Start with the engagement, not the timesheet
A useful consulting time record answers three questions: who was the work for, what was done, and how long did it take? You don’t need a complicated project structure to answer them.
Give each client a separate record, then create a job or engagement for the piece of work you’re delivering. For example, a business consultant might have these active jobs:
- Northside Kitchens: operations review
- Greenfield Services: management workshop
- Harbour Retail: monthly advisory support
Within each engagement, record individual sessions. Keep descriptions short but specific: “Interview with operations manager”, “Review supplier costs” or “Draft workshop agenda” tells you more later than “Consulting”.
The structure matters because client totals alone can conceal where your time went. Research for a new proposal is different from work on an agreed engagement, even if both concern the same company.
Record time when work starts and stops
The easiest routine is to start a timer as you begin meaningful work, pause when you stop, and finish the session when that piece of work is done.
If you are called away to another client’s task, don’t let the first client’s timer continue. Pause it, record the interruption under the right engagement, then resume the first session when you return.
Decide how you handle general administration before you start recording. Internal planning, business development and personal breaks can be recorded separately or left out of client work, depending on what you want to analyse. Recorded time does not automatically mean billable time.
For meetings, use the actual time spent rather than the meeting’s scheduled calendar length. A meeting booked for an hour might take 43 minutes; preparation and follow-up work can be separate sessions if that helps explain the total.
Worked example: a fragmented consulting morning
Suppose you’re preparing an operations report for Northside Kitchens and a client call interrupts you.
| Time | Activity | Engagement | Active time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:00–09:42 | Analyse supplier costs | Northside Kitchens, operations review | 42 min |
| 09:42–10:00 | Call about workshop attendees | Greenfield Services, workshop | 18 min |
| 10:00–10:35 | Continue supplier-cost analysis | Northside Kitchens, operations review | 35 min |
| 10:35–10:50 | Coffee break | None | 0 min |
| 10:50–11:15 | Draft report recommendations | Northside Kitchens, operations review | 25 min |
That gives 102 minutes (1 hour 42 minutes) for Northside and 18 minutes for Greenfield, rather than a single 2-hour-15-minute block charged to the wrong client.
If Northside’s agreed rate is £90 per hour and all 102 minutes are chargeable at that rate, the unrounded time value is £153.00 (102 ÷ 60 × £90). At £120 per hour, Greenfield’s 18 minutes are £36.00.
These are illustrations of time multiplied by a rate, not invoices. Actual amounts may depend on your engagement agreement, minimum increments, discounts, tax treatment and which activities are chargeable.
Separate the time record from the invoice
A good time record captures what happened. An invoice reflects what you’ve agreed to charge.
Those can differ. You might decide that a short introductory call is included in a retainer, that some research was internal learning, or that a fixed-fee deliverable took longer than expected.
If you round time for billing, keep the original duration in your working record. For example, six separate seven-minute tasks total 42 minutes. Rounding each one to 15 minutes would produce 90 minutes. That is a very different figure from the actual 42 minutes, and whether any rounding is appropriate depends on the agreement.
Keeping the raw durations makes it easier to explain a bill, review a retainer or learn from underquoted work.
A weekly review that takes ten minutes
Pick a consistent point, such as Friday afternoon, and look at each engagement:
- Check unfinished timers. A session left running or paused might need finishing or correcting.
- Check the job labels. Move any work assigned to the wrong client or engagement.
- Scan descriptions. Make vague entries understandable while the work is fresh in your memory.
- Check unusual durations. A four-hour “quick call” is worth investigating.
- Separate recorded from chargeable work. Apply your actual client agreement rather than assuming all tracked time can be invoiced.
- Export the record you need. Keep a dated copy alongside your invoice or project documents, if that’s useful to your workflow.
For fixed-fee engagements, the same review is helpful even when no hourly invoice will be raised. Divide the fee by the actual hours spent to understand the effective hourly return. Keep that calculation separate from the original agreed price.
How TapSpan fits into this routine
TapSpan lets you organise work as Customer → Job → Session. Start a Quick Timer before you’ve set anything up, or select an existing engagement. Pause one session when another client interrupts you, switch to the other job and return to the previous paused session when you’re ready. Returning doesn’t restart its timer until you explicitly resume.
You can set optional hourly rates, inspect the session history, review summaries and export finished sessions to CSV for use in your own records. TapSpan doesn’t produce invoices, manage retainers or replace client agreements. Its job is to give you a clearer account of the time you actually spent.