ensure you’re using team capacity effectively. 

You can also get at-a-glance details on your revenue and profitability with the “Revenue report.” From “Reports Library,” click “Financial” and then “Revenue Report.” From here, you can filter the report to view either revenue generated, revenue in the pipeline, or both. 

To see current or upcoming revenue, click “Source” and select “Projects.” Then set the “Project Status” filter to “Completed” and “Active Projects.” 

Set the date range to your preferred dates, and you’ll see a bar chart of project revenue, along with detailed project breakdowns below.

Core features

• Project templates let you automate recurring projects to easily map out project phases, tasks, timelines and assignees. 
• Specialized retainer management tools support end-to-end project management for consulting retainers, from sales and delivery to invoicing and reporting.  
• Invoicing tools allow you to automate fixed-fee or retainer project invoicing and accurate bill for time and materials based on tracked time. 
• Multiple time tracking options lets your team track time from anywhere and easily match it to project tasks or phases.
• Detailed pre-built or custom reporting lets you quickly gain insight into project progress, profitability, utilization, time usage and more.

Pricing

Scoro has four plans:

• Essential: $26 per user per month 
• Standard: $37 per user per month
• Pro: $63 per user per month 
• Ultimate: customized enterprise pricing 

You can also try Scoro free for 14 days.

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2. Avaza

Avaza is a work and project management software that makes it simple to schedule your team and their work — and keep an eye on the health of both. 

With Avaza, visualizing project health and profitability is simple. 

For example, The “Team” view makes it simple to monitor utilization and see who needs more work. The “capacity” bar will show at the top of each team member’s row. 

Go to “Team Schedule” from the sidebar, then use the toggle to select either “Team” (to view by team members) or “Projects” (to view per-project breakdowns.) 

If the team member is at full capacity, it’ll turn green. Light green boxes with a number show how many available hours a team member has, while red boxes indicate a team member’s past capacity.

Need to reorganize work to ensure optimal utilization without burning anyone out? 

Use the “Filter” tool to sort by team members with available capacity to find the right person for the available work quickly. 

Visualizing project profitability with the “Project Profitability” report is also easy. 

Go to “Reports” and choose “Profitability.” You can quickly see profit margins, budgets, and total expenses over time plotted against your overall project budget.

From here, you can understand if your project is on track to be profitable or if you need to adjust anything to ensure profitability.

What you’ll love 

Avaza easily ensures accurate budgeting and billing with their time-tracking and invoicing tools. 

Even better? 

You can set up automated and recurring invoices with Avaza to reduce repetitive admin work further. 

Go to “Invoices,” then click “Recurring Invoices,” then “Create.” 

From there, choose the appropriate client and set up the invoice terms. 

The most important thing to note is the “Repeat Every” section. 

Use the dropdowns to set how often the invoice should be sent. You can also click the “Remaining Cycles” category to set the duration of the invoicing (i.e., for a six-month contract), or check “Never expires” for ongoing work. 

Finally, you can check “Automatically send invoices” to ensure that invoices are sent at the appropriate intervals, without any manual effort needed from your team. 

Avaza includes a time tracking feature to make automated invoicing even easier.

Employees can track time via phone, desktop, or web browser to ensure there are no missing minutes and assign time to “Billable” vs. “Non-billable” as well as projects, clients, or tasks. 

Employees (or managers) can go to “Timesheets” to view “Time Entries” on a weekly or daily view. 

From here, you can easily see where employees spend their time and how tracked time breaks down by client and project.

You can also track time and view tracked time from the “Project” view. Operations Managers can view project tasks broken down into phases. 

For each task, see the current tracked time against the estimated time in a circular bar icon, glancing at progress and productivity.

Time tracked in Avaza can also be manually or automatically included in invoices and billing reports, making it easy to bill clients accurately, assess and forecast project profitability, and make clearer predictions for the future.

Core features 

• Visual resource scheduling makes assigning people to the right projects easy based on skills, utilization, and availability
• Time and expense tracking keep all project-related costs in one place, making accurate billing and invoicing easier
• Automated and recurring invoicing tools allow you to create quick, accurate invoices without manual effort
• 50+ reports give you visibility into profitability, revenue, team utilization, and more

Pricing

Avaza has four plans:

• Free
• Startup: $11.95 per month
• Basic: $23.95 per month 
• Business: $47.95 per month

Plans vary in the number of users and projects included.

3. Accelo

Accelo is an all-in-one professional services automation platform built for consultancies, making it easier to manage and deliver client projects profitably. 

For example, Accelo’s “Overview” dashboard for each project shows key data around budget vs. actuals, earned value, and insights into the overall project progress.

