In many companies, consultants are hired to handle problems that the company does not have a solution to immediately. It would be silly to expect a company of a small size to have so many people on the payroll. Hiring a consultant is much easier and cheaper than hiring a plumber, decorator, or electrician.

But, with every facilitation, there is a price to pay. In this case, you need to control how many people you hire as consultants and how many hours they are billing. It is of the essence to get the project management going with the time tracking tool and the total hours you spend on your hires.

In this case, we have prepared some free consultant timesheet templates to help you manage timesheets best. That way, you will get accurate billing for multiple employees in a weekly or monthly timesheet template for more advanced users.

With that in mind, let’s review some consultant timesheet templates to find the best out of them!

But before that, let’s review what kind of software would be the most suitable for this project. In our experience, going the second best in this kind of scenario is not optimal, so we will surely recommend the Microsoft Office package.

It will allow you not only to track hours, assign project codes and see the whole client’s project right before your eyes, but it is also one of the most easy-to-use and widespread software tools you will ever encounter. It is the single best time-tracking software you will find!

Using it for your weekly timesheet template will benefit you greatly, as keeping track of every hour you bill is so time-consuming.

A suitable Word format or one of the Excel sheets can get you far, and using it monthly will significantly shorten the time it takes to go over this simple task.

And, it is no longer this expensive piece of software that will break your budget but an affordable piece of software that anyone can get.

If you are interested in some good details, check out RoyalCDKeys for some of the best offers on the market, including a Microsoft Office package. And now, let’s get over some useful free timesheet templates for your project.

Consulting Timesheet Template #1

First up, we start with something simple yet relatable. A project time doctor is used for many different things, primarily to bill hours correctly. As you can see, all the activities are divided into different brackets, timestamps, and the total hours/total pay at the end.

It is simple, valuable, and a great way of getting your consultant's work done. In most cases, something basic like that will suffice, but in others – you will have to use different tools. You can download this template for free at TimeDoctor.com.

Consulting Timesheet Template #2

Next up on our list is a consulting timesheet template you will use every week. It is much more advanced than what we’ve seen in the previous one, and for a reason. This timesheet is a detailed instruction on how to bill hours, divide tasks and add all the necessary hours.

If you want something that will suit your weekly needs, this template would be perfect for that. You can download this template for free at DocTemplates.net.

Consulting Timesheet Template #3

The next one on our list will help you better understand what tasks are being done, at what hours, and how much it will cost.

It’s a great graphic representation of the tasks at hand, and you will quickly notice that total billable hours line up perfectly with every detail in the spreadsheet.

The best thing about this one is undoubtedly the presentation. Everything is clear, nothing sneaky going on, just overall – an excellent template for most needs. You can download this template for free at SmartSheet.com.

Now that we know just what kind of template we should use for our project, let’s go over the topic at hand – consulting timesheet.

The idea is mainly conveyed in the name, as it is a timesheet for all the consulting work you will need in your company. Whether you have an hourly basis for a job or pay people for different tasks – it doesn’t matter.

A timesheet will show all the billable hours consultants had to sacrifice to complete a job at hand with detailed tasks they needed to do within those hours.

You will also be able to see all the leave days the consultant took during the month or a week, how much time is being wasted, and what kind of organizational costs it will take to keep this consultant working on this project.

According to the timesheet, those kinds of timesheets are widely used by doctors or business managers who complete them at the end of the month or every week. The timesheets are readily available everywhere, so you do not need to worry about not being able to get one for yourself.

You can use one of our templates or create one of your own, but remember to connect all the brackets so that you wouldn’t have to insert all the information again and again, ad nauseam.

Let’s now explain why you would need such a spreadsheet daily. So, the best argument is that it will help you track the hours of all workers, including those who are not stationary or employed full-time.

It is a crucial tool that will help you understand the costs necessary to run your business.

Keeping the Record

Another aspect of a consulting timesheet is that it allows you to record all the employees and consultants working in this company.

You have all the names, dates when they were working, their sick leave, and everything you would need to know about your employees.

It’s great, especially if you have a lot of employees outside and inside the company. That way, you can collect and keep data that you can later use to optimize your business.

Track the Time

It is also widely used to track the time of work of your employees and consultants. The days of punched cards are long gone; this is the time of the consulting timesheet! It is especially useful if you run a business that uses lots of different people or provides hourly-based services.

You must explain to the company that hired you why you bill those hours so they pay you.

It is illogical if you bill 4000 hours to fix one sink; people will probably not be extremely joyful about your company.

That is why using timesheets is an essential component of multiple businesses all over the business world. With that in mind, let’s review some core benefits of using consulting timesheets in your everyday work.

And – they are plenty. Of course, we will not be able to list all of them in this article, but we have picked some more interesting ones that will surely be useful in your company. So, without further ado, let’s check out some of the benefits that come from using consulting timesheet templates.

