Time tracking software for professional services: what law, accounting and consulting firms need

Time tracking software for professional services has one job: turn the hours your people spend on client work into numbers you can bill, price and defend. For law, accounting and consulting firms, that means three things. Time is captured without relying on memory, every hour is tied to a client and a matter, and the record is one that both clients and staff can trust.

Most professional services firms already track time. The problem is how. When hours are reconstructed from memory at the end of the week, the short calls, quick email replies and document reviews between meetings are the first to disappear. Those small pieces of client work are real work, and a firm that cannot see them cannot bill them.

Why professional services firms track time differently from other teams

A professional services firm sells expertise by the hour, or prices fixed-fee work based on how many hours similar work took before. In both cases, the hour is the unit the business runs on. A software company can afford a rough sense of where time goes. A law firm, an accounting practice or a consultancy cannot, because the timesheet is also the invoice, the pricing model and the profitability report.

Professional services work also crosses many clients in a single day. An accountant may touch six client files before lunch. A consultant may move between a workshop, a client call and a proposal draft in one afternoon. Time tracking for professional services has to follow that pace without asking people to stop and fill in a form every twenty minutes.

What to look for in time tracking software for professional services

Automatic capture of computer work

The most reliable timesheet is the one nobody had to remember. Time tracking software that records time automatically while people work on their computers removes the end-of-week reconstruction. Staff review and correct a record instead of writing one from scratch, and the small client tasks stay on the timesheet instead of falling off it.

Hours tied to a client and a matter

An hour is only billable when it belongs to someone. Look for software where a client record sits above the project or matter, so that time tracked against that project counts as work for that client. In Worktivity, linking a customer record to a project makes the hours tracked against that project billable work for that company.

A clear way to record work away from the desk

Professional services work does not all happen at a keyboard. Client meetings, site visits, court appearances and phone calls need a place on the timesheet too. Good time tracking software lets people add that time with a reason, and lets a manager approve it before it counts. In Worktivity, a manual time entry covers work the desktop app could not see, requires a written reason, and changes nothing until someone approves it.

Privacy controls your staff can accept

Automatic tracking only works if the people being tracked accept it. Professional services firms handle confidential client material, and staff are right to ask what a tracking tool records. Look for software that states plainly what it collects, lets the firm decide whether screenshots are taken at all, and shows each person their own data. In Worktivity, screenshots are optional, can be turned off or blurred so content is not readable, and every employee can see their own activity in the My activities section.

Reports that show where the hours went

Captured time is only useful when it answers a question. Partners and practice managers need to see which clients and matters absorbed the most hours, where fixed-fee work ran over, and how work is spread across the team. A fair view of workload matters as much as a billing view: when hours are visible, uneven workloads become visible too.

Questions to ask before you choose a tool

Before committing to time tracking software for a professional services firm, run through these questions with the people who will use it every day.

1. How does time get onto the timesheet? If the answer depends on people remembering, expect the same gaps you have today.
2. Can every hour be tied to a client and a matter? Time without an owner cannot be billed or used to price the next engagement.
3. How is work away from the computer recorded? Meetings and calls are often the most valuable hours a firm bills.
4. What exactly is recorded, and who decides? Ask for the list in writing and check whether screenshots can be switched off or blurred.
5. Can staff see their own data? A record that only managers can see feels like surveillance. A record everyone can see feels like evidence of the work done.
6. What does the tool not do? Every tool has limits. A vendor who names them is easier to trust than one who claims to do everything.

How Worktivity handles time for professional services, and where it stops

Worktivity records time automatically through a desktop app, ties hours to customers and projects, and adds approved manual entries for work away from the desk. Timesheets and project cost reports show where the hours went, and each employee sees their own data.

Worktivity also has limits worth knowing before you decide. Customer invoices in Worktivity are built line by line: Worktivity does not turn tracked hours into an invoice automatically, and Worktivity does not email the invoice to your client. Invoicing sits in the cost management module, which is available to owners and co-owners. If your firm needs invoices generated directly from timesheets, check that requirement against any tool you evaluate, including Worktivity.

If you want to compare Worktivity with other billable hours tools side by side, read our comparison of seven billable hours tools, including where each one falls short.

See how a consulting firm uses Worktivity

The clearest way to judge time tracking software for professional services is to see it working in a firm like yours. Read the SCBC Logistics & Consulting case study to see how a consulting team uses Worktivity day to day, then start a free trial to test it against your own client work.