For insights into the project’s progress, click the “Schedule” tab.

Toggle on the “Planned/Predicted” and the “Target/Actual” views from the “Schedule” tab, and you’ll see the dates of each task and milestone separated into four categories: 

• Planned: when you have the actual task planned for an assignee to complete 
• Predicted: when the task is predicted to start and end based on other tasks
• Target: goal start and end dates for this task based on the overall project timeline
• Actual: the actual status of the project, as measured by time tracking and statuses within your project tracker

This ensures you’re never surprised about your projects’ status, and helps you ensure on-time delivery.

Want to dive deeper into project financials?

Click the “Insights” tab to get info on activities vs. hours, project earned vs. forecasted value, overall project budget and costs, and more.

With Accelo’s detailed project dashboards, you can manage project milestones, planning, progress, and financials all in one place.

What you’ll love

Accelo’s retainer management features cut repetitive administrative and scheduling work and make it easier for your team to focus on servicing profitable projects. 

To create a “Retainer” project, just click the “Create” button, then click “New Retainer.” 

This will open the retainer flow, which has five main elements: 

• “Retainer Information” — allowing you to set basic retainer details 
• “Period and Allowances” — allowing you to set duration, billing, and etc. 
• “Rates and Invoicing” — allowing you to see the rate, invoice templates, and more
• “Tasks” — allows you to include specific tasks with this retainer
• “Materials” — allows you to define any additional materials associated with the project

Even better: you don’t have to define this from scratch every time. 

After all, your consultancy probably has a few standard retainers you use and reuse for many clients. 

In Accelo, you can define these in advance using “Retainer Types.” 

Go to “Configuration,” then click “Retainers,” then “Types, Progressions & Fields,” then “Add Retainer Type.” 

From there, you’ll see a similar screen to the “New Retainer” screen. You’ll include the same details, but this time, you’re setting up the standard format, which you can reuse for future retainers.

Once your retainer template isyou have your retainer template set up, click “Create Retainer Type.” 

To use the template, go to “New Retainer” and click the dropdown under “Type.” You’ll then see all of your retainer templates, and you can choose the relevant option. 

All of your templated details — including rates, invoicing, tasks, and more — auto-populate. Easy!

Core features 

• Retainer templates allow you to schedule work and projects easily by creating standardized templates for recurring client work
• Automations allow you to automate many aspects of client communication
• Real-time reporting lets you manage and adjust costs and budgets accurately
• Integrations with accounting software help you streamline financials and administrative processes

Pricing

Accelo has four plans:

• Professional: $50 per user per month
• Business: $70 per user per month
• Advanced: $90 per user per month 
• Elite: custom enterprise pricing

4. Teamwork

Teamwork is a great project management tool for consultancies, as it’s built with client work in mind. This also makes it easy to provide increased transparency to clients, or to work directly with clients within the platform. 

How? 

Start using the “Gantt chart” to easily set up projects with phases, milestones, and more detailed tasks, if needed. You’ll see a visual representation of your entire project timeline and can easily adjust phases and dates as needed.

You can provide additional transparency to clients and reduce back-and-forth communications by adding clients as “Users” within your workspace. 

Go to the “People” space, click the “People” tab, click “Invite users,” and then click “Add user.” You can then add your Client contacts as “client” users. 

From there, you can click the dropdown menu to select “Edit Profile” and then select the “Permissions” tab. Then, you can adjust the toggles to edit which projects client users have access to, as well as what level of granularity.

Teamwork also has pre-built reports and dashboards to increase your internal team’s visibility into your project’s health, profitability, and more. 

To start, go to “Reports” and select “Project Health.” Within the report, you can see active projects, remaining time, budget, completion status, and a health score. 

This gives you an easy way to view at-a-glance which projects need attention urgently. You can click on the project directly from here to view overdue tasks, adjust timelines, etc.

You can also quickly see which projects are at risk of going over budget or being overserviced, keeping your overall portfolio more profitable.

What you’ll love 

Teamwork’s automation, templates, and triggers are great tools for automating repetitive tasks, speeding up operations and workflows, and keeping projects moving forward.

For example, time—or event-based notifications allow you to avoid repetitive work like updating tasks or phases, assigning team members to certain tasks, keeping your team in the loop, or adjusting project deadlines. 

Set up “When/Then” automation to trigger a specific action based on changes within your project. For example, you might set up an automation so that when a task’s priority changes from “Low” to “Medium” or “High,” all task assignees get a notification.

You can also leverage Teamwork’s integrations with your automation. For example, an automation system can be set up to send a Slack notification to relevant stakeholders when new tasks are added, or project phases are updated.

