How an IT consultancy became 20% more profitable by using Timeular

Envision Design is a managed service IT provider which manages, monitors and secures all the technology needs for companies who don’t keep all of their IT in-house. The owner, Richard, works as a IT consultant and has been a longstanding user of Timeular.

The challenge: underestimating non-billable overhead time

Before using Timeular, Richard and his team were greatly underestimating the amount of non-billable overhead time involved in client work. They were placing clients in pricing tiers based on estimations of how much work would be involved and, in some cases, they were undercharging for their services.

The solution: charging accurately for the service

For Richard, it’s important to be able to know if the team is spending ten hours or 100 hours a month supporting one client. He explains: “it’s always been a challenge getting the team to provide decent, accurate documentation. Timeular has removed this challenge and it’s ease of use and ubiquity across devices means that the team are tracking in real time rather than guesstimating.”

Some of the team are mostly office based and so using the Tracker works well for quickly tracking their regular activities. But for those in the team who tend to move around more, being able to track their time using the app provides them with the flexibility they need when they are on the go.

Lauding it as one of his favourite features, Richard says he loves the reporting tool as “it’s very graphic and the visuals really help me understand how things are going. The colours make it easy to digest too. I can filter, export and share as I wish and that’s really important.”

The outcome: being intentional about how time is spent

The team tracks client related IT consulting time as billable time. They also track non-billable time when carrying out admin or internal work relating to that client. They are then able to combine the billable and non-billable time to get a clear picture of exactly how much time they are dedicating to that client in total.

“If you’re not tracking then you could be giving your time away for free. Using Timeular allows us to be intentional about how we plan and spend our time.“

Thanks to the insights generated through Timeular, they are able to review and determine their pricing and, in turn, better set pricing for their services and become more profitable.

“We want to know that the fee charged was fair for both parties based on the time given to that project. Timeular provides me with that insight in just a few clicks.“

When working with more complex clients and moving them up a pricing tier, Richard explains that the reports can also be a great resource as they support the case by showing a clear breakdown of the work including that which goes on behind the scenes that the client is less aware of.