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A small team with straightforward hourly billing can usually manage with a standalone tracker such as Toggl Track, Harvest or Clockify. It is also the cheaper option.
Agencies on retainers need to compare allocated and tracked hours throughout the month. A connected platform such as Magnetic or Productive lets them review this before month end.
Consultancies that combine time and materials with fixed-fee work need rate cards, approvals and reports comparing actual effort with estimates. These matter more than improvements to the timer itself.
Architecture and engineering firms that bill by project stage should track time against the budget for each stage as well as the overall project amount.
If someone spends more than a day a month connecting timesheets to projects and invoices, the cost of that work can outweigh the saving on a cheaper tracker.
Billable utilisation at professional services firms fell to 68.9% in SPI Research's 2025 Professional Services Maturity Benchmark. EBITDA margins dropped to 9.8%, their lowest level in over a decade. Demand accounts for some of that shortfall. Another major problem is client work that gets completed but never gets invoiced.
Most firms already use some form of time-tracking software to capture those hours. Options range from a free browser timer to a platform that handles projects, resourcing, and billing. A six-person design studio will have very different requirements from a 60-person engineering consultancy.
This guide compares 10 tools for agencies, consultancies, and architecture and engineering firms. We've organised the comparison around how you bill, because that often matters more than the feature list.
Before considering software solutions, identify where time goes unrecorded. Four main issues cause most of the missing hours firms usually see.
Late entry. When people log Monday's work on Friday afternoon, they have often forgotten some of the key details. Memory research by Hermann Ebbinghaus shows recall falls sharply within hours. A two-hour design review gets recorded as "about 1.5 hours", and a 20-minute client call is left out altogether.
Small tasks. It’s easy to skip logging brief tasks, a quick phone call, reviewing a document between meetings, or a short Slack exchange with a client, because they may seem insignificant. To avoid missing these, make it a rule to track any task that takes six minutes or longer (0.1 of an hour).
Classification. People need to know whether meeting preparation, travel, and internal planning for a client count as billable work. Without a written policy, they make their own judgement and usually record less than they should. Agree on the policy before buying software so the system has a rule to apply.
Handoffs. It’s common for time to be tracked in one tool, for budgets to be managed in a separate spreadsheet, and invoices handled in an accounting system. This means someone has to manually transfer information between these systems, and hours are often lost during exports or updates.
For a consultant billing £120 an hour, losing 30 minutes a day adds up to about 115 billable hours across 46 working weeks. That's £13,800 a year for one person or £276,000 for a 20-person team. To estimate your firm's loss, compare last month's logged client hours with client work in your team's calendars.
Our guides to reducing time leakage and spreadsheet versus automated time capture cover these causes in more detail. Here we focus on which tools can help.
Almost every tool on this list belongs to one of three categories. Choosing a category first gives you a smaller, more relevant set of tools to compare.
Toggl Track, Harvest, Clockify, and Timely capture time quickly and produce clear reports showing who worked on what. They don't show whether those hours were within budget, covered by the agreed scope, or profitable. Someone still needs to export the time and match it to project budgets and invoices.
For solo consultants and small teams with straightforward hourly billing, that may be all that's needed. A broader platform adds little value if you do not use its other features.
Hubstaff is the main example on this list. Monitoring tools add screenshots, activity levels, and location tracking, which can help when a contract requires activity logs. In agencies and consultancies, monitoring people paid for their judgement can undermine trust. Activity data also tells you little about whether their work was profitable.
Magnetic, Productive, Scoro, and BigTime are professional services automation (PSA) platforms. Time tracking sits alongside project management, resourcing, budgets, and billing. As people log hours, the system updates project budget spend, client margins, and team capacity without anyone exporting data.
These platforms suit firms of roughly 10 people or more that run several projects at once, particularly when they use a mix of billing models.
To compare the cost of a standalone tracker with an end-to-end platform, work out how much time your firm spends transferring hours between systems each month. Then compare that cost with the difference in subscription prices.
Take a 20-person agency whose operations manager spends two days a month matching timesheets to projects and preparing time records to support invoices. At an internal cost of £35 an hour, those 16 hours cost £560 a month. For 20 people, the difference between a tracker at around $9 per user and Magnetic Pro at £17 per user is roughly £200 a month. The reconciliation work alone costs more than the additional subscription, even before accounting for any hours missed in the process.
If the same work takes your firm an hour a month, a standalone tracker is likely to remain the better choice.
Stop matching timesheets to invoices manually
In Magnetic, approved time automatically syncs to invoices at the right billing rates.
Many software comparisons give little attention to billing models. Yet a tool that works well for hourly billing may not help with a retainer or stage-based fee setup.
