“We billed 61% of our own hours last quarter.” The managing partner said it flatly, like he was reading a weather report. Fifty-two consultants, a solid client roster, and nearly four of every ten hours they worked never made it onto an invoice.
His first guess was that people were coasting. They weren’t. They were working plenty — just not in a way anyone could bill for.
Where the missing hours go
We pulled three months of calendars, badge data, and project notes from twelve consultants. The pattern was consistent and, honestly, boring.
- Scope creep nobody wrote down: “quick calls” that ran 45 minutes, three times a week, per client.
- Work done before a change order was signed, sometimes weeks before.
- Internal rework caused by requirements that got clarified verbally instead of in writing.
- Travel and prep time everyone assumed was baked into the fee. It wasn’t.
None of that is dishonest. It’s just invisible. Unlogged work is unbillable work, and it compounds quietly until the year-end numbers look like a math error.
The Monday morning timesheet test
Their old process was a monthly timesheet filled in from memory on the last Friday. Memory is generous with meetings and stingy with detail. We replaced it with a five-minute daily habit and one rule that made it stick.
The rule: nobody submits a timesheet for a day they can’t describe in a single sentence per client. If the sentence is vague — “worked on the project” — the project manager sends it back. Three weeks was enough for people to stop writing vague sentences.
Then we wired hours against the original estimate so a project manager could see the gap on Monday morning instead of discovering it at invoicing. The fix wasn’t software. ERP Consulting at this stage is about changing one habit and giving managers a weekly number to look at.
Turning billing into a 3-day cycle
- Every engagement gets an estimate broken into phases, not one lump sum.
- Any work outside the signed scope gets a change order within 48 hours — one page, a price, a signature.
- Timesheets close Tuesday at noon. Invoices go out Wednesday and Thursday.
- Project managers review hours versus estimate weekly and flag anything past 85% of budget.
Nine months later the realization rate was 84%, up from 61%. On their revenue base, that was about $1.1 million a year that had been walking out the door with a smile. Same clients, same headcount.
Run one number this week: total hours your team recorded last month, divided by total hours they were paid for. If it’s under 80%, you don’t have a discipline problem. You have a visibility problem.