Payroll Management

As we’ve stated before, the more employees you have, the more problems will occur in creating a database to bill them all correctly. Additionally, you will have trouble keeping track of all the billable tasks in the company.

That is why a consultant timesheet will help you quickly solve that problem. Especially if you would use one of our well-interconnected payroll systems that will instantly show you how many hours and costs it took to complete the tasks.

Additionally, it is a great tracking mechanism for each employee's performance. You will quickly notice that some of your employees manage to complete, for example, three tasks in eight hours, but some can only do one.

It’s also useful while talking to the clients, and if they are having some invoice issues, you can present a list of tasks and hours spent on said tasks to them.

Budget Planning

With a well-crafted timesheet, it is easy to observe the time needed to complete each task. You can then plan all the budget spending ahead while looking at a pretty reliable source: your consultant timesheet.

It’s also of great use for all future projects and how to handle potential issues with costs. Looking at your spreadsheet, you can easily deduce what kind of budget you must propose to your stakeholders to keep everything running smoothly.

Efficient Task Management

Another great plus of using a consulting timesheet is that you can easily manage all the tasks you need to complete with the hiring people.

If you need to get done, let’s say, four different things, you can just check who is available, how much it will cost, and how quickly those people can do it.

Each person is different, so you will need to keep track of time spent on each particular task so that you will be able to complete everything in the right amount of time.

It is beneficial when you are getting all the consultants involved.

Problem Solver

A good consulting timesheet is also a great problem solver, as it shows how much money and time is spent on each task, and there is no discussion that someone was taken advantage of.

Especially because employees are filling in those timesheets themselves.

When communicating with the outside world, you can show customers the timesheets filled in, with the tasks and hours presented on a neatly kept table for all of them to use.

So, now that we know what we are talking about and how we should use this kind of tool, let’s go over some of the most crucial details on how to create and use a consultant timesheet template.

It’s beneficial not only from an employer's perspective but also from the perspective of employees, as those would most likely be the people filling it in. Here are some things to keep in mind then.

Essential Information

The first thing you need to fill in is all the personal information, such as:

• Name of customer/employee

• Address of customer/employee

• Contact info of customer/employee

After that, be sure to create and fill in the brackets of the provider information:

• Name of provider

• Address of the provider

• Contact info of the provider

• The period concerned

• The hourly rate

Additionally, be sure to include the following:

• Date

• Hourly rate

• Name of the project

• Tasks description

• Billable hours

Activities

This is a part where you add all the information on this project. It would be:

• Starting day of the task/project

• Name of the task

• The number of hours spent on the task

• Total number of hours

• Overtime hours

• Other expenses

• Payment info

• Credentials

• Total billable hours

• Signature of the consultant.

• Signature of the manager

• Date

Now that you are a timesheet expert, let’s get over some of the different types of timesheets that you can find on the whole wide web.

Of course, there are probably many more that you can find on the internet, but those are some of the most common examples of this technology utilized in real-life scenarios. So, without further ado, let’s go over some examples.

Paper Timesheet

Old and gold, a good paper timesheet will never let you down. And – there are surprisingly a lot of different companies that are still using this kind of format to get their timesheets up and running.

In this case, the data is being recorded in a pretty much spreadsheet format; the only difference is that it is all on paper.

Of course, it is one of the worst uses of this technology, mainly because we live in the XXI century, and we have access to unlimited resources that you can combine into a tabular format that is interconnected with every other element.

Nowadays, using this kind of technology feels a bit underwhelming and sub-optimal, at least.

Spreadsheet Timesheets

Another type of timesheet is a spreadsheet-based concept that you can put in your Microsoft Excel or one of your Google Sheets with ease.

The best thing about this kind of technology is that it can be easily integrated with many different data points. You can create an absolute monster of a spreadsheet if you want to create a tool combining all the data in the company.

And, as we know it nowadays, the more data you have, the better your company is running.

Online Timesheet

The other type of timesheet is the online one, where you can easily track all the differences we put into the system from different data points.

Using an online timesheet is excellent if you have many employees filling up different timesheets and want some control over them.

Additionally, if you have a tremendous online timesheet, you can add some elements to your project to maximize the data output of it for your company.

Creating a working hours/overtime/employee productivity tracker with this online timesheet software is pretty basic. It can give some well-deserved insight into how the whole thing operates.

And now we’re here, the experts on timesheet communication. Thank you so much for spending some time with us, where we tried to find out everything there is to know about timesheets for consulting work.

As it turns out, it is a handy tool that you can utilize to get a lot of data about your organization and learn more about how to go about some task handling in your company. See if there can be any upgrade to your business model, and have clear proof that you billed hours necessary for the task at hand.

Anyways, thank you so much for checking out our article. We hope that you can learn a thing or two about timesheets with our help. If you are interested in some different office/software/gaming-related information, we have a lot of that prepared for you in-store. Check out our wide library of texts here at RoyalCDKeys.

We will see you at the next one!