How to get timesheets in before invoicing in an IT consultancy

An IT consultancy gets timesheets in before invoicing by setting a cut-off that falls before the invoice run and not on it, chasing only the people whose time is missing, checking each entry against the billing rules and the statement of work it is billed to, and handing the approver a complete set with a short list of exceptions. On time and materials work the timesheet is the invoice, so each missing week holds back one client's bill. An AI worker can do the reminding and the checking. Entering the hours, correcting them and approving them stay with your people.

Why must the time be in days before the invoice date?

Because the invoice date is fixed. An IT consultancy or software house that bills time and materials invoices on a fixed day, usually just after month end, and every hour on those invoices has to be logged, submitted and approved first. Harvest, for example, records each time entry as unsubmitted, submitted or approved, and records separately whether it is billable and whether it has been invoiced. A firm that bills on approved time cannot bill a week that is still unsubmitted, and the whole client invoice waits for it. The real deadline is therefore days earlier, and consultants are seldom told which day it is.

Statements of work add a second reason. The Association for Project Management defines a statement of work as the part of a contract that sets out "the detail of deliverables, timescales and management procedures", and a change request as "a request to obtain formal approval for changes to the approved baseline". Days logged beyond what a statement of work allows need that approval before they are billed, and they come to light once the time is in.

How do timesheets reach an approved invoice today?

1. Set the cut-offs. One day when each week closes, and one when the month closes, placed far enough before the invoice run for queries and approval. Today this is custom, held in the delivery manager's or finance lead's head.

2. Find the gaps. Who has not submitted, and whose week is short of their contracted days. The delivery manager runs a report and reads down it.

3. Chase. A message goes to everyone, then to the usual few, then comes a walk round the office or a call. The time system's own reminder has already gone and been ignored.

4. Check what came in. Look for hours on a project that has closed, time with no task or ticket reference, a fourteen-hour day, and days booked to a statement of work whose budget is spent. Often nobody checks until the client queries the invoice.

5. Correct. The consultant who did the work fixes the entry.

6. Approve. The project or delivery manager approves the time, and finance raises the invoices.

What you can change this week

• Publish the calendar. Put the weekly and monthly cut-offs and the invoice date in everyone's diary for the year. People miss a deadline they were never told.

• Close the week, not only the month. A week submitted on Friday is remembered. A month rebuilt on the 31st is a guess, and a guess on a client's invoice is where disputes start.

• Read how your built-in reminder decides whom to tell. Harvest sends a first reminder before the deadline you choose and a second after it, and lets you pick who receives them: anyone who has not submitted, or anyone who has tracked less than a set share of their capacity. Find out how your own system treats a week with two days on it and three missing.

• Write the billable rules down. Say which projects are open, what a complete entry carries, which statement of work each project bills against and the longest day you would accept without a question. Until they are written, only one person can check a timesheet.

• Keep a list of who is away. Chasing someone on leave teaches everyone to ignore the chase.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

Much of this job is dates, gaps and rules, which an AI worker can take on with a specification you approve and a named person it reports to. For this job it keeps your cut-off dates and knows who is away. It can look in the time system for unsubmitted and part-filled weeks, message each person with the days that are missing, and keep asking only those whose time is still missing, at the intervals you set. It can read what was submitted against your written rules and send each query to the consultant who made the entry. Before the run it tells the approver that the set is complete, or gives finance the list of what is missing, whose it is and how long it has been waiting. The role is specified on our page for timesheet chasing. Once the hours are in, setting them beside each project's budget in the client's weekly or sprint report is a job for management reporting.

What the consultant and the manager keep

The hours on an invoice are the consultant's word for what they did, so the consultant enters and corrects them. The worker asks; it never edits. Approval stays with the manager who knows what the client agreed to. Whether an hour is billable, whether extra days fall inside the statement of work or need a change request, and whether to invoice a project with a week missing are commercial decisions. So is what to say to a consultant who is late every month: the worker reports the pattern and a manager has the conversation. Any phone call stays with your team.

What to have ready before starting

• The invoice run date and the cut-offs counted back from it.

• Each person's contracted days, and where leave is recorded.

• The written rules for a billable entry, and the days each statement of work allows.

• The wording and the intervals of the reminder, and who is told about repeat lateness.

• Last quarter's figures: how many days after month end the last timesheet arrived, and when the invoices went.

Timesheets are one of four jobs that pull billable people off billable work, set out on our page for IT consultancies and software houses. What the chasing costs in billable time is argued in how to scale an IT consultancy without hiring more staff.

Before every invoice run in an IT consultancy, an AI worker would chase and check the hours, and your delivery manager would approve the time and finance would raise the bills. One late timesheet can hold up a client's invoice. Talk to our agent.