You can even set up automations within “Project Templates” to trigger your most-used automations automatically when new projects are created.

Core features 

• Portfolio views let you gain big-picture visibility into your active projects, monitoring project health, team utilization and more. 
• Expenses and time tracking allow you to track project profitability against pre-set budgets. 
• Client user permissions allow you to enhance client relationships with greater transparency and tools to streamline communication.   
• Automation and pre-built templates simplify your processes, reduce repetitive work, and make your workflows more efficient. 
• Integrations connect Teamwork with Slack, Hubspot, and other tools your team uses to keep work streamlined and aligned.

Pricing

Teamwork has five plans:

• Free for up to five users
• Starter: $5.99 per user per month
• Deliver: $9.99 per user per month 
• Grow: $19.99 per user per month
• Scale: custom enterprise pricing

5. Runn

Runn is a resource and project management software designed to make it easy to see both real-time data and future forecasts.  

Runn is a great tool for consultancies because it keeps things simple with high-level project planning data and visibility. 

To get started, go to the planner under the “Projects” tab. Here, you can see all of your projects at a glance and their estimated timelines.

Click the dropdown arrow next to a specific project to view detailed project info, such as planned phases and resource utilization.

From here, you can drag and drop to add or adjust phases or timelines or add project milestones. 

With Runn, you can also approach planning from a people-first perspective. Runn’s “People” planner makes resource management for growing teams easy.

By default, the “People” planner shows individual team members with utilization percentages or total capacity. However, you can also use it to see where your overall capacity gaps are so you can plan for the future. 

Go to “People” and click the “Group by” icon. Then select “Role” to see capacity and utilization by role. 

From there, click “Filter” and add the filter type “Person Type: Placeholder.” This will show you all the placeholders added to current, upcoming, or potential projects that aren’t yet assigned to existing team members. 

Now, you can easily see the amount of support you’ll need, by full-time roles or hours, for each role in the upcoming months. 

With this level of forecasting and visibility, you can make data-driven decisions about who to hire, when, and if you’ll need long-term support from a full-time employee or contractor for a short-term project.

What you’ll love

You can also gain visibility into project health with the “project performance” charts. 

Consultancies can view project performance for both Time & Materials and Fixed-Price projects. 

To view your project performance, click “Charts” and click “Project Performance.” From here, you can use the toggle navigation at the top right of the screen to toggle between three views: 

• Time
• Revenue, or 
• Cost 

Each view allows you to see how your project is currently tracking against your budget, your projected future revenue or costs, and when your project may go over budget. These forecasting predictions allow you to better gauge project progress and make changes as needed to ensure profitability.

Core features 

• Project and pipeline tracking with both real-time updates and future forecasting allows you to keep an eye on your entire portfolio and make changes before it’s too late.  
• What-if scenario and forecasting capabilities allow you to plan for the future and see the impact of different possibilities on your business to make the best decisions. 
• Detailed reporting and forecasting for utilization, pipeline, profitability, and more help you make data-driven decisions to scale your business.
• Drag-and-drop resource and project planning focusing on phases and milestones keep things simple while giving you insight into all projects. 

Pricing

Runn has a free plan and two paid plans: 

• Free: up to five users with unlimited projects
• Pro: $8 per user per month
• Enterprise: custom pricing for custom requirements 

A 14-day free trial of Runn’s Pro Plan is available.

6. ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the most robust project management tools available. It provides both high-level reporting, project and resource management, and more granular dashboards, task management, and client management tools. 

ClickUp offers dozens of different “Views” to see your tasks, project timelines, and team capacities for different projects. 

For many operations managers, the “Gantt” view is the perfect way to see high-level overviews of each project’s timeline. 

Click the “+View” button from the calendar, then “Gantt” to add a Gantt chart view to the current project. Once in the Gantt view, you can see project phases, tasks, and hierarchies in the left-hand sidebar. You can also view phases shown on the timeline as a colored bar. 

Individual tasks will be shown as colored bars in line with the relevant task from the left-hand sidebar.

With your entire project in view on the Gantt chart, you can easily assess project progress, make changes as needed, and understand major project phases. 

Not sure if your team has the capacity to stay on track? 

Click “+View” again and add a “Workload” view. The “Workload” view shows all assigned team members’ capacity and utilization, broken down by day. A red box shows who is over capacity. 

To re-assign their tasks to another team member, simply click into the capacity box to show tasks. From here, you can drag and drop tasks to another available team member to balance capacity and ensure projects keep moving forward, without burning out your team.