Over-servicing is a common problem with retainers. A client pays for 40 hours a month, but the team delivers 52. If nobody spots the extra time until month-end, the agency has already absorbed the cost and reduced its margin.
You need to compare the hours allocated to each retainer with the hours recorded as work happens, with a warning before the budget is used up. Standalone trackers report an overrun after the event. Magnetic, Productive, and Scoro show it during the month, giving you time to discuss it with the client.
Harvest and a simple spreadsheet can be sufficient if you have fewer than five retainers and someone reviews them weekly. With more retainers, it is harder to keep up that review. Our agency page explains how retainer tracking works in Magnetic.
Time and materials work needs accurate records and a clear approval process. You need rates for each person or role, a manager to approve time before it reaches the client, and enough detail to support the invoice. Harvest handles this well for small teams. BigTime and Magnetic support multiple rate cards and approval chains for larger firms.
On a fixed-fee project, you still need to record time to assess whether the agreed amount covered the work. Compare actual effort with the estimate for each phase, then use what you learn in the next proposal. Without that comparison, a consultancy can keep underpricing the same type of project.
Most consultancies use both billing models. Check whether a tool can handle T&M and fixed-fee projects side by side without workarounds. Our guide to utilisation versus realisation explains why you need to track those measures separately. The consulting page covers how Magnetic handles mixed billing.
Architecture and engineering firms usually agree fees for each work stage, following the RIBA Plan of Work in the UK or AIA phases in the US. An overall project can look profitable even when one stage exceeds its fee by 40 percent. Logging time against individual stages makes that difference visible.
These projects often run for months or years, include expenses and sub-consultant costs, and require staff to be scheduled well in advance. Your software needs to support stage budgets, time, and expenses for each stage, plus long-term resource planning. Magnetic, BigTime, and ClickTime support budget tracking at this level. A standalone tracker can tag time by stage but won't show how much of the stage fee you've used. Our architects page explains how Magnetic tracks stage budgets.
Timers, mobile apps and reminders are available in every tool on this list. The following five features matter more when comparing tools for professional services firms.
Best for: agencies, consultancies, and architecture and engineering firms that want time, projects, resourcing and billing in one system.
Magnetic is built for firms that sell time. It connects time tracking to tasks, project budgets, invoicing and resource plans. Each logged hour updates the project's budget spend, the client's margin and the person's utilisation.
Teams use the allocated-versus-tracked view most often. It lets project managers see over-servicing as hours are recorded, so they can review the extra work during the month.
Pricing: Solo is free for one user. Essentials starts at £9 per user per month billed annually (£10 monthly), and Pro starts at £17 per user per month billed annually (£22 monthly). Both have a five-user minimum. A 14-day free trial is available. See current pricing.
Where it fits less well: A freelancer who only needs a timer may find Magnetic a bit too advanced. Firms requiring activity monitoring with screenshots will need a monitoring tool.
See how Magnetic timesheets work
Best for: small firms billing by the hour that want time and invoicing together.
Harvest is one of the longest-established time trackers and remains straightforward to introduce to a team. Time entry is quick, expenses are recorded alongside time, and tracked hours can be turned into invoices with little effort. It connects to accounting tools including QuickBooks and Xero.
Pricing: Free for one seat and two projects. The Teams plan starts at $9 per seat per month billed annually. A 30-day free trial is available.
Limits: Capacity planning is handled in Harvest Forecast, a separate product. Budget and profitability reporting is less detailed than in a PSA, which matters more for retainers or fixed-fee work.
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Best for: teams that want time entry to be as fast as possible.
Toggl Track is known for its one-click timers, browser extension, and clear reports. Its main advantage is how little effort it takes to log time, especially for teams struggling to build the habit.
Pricing: Toggl offers a free plan for small teams. Starter is listed at $9 per user per month. A 30-day free trial is available.
Limits: Project planning and resourcing are handled in separate Toggl products, and invoicing is basic. You generally need to export time to other systems for billing and budget tracking.
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Best for: budget-conscious teams that need basic time tracking for a large number of people.
Clockify's free plan includes unlimited users and projects. It is a practical starting point for firms introducing a formal time tracking process.
Pricing: Free for unlimited users. Paid plans start from around $4.99 per seat per month, with prices increasing by tier.
Limits: To unlock approvals, invoicing, or advanced reporting, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. As you add these extras, the free plan’s initial savings quickly disappear.
Best for: teams where people consistently forget to log time.
Timely records activity in the background and prepares draft timesheets for review and submission. It helps with late entries by keeping a record of work, so people do not have to reconstruct the week from memory.
