Best Practices for Client Billing at Consulting Firms

For consulting firms, accurate and timely billing for services rendered—and prompt payments by clients—is a big contributor to their success. Many small to medium consulting firms still rely on manual processes when it comes to tracking time their consultants put into a project, collating invoices, and billing clients for completed work. These manual processes are time-consuming, inefficient, prone to errors creeping in, and are a hassle for both consultants and managers to use. These drawbacks contribute to delayed payments coming in from clients, and can also lead to client dissatisfaction if errors crop up.

Consulting firms can greatly improve their billing practices, streamline processes and achieve higher revenue to boot, by replacing outdated and cumbersome processes, and adopting modern, centralized solutions that provide a host of advantages.

Let’s briefly look at some major pain points with manual billing and project tracking:

PROBLEM: Getting busy consultants to enter time worked on projects

SOLUTION: Adopt a solution that makes entry of time and project status easy for everyone

PROBLEM: Delays in time and project data submission by consultants often lead to “guesstimates” and errors

SOLUTION: Use a system that enables timely time and project data submission via browser or mobile apps. Reminders via email encourage consultants to submit reports on time, and help you invoice your clients based on detailed, up-to-the-moment data

PROBLEM: Managers are burdened with collecting and manually entering consultants’ data

SOLUTION: Eliminate cumbersome paper- and Excel-based tracking in favor of an automated system that doesn’t require investment in hardware, software or skilled staff.

Stay tuned for more useful billing tips and best practices!