PLYNT for consulting and professional services
A consultancy sells hours, whether or not it prices them by the hour. This page is about knowing how much of the team’s capacity turned into billable work, and having the hours behind an invoice ready before a client asks.
Key facts
- What is measured
- Approved hours per person, client and engagement, against cost held per person rather than an average rate.
- Before the invoice
- Hours are reviewed before they reach an invoice, so the figure a client receives has already been checked.
- Who sees pay
- Salary figures are leadership-only; other roles see the work without the pay.
- Not included
- No proposal pipeline today, no automatic desktop time capture, no payroll.
A closer look.
The details behind the workflow, including what is available and what is still planned.
A partner knows roughly who is busy. Roughly is enough to staff next week and useless for the question that decides a year: what share of the hours the firm paid for were sold.
The gap is rarely idleness. It is internal work, a proposal that took eleven days, a client who needed three calls that were never recorded, a project that ran two weeks past its fee. Each is defensible; none appears anywhere until someone reconstructs the quarter from calendars.
An invoice raised without the hours behind it is also a slower invoice. It is queried, it waits, and it is paid late.
- Every hour attached to a client or an internal reason. Unassigned time is the part of the year nobody can explain.
- A review step before hours reach an invoice. A partner’s correction belongs before the client sees the number, not after.
- Cost per person, not an average rate. Utilisation calculated on an average tells you nothing about which engagements are worth taking.
- Fixed-fee and time-and-materials in the same view, because most firms run both.
- Capacity before commitment. The answer to “can we take this on in March” should not require three conversations.
Hours are recorded against tasks that belong to an engagement and a client, and approved before they become cost or reach an invoice. Loaded hourly cost is held per person, so a report separates a senior week from a junior one.
People and workload shows who is committed and to what, before a new engagement is accepted. Reports set approved hours and direct costs against engagement value and show what each figure is built from.
Salary figures are visible to leadership only; other roles see the work without the pay. Firms with a second entity — a training arm, a foreign company — keep each in its own workspace.
There is no proposal or pipeline management today: the sales CRM is in development, so opportunities live elsewhere until they become clients. There is no automatic desktop time capture, and no document assembly or e-signature. It is not accounting software and does not run payroll.
Firms that bill strictly by the hour with no project structure may find a dedicated time-and-billing tool simpler.
Does it calculate utilisation?
It holds the parts utilisation is calculated from — approved hours per person, per client and per engagement, against cost per person. The reports show hours and margin per engagement; a single firm-wide utilisation percentage is not a built-in metric today.
Can associates see each other’s rates?
No. Financial records are limited by role and salary figures are leadership-only.
We work with clients abroad and invoice in different currencies.
The workspace currency is set per company, and each company has its own workspace. Subscription prices themselves are published in US dollars.
Still choosing between tools? The 2026 comparison guide reads fourteen of them on their own published prices, and the comparison pages go tool by tool.
Start with the work that keeps getting stuck.
Bring one project into a connected workspace. See the work, the people and the cost together.