Timesheet
Also known as: Time sheet, Time tracking, Time entry
Document, often digital, where a consultant logs hours worked, split by project, activity and type (billable or non-billable).
The timesheet is the heart of the reporting and billing process in a services firm: without accurately logged hours there is no invoice, no recognized revenue and no margin analysis. Weekly submission is the standard, with deadlines on Friday or the following Monday.
Modern PSAs offer mobile interfaces, suggestions based on calendar and Jira, allocation consistency checks and manager approval workflows. A company with timesheet compliance below 85% loses 3-8% of revenue to unlogged or late-logged hours. KPIs to watch: timesheet on-time rate (target 95%+) and percentage of unassigned hours.
Non-compliance is almost never a discipline problem. Consultants skip timesheets because entry takes too long, because the categories do not match the work they actually did, and because nothing visibly happens with the data afterwards. Each has a cheap fix: entry under thirty seconds from a phone, only the projects the person is assigned to, and a monthly moment where they see what their own hours produced.
The same data answers questions well beyond billing, and most firms never ask them. Which work types consistently take longer than they were sold, how much effort goes to unbilled internal work, whether a specific client absorbs disproportionate attention outside the contract: those answers change pricing more reliably than any market analysis, provided the categories stay stable enough to compare year on year.
Out of 200 consultants, 184 close their timesheet by Friday: 92% on-time rate, below target. The PSA sends automatic reminders to the remaining 16.