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All-in-one HR platform · v2.0
14-day free trial · No credit cardhello@HrMagix.com
All-in-one HR platform · v2.0
14-day free trial · No credit cardhello@HrMagix.com
Consultancies, agencies and firms billing client time
In a consultancy the same hour is simultaneously a payroll input and a revenue line. Capturing it once, accurately, against the right client is not administration, it is bookkeeping.
A consulting or agency workforce is rarely in the office, and that is the point. People are at client sites, between them, or working from wherever the engagement requires. The office is an address, not a place of work.
This makes the ordinary assumptions of attendance software useless. A biometric reader at reception measures nothing meaningful. At the same time, the firm needs to know where hours went, not to police anyone, but because those hours are the thing being sold.
A client disputes the hours billed, and the timesheets cannot settle it.
Utilisation is being estimated rather than measured.
Not a feature gap, the specific operational pressures this kind of company runs into, and why each one resists a spreadsheet.
Geo-fenced mobile check-in around client sites, with location tagging, records where the work actually happened. For a mobile workforce this is the only capture method that reflects reality.
Engagement-specific schedules, extended hours during a delivery push, and weekend work that must generate comp-off rather than resentment, all of it needs the same rule engine a shift operation uses.
When a consultant's manager is themselves at a client site, an approval chain based on who is physically around fails. Multi-level hierarchies configured by grade with escalation keep leave and regularisation moving.
In firms where people join to grow, career conversations are not a nicety. Structured 1-on-1s with shared agendas, running action items and a manager's own notes make progression a documented conversation rather than an annual surprise.
You do not have to switch everything on at once, and for a company like yours there is a sensible order. This is it, with the reasoning attached.
Professional firms have an organisational shape that HR software rarely anticipates. Partners are owners rather than employees, and are usually paid through drawings rather than payroll. Associates and staff are employees in the ordinary sense. Articled clerks, trainees and interns are a third category with their own stipend and statutory treatment.
The consequence is that a single payroll run has to accommodate populations whose relationship to the firm is legally different, and a single employee record has to be clear about which is which, because it determines PF applicability, ESI eligibility, TDS treatment and gratuity accrual.
The point is not that the software decides these questions. It is that the category has to be a field on the record rather than an understanding held by the person who runs payroll, because that person eventually goes on leave.
Accounting, audit, legal and consulting firms have compressed periods where the ordinary rules of working time stop applying: statutory audit season, tax filing deadlines, a case going to hearing, a transaction closing.
Two administrative facts follow. Overtime and late working concentrate into a few weeks, which makes the overtime and comp-off policy far more consequential than its usage across the year suggests. And leave becomes contested, applications cluster immediately after the peak, and a team calendar showing the overlap at the point of approval is worth more than a policy document.
Where the firm compensates the peak with time off rather than payment, the comp-off entitlement and its expiry are the mechanism that decides whether that promise is honoured or forgotten.
Professional firms hold client confidences as a professional obligation, and they hold employee confidences as an employer. The two are separate, and the second is the one HR systems are responsible for.
In a small firm the practical risk is not a breach from outside. It is that salary, disciplinary records or a grievance become visible to a colleague because access was granted informally and never withdrawn, the partner's assistant who was given the payroll folder once, the manager who kept access to a team they no longer lead.
Access granted by role against the record, withdrawn when the role changes, and recorded when a restricted field is opened, is what turns a confidentiality clause into something that can actually be demonstrated.
Everything here runs from the same employee record and the same attendance ledger, which is what allows a firm whose people are almost never in one place to still close a month on time.
Yes. GPS geofences can be configured around client sites and branch locations as well as your own offices, with location tagging and optional selfie validation on mobile check-in.
Approval hierarchies are configured by grade with escalation, and notifications go by email and push, so a request routes onward rather than sitting with someone who is unreachable.
HRMagix captures attendance and location, including project-specific rosters and overtime. It is not a billing or invoicing system, and does not claim to be one, what it provides is the accurate time record that billing depends on.
As distinct categories on the employee record, because the category determines PF applicability, ESI eligibility, TDS treatment and gratuity accrual. Partners paid through drawings sit outside payroll; trainees on a stipend have their own treatment. The important thing is that the distinction is a recorded field rather than knowledge held by whoever runs payroll.
Through the team calendar at the point of approval rather than through policy alone. Applications cluster immediately after a peak, and an approver seeing the overlap while deciding is making a staffing decision rather than approving four requests in sequence. Blackout or restricted periods can be configured where the firm needs them.
Yes. Compensatory off is earned from the attendance ledger, a day worked that was not a working day, and carries the expiry the policy sets, so it lapses on a date rather than when someone forgets. That expiry is usually what determines whether the promise is honoured.
Access is granted by role against the record rather than informally, and it changes when the role changes. Views of restricted fields are recorded. In small firms the realistic risk is not an external breach but access that was granted once for a reason and never withdrawn.
Yes. Structured 1-on-1s carry shared agendas, running action items and the manager's own notes, so progression becomes a documented conversation rather than an annual surprise.
Looking for a custom walkthrough or have specific statutory policy requirements? Connect with our product specialists in Pune for a 1-on-1 consultation.
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