Time & Expenses Module

Timesheet Software for Consultants

In a consulting firm the timesheet is not an administrative record. It is where revenue, cost, margin and utilization all come from. SUNAGO Matrix logs billable hours against projects and phases in a weekly sheet, runs them through approval, and turns a single entry into project cost, progress and utilization without anyone rekeying anything.

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One entry, four jobs

The reason firms end up with a timesheet tool, a resourcing spreadsheet and a project accounting export is that the three were never connected. Here is what a single logged hour does when they are.

1

It consumes budget

The hour lands against a project phase and reduces the budget remaining there, so progress is measured in what has actually been spent rather than a completion percentage someone selected.

2

It carries a cost

It is priced at that person's derived cost per hour, after part-time capacity, vacation, real utilization and their share of overhead. Project cost and margin move with it.

3

It moves the forecast

Forecast at Completion recalculates, so a project drifting off course says so in week three rather than at final invoice.

4

It updates utilization

Billable against available hours for that person, which in turn feeds back into their cost rate. The loop closes on itself rather than depending on an assumption.

This is also why timesheet accuracy matters more here than in most businesses. If the hours are wrong, four numbers are wrong, and the firm finds out at the end of the project rather than during it.

What unlogged time costs, in money

Revenue leakage in a consulting firm is rarely dramatic. It is half an hour here, a forgotten client call there, and a Friday timesheet reconstructed from memory a week later. The arithmetic is worth doing once. Figures below are for a firm of eight billable consultants at a EUR 95 sell rate.

Leakage per consultant per dayHours lost per year, firm-wideRevenue at EUR 95 per hour
15 minutes440EUR 41,800
30 minutes880EUR 83,600
45 minutes1,320EUR 125,400

Half an hour a day is not a discipline problem, it is a friction problem. Hours logged three days late are hours logged from memory, and memory rounds downward. That is 880 hours a year, or roughly EUR 83,600 at a modest sell rate, for a firm that would notice immediately if a client failed to pay a EUR 20,000 invoice.

The leakage is only half of it. Those hours were worked, so their cost landed on the project whether or not anyone recorded them. An unlogged hour therefore understates revenue and understates consumed budget at the same time, which makes the project look more profitable than it is right up until it is delivered.

What reduces it is an entry interface that takes seconds rather than minutes, and an admin calendar view over the team's logged time so a missing day is spotted while the week is still recent. Neither is glamorous, and together they are worth more than most pricing decisions.

What the time and expenses module covers

Weekly timesheet

Log hours against projects and phases with minimal clicks, in a weekly view built for people who fill it in on a Friday afternoon rather than an interface that punishes them for it.

Billable and non-billable

The split happens at entry, not in a later cleanup. Internal work, business development and training are captured rather than quietly disappearing from the record.

Approval workflows

Submit for manager approval before hours become an invoice, with the same workflow covering expenses so one review catches both.

Admin calendar view

Review logged time across the team on a calendar rather than person by person, which is where a missing day or a week nobody filled in actually becomes visible.

Expenses with markup

Expense tracking with receipts, billable and non-billable categories, and automated markup where you bill expenses on to the client.

Utilization rates

Billable hours against real availability per person, team and firm, calculated from the same data rather than estimated in a separate sheet.

Where standalone time tracking runs out

Dedicated time tracking tools are good at capture. Where they stop is at the point the hours need to mean something. They will tell you a consultant logged 32 billable hours last week. They cannot tell you what those hours cost, whether the project they went into is still profitable, or whether 32 was a good week for that person given their availability.

Answering those requires salary, capacity, vacation, utilization, project budget and overhead to sit in the same place as the hours. That is the whole argument for keeping time inside the system that runs the projects rather than exporting it into one.

Related reading: timesheet software for engineering firms and how to calculate a true cost per hour.

Where the hours go

Project Cost Tracking

Every hour priced at its real cost, driving margin and Forecast at Completion.

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Project Management

Hours consume the phase budget, so progress reflects spend rather than opinion.

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Resource Planning

Planned against logged, so next quarter's capacity plan learns from this one.

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Timesheet software: common questions

Billable hours, approvals, utilization and what it costs per user.

What makes timesheet software different for consultants?
For most businesses a timesheet is a payroll record. For a consulting firm it is the source of the revenue, the cost and the margin all at once, which raises the stakes on whether it is accurate and whether people actually fill it in. The requirement that follows is a split between billable and non-billable time at the point of entry, hours logged against a specific project and phase rather than a general bucket, and approval before any of it becomes an invoice.
How are billable hours tracked?
Hours are logged against a project and its phases in a weekly timesheet, categorised as billable or non-billable as they are entered. From there they do three jobs at once: they update the project's consumed budget and progress, they price into project cost at that person's derived cost rate, and they feed the person's utilization rate. No re-entry and no monthly reconciliation between three systems.
Do timesheets need approval before invoicing?
Yes, and they should. Timesheets are submitted for manager approval before the hours become an invoice, and the same approval workflow covers expenses, so one review catches a mis-coded expense as readily as a mis-coded hour. Admins review time and expenses from their own queues, with a calendar view over the team's logged time.
How does time tracking connect to utilization?
Utilization is billable hours divided by available hours, and both sides of that come out of the same system: hours from the timesheet, availability from capacity after part-time percentage, vacation entitlement and absence. That matters more than it sounds, because utilization also drives each person's true cost per billable hour. A firm that tracks hours but estimates utilization is calculating its margins on a guess.
Can we track expenses alongside time?
Yes. Expense tracking with receipts sits in the same module, with billable and non-billable expenses, automated expense markup where you bill them on, and the same approval workflow. Expenses land on the project alongside labour so the cost picture is complete rather than nearly complete.
What does it cost per user?
EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, one plan, every module included, from a single seat. Standalone time tracking tools are frequently more expensive than this on their own, before you add the project, resourcing and reporting they do not include.

Turn logged hours into numbers you can act on

EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, every module included, free onboarding and data transfer. 14-day trial, no credit card required.

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