How can directors keep track of the consultant's work time?

[Monro]

Consultants travel with work. How can the directors in the consulting firm keep track of the consultant’s work time?

[Tom Spencer]

Good question. 

Why do directors need to keep track of work time?  Well, most consulting firms will bill clients based on hours worked. It may be that a project fee is negotiated with a client at the start of the project, but the client might then be billed monthly based on billable hours worked multiplied by each consultant's hourly rate. 

How do consulting firm's keep track of work time? Some kind of specialised timesheet software is almost certainly used. The alternative would be keeping track of hours worked in an excel spreadsheet, or even worse, on a piece of paper. 

[Ian Cai]

@Tom Spencer  How can we make sure that consultants use the specialized timesheet software to count the hours worked?

Maybe the clients will know whether the consultants are working or not because they often receive feedback from consultants, they will know the efficiency about the consultants. I think one of the problem of paying based on hours worked is that people could lower their efficiency as the reward they get remains the same no matter how much work they have done.

In my opinion, the best situation would be the firm trains and cultivates consultants perfectly well so that they could be willing to solve the problem efficiently and be honest about hours worked with all their heart.