Time & materials software that knows your bill rate and your cost rate

Stop running T&M billing through three spreadsheets and an accountant. Ask hice.ai for this month's billable amounts and get them computed, approved and ready to export.

Why T&M is the hardest billing model to get right

T&M looks simple — log hours, multiply by rate, send invoice — until you have 50 consultants on 30 clients, each with its own rate card, overtime rules, expense policies and approval workflow. Then it becomes a monthly fire.

Bill rates vary by client, role, seniority and quarter — Excel can't keep up
Cost rates (salary + overhead + benefits) are out of date, so margin is a fiction
Overtime and weekend hours fall under different rules per client — easy to undercharge
Pre-approved budgets get exceeded silently — the client refuses to pay the excess
Monthly invoicing takes 4-6 days and produces disputes that take weeks to resolve

Bill rate, cost rate, margin — in chat

hice.ai is built for the T&M model. Every rate, every override, every overtime rule is one chat away. Consultants log hours, AI applies the right rate, finance approves the billing data, margin is real.

«What's our margin on the Northrop engagement this month?» → £42k revenue, £28k cost, 33% margin, with breakdown by consultant
«Compute April amounts to invoice for all T&M clients, exclude unapproved hours» → 17 billing summaries ready for review with backing detail
«Mike worked 14 hours on Saturday for Acme — what rate applies?» → standard rate × 1.5 weekend multiplier, with the client-specific cap flagged

Try it in chat

Examples you can ask:

Static demo of hice's AI chat.

What you get

Multi-dimensional rate cards

Bill rate by client × role × seniority × period × currency. Effective-date switching is automatic. Approval workflows for overrides.

Live cost rate engine

Cost rate includes salary, social charges, benefits, overhead and PTO accrual — updated automatically when payroll changes.

Overtime and weekend rules

Per-client multipliers (1.5x, 2x), caps, blackout periods — set once, enforced forever, visible to consultants when they log time.

Budget guard-rails

Pre-approved budgets enforced at log-time. Consultants can't burn past 110% of cap without partner approval — protects you from disputes.

Invoice-grade time data

Every billable hour has a description, a project code and an approval status. Generate invoice backing detail in 30 seconds.

A rate card that survives clients, roles and currencies

The rate card is the most underestimated piece of a time-and-materials operation. As soon as a firm works with several clients on negotiated terms, the same role carries different prices, with annual uplifts, volume discounts and sometimes different currencies. Held in a spreadsheet, it guarantees that an invoice will eventually go out on a rate agreed two years ago.

Tying the rate to the contract rather than to the project, with an effective date and a warning when it lapses, removes that class of error entirely. Every logged hour is then valued at the right rate at the right moment, and the annual price review stops being a manual exercise somebody has to remember.

Rates by role, client and validity period
Annual uplifts with a warning before the effective date
Multi-currency with the exchange rate recorded on the transaction
Alert when hours are booked against a lapsed rate

Caps, budgets and the conversation before the overrun

A not-to-exceed clause protects the client and does nothing for the vendor unless somebody is watching the burn. The damage on a capped engagement is rarely done in the final week — it is done in weeks four to six, when consumption quietly moves ahead of plan and nobody raises it.

The control that works is a threshold agreed with the client at signature and an alert that fires on the way there rather than at it. A conversation at seventy percent consumption is a scope discussion; the same conversation at a hundred and five percent is a dispute about who pays.

Consumption against cap visible to both sides
Alerts at agreed thresholds, not at the ceiling
Change requests priced and accepted before the work starts
A stated rule for what happens when the cap is reached

Where the margin actually leaks

On a time-based contract the margin is not set at signature, it is built week by week, and it leaks in a small number of predictable places: hours worked and never logged, bookings made outside the assignment, rates not updated after an agreed uplift, and delivered work nobody invoices because an approval is missing.

There is a quieter fifth. A project sold with two seniors and three juniors but delivered with four seniors bills the same amount and leaves considerably less. Comparing the planned seniority mix with the actual one every fortnight is one of the cheapest reviews available, and one of the most profitable.

Hours pending entry by person and project
Bookings outside the assignment or the contract
Comparison between the seniority mix sold and delivered
Delivered work awaiting invoice, by age

Real case: 80-consultant T&M boutique in New York

Sarah, head of finance at a management consultancy with 80 senior consultants billed at $300-650 per hour, was closing the month over 5 working days with two part-time accountants. After three months on hice.ai, month-end close is 1.5 days, she recovered 8% of margin by catching cost-rate drift (raises and bonuses that hadn't propagated to rate cards), and disputed invoice value dropped from $90k/month to under $15k.

hice.ai vs Excel + Harvest + a billing tool

Feature	hice.ai	Excel + Harvest + separate billing
Margin per engagement	Live, every day	Monthly, after a 2-day reconcile
Rate-card updates	Chat command, takes effect today	Update three sheets, hope nothing breaks
Overtime and weekend rules	Encoded once, applied always	Done manually each month
Budget cap enforcement	Blocks at log-time, partner approves	Discovered when invoice is rejected
Monthly close	1-2 days	4-6 days
Dispute resolution	Backing detail in 30 seconds	Hours digging through timesheets

FAQ

Can it handle bill rates that vary by week (e.g. holiday weeks)?+

Yes. Rate cards have effective-date ranges. Special weeks, holiday surcharges and project-phase rates are all handled natively.

What about T&M with caps (T&M-not-to-exceed)?+

Caps are first-class. Consultants see the cap when logging time, partners get alerts at 70/80/90%, and overruns require explicit client approval before billing.

How does it compute consultant cost rates?+

From your payroll data: gross salary, social charges, benefits, bonus accrual, plus a configurable overhead allocation. Updates automatically when payroll changes.

Do consultants see their bill rate?+

Configurable. Some firms show it (transparency, motivation), some hide it. Cost rate is partner-only by default.

Can it handle subcontractors at different cost rates from employees?+

Yes. Each resource has its own cost rate type — employee, contractor, freelancer — and hice.ai mixes them correctly in margin reports.

What about retainer plus T&M overage?+

Hybrid contracts are standard: a fixed retainer covers N hours, additional hours bill T&M at the contracted rate. hice.ai tracks both balances live.

Can finance still use QuickBooks or Xero?+

Yes. hice.ai is the front-end and PSA; QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite or Sage handles the GL and invoicing. Billing data pushes automatically with full mapping.