Built for consulting firms · Utilization + margin

Time tracking
for consulting firms.

Track utilization, manage project margin, plan capacity. All in one tool.

Consulting firms have three things they actually care about: consultant utilization (are people billing enough?), project margin (are we making money?), and capacity (can we take on the next engagement?). Tempough wires those three into a single workspace so the partner meeting doesn't start with someone exporting CSVs.

Why Tempough fits consulting firms

Utilization is a first-class report, not an afterthought

Billable percentage per consultant, per practice area, per time period. Targets you can set per-person. Variance vs. target highlighted so you can spot under- or over-utilization before it shows up in the quarterly P&L.

Cost rates with history (because people get raises)

A consultant's cost rate today is different from what it was 18 months ago. Tempough stores cost rates with effective dates, so margin reports for last quarter use last quarter's rates. Important for partnership-distributable calculations.

Real margin math, including overtime

Cost vs. billable revenue per project, per client, per consultant. OT-aware — if your team logs 50 hours on a project and your OT multiplier is 1.5x, the margin report computes 40 hours straight cost + 10 hours OT cost. Surprises don't hide in the spreadsheet.

Forecast vs. actual, per engagement

Schedule consultants onto projects in advance. At the end of each week, see planned vs. logged for each person on each engagement. The variance number is what tells you whether your bench is right-sized.

Multi-rate-card billing

Different consultants bill different rates. Same project, same consultant, different rate per phase (e.g. discovery vs. delivery). Tempough resolves the rate hierarchy automatically when generating invoices.

Approvals that lock the period

When a weekly timesheet is approved, OT is snapshotted and the period is locked. No silent edits after the fact. Audit log records who changed what, when, and why. Important when your billing is the source of truth for partner draws.

The features that matter for consulting firms

Not the full feature list — the ones that map directly onto how consulting firms actually work.

Utilization report

Billable % by person, team, or practice area. Configurable targets + variance.

Cost rates with history

Effective-dated rate changes. Historic reports use historic rates.

Margin (P&L) report

Per project, per client, per consultant. OT-aware. Locked at approval.

Forecast + capacity planning

Schedule consultants in advance. Time-off and holidays deduct capacity.

Custom report builder

Build ad-hoc reports across time, expenses, and invoices with filters and groupings.

Audit log + permission groups

Granular permissions per role. Every edit logged with diff.

Recommended plan

Team or Team Pro

$11–13/seat/mo billed annually

Team gets you cost rates, margin, approvals, forecasting, and team reports. Team Pro adds branded invoices, webhooks/API for sync to a data warehouse, team groupings for practice-area splits, and document distribution (handbooks, IC agreements, policy ack workflow). Most firms over 8 consultants land on Team Pro.

Common questions

Utilization = billable hours / capacity for the period. Capacity defaults to the workweek defined in workspace settings, minus time-off and holidays for that consultant. You can set per-person target utilization (e.g. 75% for senior consultants, 85% for analysts) and the report shows variance against target.
Coming from Harvest?

Harvest alternative for consulting firms

The audience-specific case for switching from Harvest.

Read the case →

More reading for consulting firms

Also built for

Try Tempough for two weeks.

No credit card. Cancel any time. Full feature set during the trial.