What you’ll love 

If your consultancy needs nitty-gritty, customized data visibility to scale up your business or more closely monitor project progress and profitability, Clickup can be a great solution. 

In ClickUp, dashboards are built by adding widgets so you can monitor the overall health of projects or specific projects. 

Not only are dashboards a great way to improve internal visibility and keep projects moving forward, they’re also a great way to improve client transparency. 

For example, a Client Portal dashboard is a great way to provide visibility into your client projects. You can use a templated version or create a custom version with as much detailed data as you need. 

You could add a “Phases” pie chart or timeline, a “Task List” of current or upcoming tasks, a “Requests” or “Chat” widget to allow the client to make additional requests or ask questions right within the dashboard. 

Add clients to Clickup as a guest and then click “Share” on the dashboard navigational bar to add them to the view. 

Now, you can avoid sending time-consuming status updates and emailing back-and-forth with all of your clients. Instead, they have a birds-eye view of everything they care about all in one place.

Core features: 

• Goals, milestones, sprints, and other project planning features go beyond the basic phases and tasks to create a project timeline that exactly matches your workflow and deliverables
• Ready-made or custom dashboards give you a detailed insight into project health, progress, team utilization and more
• Automation and triggers let you automate repetitive or tedious tasks to streamline workflows and optimize processes
• Docs, comments, chats and other collaboration tools make it easy to work together, keep all your work in one place, and keep clients integrated into your processes
• Built-in time tracking makes it easy to get accurate real-time reports of your costs, effort, and budget

Pricing

ClickUp has a free plan and three paid plans: 

• Free: up to 100MB of storage with unlimited projects
• Unlimited: $7 per user per month
• Business: $12 per user per month 
• Enterprise: custom enterprise pricing

7. Wrike 

Wrike is an all-in-one work management platform built to help consulting firms juggle multiple client engagements. It provides task management, resource allocation, and project tracking tools consultants need to deliver excellent service.

For example, Wrike’s portfolio management tools allow you to visualize your entire portfolio with easy-to-manage Kanban boards and other views. Customizable Kanban boards let you watch all your tasks, from current sprints to high-level project phases. 

As projects progress, you can also view people resources and capacity to optimize team utilization and adjust as needed to keep projects on track. 

How? 

From the “Project Team Workload” view, you’ll see all team members’ utilization and specific tasks they’re assigned to. 

To reallocate work to balance workloads, click on the task you want to re-assign, then drag and drop it to the appropriate team member and date.

Utilizations will update automatically, making it quick and effortless to ensure your team is balanced and projects stay on track. 

Sort your view by week, month, or quarter to forecast capacity and potential workload roadblocks in the future, and adjust project timelines or assignments to ensure you deliver projects on time and profitably. 

Rather than working from a project—or task-based scheduling approach, start with your team members and ensure every task, no matter how large or small, has an appropriate owner. 

What you’ll love

A key feature of Wrike is the library of tailored consulting templates to kickstart projects. These pre-built templates around scheduling, risk analysis, meetings, and more save teams time while optimizing best practices.

For example, the “Project schedule” templates help create detailed project plans for executing consulting engagements. It provides sections for capturing objectives, key dates, budgets, risks, and assigning team member responsibilities.

With the heavy lifting of planning done through templates, project managers can focus more time on strategy and client relationships. You can use templates like: 

• Complex Projects with Phases 
• Contract Management
• Client Contact List
• Project Risk Analysis 
• Project Delivery Initiation

Core features

• Project management dashboards give you insight into any data you need to make data-driven decisions for hiring, future projects, and profitability

• Budgeting tools let you monitor planned vs. actual costs and time to keep projects profitable and know what’s driving the most revenue

• Custom reports with forecasting allow you to track the trends that matter to you and make better decisions for future work

• Integrations with all the other tools you use—Zoom, Slack, MS Teams, Google Suite, and more—streamline processes and ensure nothing slips through the cracks

Pricing

Wrike has a free plan and four paid plans:

• Basic: Free
• Team: 9.80 per user per month 
• Business: $24.80 per user per month 
• Enterprise: custom pricing upon request
• Pinnacle: custom pricing upon request

A 14-day free trial is available. 

Which tool is right for your consultancy? 

There’s a lot to consider when choosing the right tools for managing consulting projects. 

Whether focused on client relationships, increasing data-driven decisions and visibility, or growing your consultancy, you need a tool that can cover all your bases. 

If you’re ready to implement an end-to-end solution designed for consultancy needs, try Scoro. Scoro has everything consultants and operations managers need to gain visibility into project health and utilization, make data-driven decisions, and scale rapidly as their business grows.

Start your free trial of Scoro today.

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