A consulting firm or a freelancer tracks time on a spreadsheet, quotes in a word processor, and bills by hand, with no consolidated view of how profitable each mission really is. This application brings missions, time tracking, expenses and billing — on a day-rate or milestone basis — together, with a dashboard that shows the month's profitability without reopening a spreadsheet.
Who the application is for
For independent consulting firms and freelancers who bill their missions on a day-rate (time and materials) or milestone basis, and want to track profitability mission by mission without juggling several tools.
What the application does
- Brings together every mission with its client, billing mode (day-rate or milestone), the applicable rate chosen from a rate table, and the consultants assigned.
- Logs time by consultant and by mission, with a draft, validated or billed status, and blocks any entry on a closed or cancelled mission.
- Bills validated day-rate time in a single action, at the mission's effective hourly rate, never billing the same line twice.
- Tracks a milestone-based fixed-fee project, each milestone billed on its own once reached, with an hours budget that refuses any entry beyond it unless an amendment or explicit exception is recorded.
- Logs expenses by consultant, rechargeable or not, grouped on a single invoice per mission.
- Sends an automatic reminder, without duplicates, when a milestone budget nears its limit and when validated unbilled time is ageing.
- Prints a commercial proposal and a monthly activity report, and shows on a dashboard the average day rate achieved, the billable utilisation rate, unbilled work in progress and margin.
Day to day
- You create the mission, choose its billing mode and assign the consultants.
- Each consultant logs their time through the week; you validate it before billing.
- On a day-rate basis, you bill validated time with a single action; on a milestone basis, you mark each milestone reached then bill it.
- You let the two automatic reminders warn you about a milestone budget nearing its limit or billable time that is ageing.
- You check the dashboard to follow the month's profitability, and print the commercial proposal or the activity report whenever you need them.
What the application does not do
- It does not manage a full project, with task planning and dependencies: it is limited to time tracking and billing.
- It offers no standard legal framework agreement or ready-made terms and conditions.
- It offers no self-service client portal beyond the standard portal for viewing invoices.
- It does not work out any market day rate: the rate table remains the one you enter yourself.
Free and full editions
The free edition already carries missions, time tracking, the rate table, expenses and day-rate billing, with no time limit. The full edition installs on top without losing or changing anything, and adds milestone tracking with its budget control, the profitability dashboard, the PDF documents and the two automatic reminders.
Getting started
Fill in your rate table and your consultants' records, with their internal daily cost. If you move to the full edition, then set the budget reminder threshold and the delay before reminding on unbilled time, in the application's settings.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.