Pricing: From $9 per user per month billed annually, with planning and reporting added on higher tiers. A free trial is available.
Limits: Your team needs to understand what background tracking records and who can see it. Billing and budget controls are less extensive than in a PS.A.
Best for: agencies that want budgets and profitability tied to time.
Productive is an agency management platform for time, budgets, resourcing, and invoicing, with a strong focus on project profitability. It is a direct alternative to Magnetic for agencies. Our Magnetic versus Productive comparison explains the differences.
Pricing: Essential starts at $10 per user per month billed annually ($12 monthly). Professional costs more and adds more detailed reporting and resource planning. A free trial is available.
Limits: Several features agencies buy Productive for are on higher tiers. Base your cost comparison on the plan that includes the features you need.
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Best for: firms that want quoting, CRM, projects and billing in one suite.
Scoro covers a broad range of business functions, including quotes, sales pipeline, time tracking, projects, and invoicing.
Pricing: From around $17 per user per month, with seat minimums. The full feature set requires higher tiers. A free trial is available.
Limits: Pricing and setup effort are higher than for most tools on this list. Smaller firms may pay for modules they do not use. Our Scoro comparison explains how it compares with Magnetic.
Best for: consultancies and engineering firms, particularly those in the US using QuickBooks.
BigTime is a PSA for consultants, engineers, and other firms that bill by the hour. It supports multiple billing rates, time and expenses, project budgets, and invoicing. Its QuickBooks integration is well established.
Pricing: Essentials starts at $20 per user per month. A free trial is available.
Limits: BigTime has one of the higher starting prices on this list. Its features are designed for mid-sized firms and may exceed what a small team needs
Best for: finance-led firms that want detailed, audit-ready time and budget reporting.
ClickTime combines time tracking with budget, cost, and billing reporting. It includes more than 70 pre-built reports and tools for managing retainers. It suits firms where finance manages the timesheet process.
Pricing: Starter costs $12 per user per month (billed annually at $15/month) for up to 25 users. Expense tracking is an add-on.
Limits: ClickTime focuses on time and budgets. You’ll still need separate tools for project delivery and resourcing.
Best for: remote teams where activity logging is a contractual requirement.
Hubstaff combines time tracking with optional screenshots, activity levels and GPS location tracking.
Pricing: From $4.99 per user per month, with more monitoring and reporting on higher tiers. A free trial is available.
Limits: Monitoring can damage trust in teams whose work depends on professional judgement. Hubstaff records activity without showing whether the work is profitable, so it addresses a different need than most agencies and consultancies have.
A free trial is more useful when you know what to check. Use the following approach to assess each tool over two weeks.
Use a live project. Run a real project in each shortlisted tool so you can see where the process is awkward. Demo data won't show you that.
Have everyone log time daily. Include at least one person sceptical about time tracking. If they keep logging, the team is more likely to keep using the tool.
Review the records on day ten. Compare logged client hours with client work in calendars, record steps needed to turn approved time into a draft invoice, and review the project's budget spend report.rt.
Assess adoption, reconciliation, and visibility. By week two, is almost everyone logging time daily? How many manual steps are needed between a timesheet and an invoice? Could the project manager have identified an overrun before it happened?
Two weeks should usually be enough to tell whether a tool will work for your team. Problems may become clear earlier in the trial.
If your firm runs retainers, mixed billing models, or stage-based fees, try Magnetic with a real project. You can review time, budgets, and margins together without reconciling records by hand.
Start a 14-day free trial or book a demo, and we'll show you how it works with your own projects.
No reliable figure applies to every firm. The amount depends on how and when people record their time. SPI Research's 2025 benchmark reported average billable utilisation of 68.9%. Some of the shortfall against healthy targets comes from work that was done but never logged. Compare last month's recorded client hours with client work in your team's calendars to estimate your firm's loss.
A PSA usually becomes relevant at around 10 people, when a firm runs several projects at once or uses more than one billing model. Reconciliation time is a useful indicator. If someone spends more than a day a month transferring hours between a tracker, spreadsheets and the accounting system, a connected platform can pay for itself through the time saved.
Both are good standalone trackers. Harvest suits firms that want invoicing and expenses in the same tool. Toggl Track suits teams whose main concern is fast time entry. When you run several retainers, you'll need to compare allocated and tracked hours in real time. Neither provides that view, which is why agencies often consider Magnetic or Productive at this point.
Both platforms connect time, budgets and resourcing for service firms. Magnetic serves agencies, consultancies, and architecture and engineering firms. It includes CRM and automations in the same system and offers a free Solo plan. Our full comparison covers the differences feature by feature.
Choose a tool that takes seconds to use and show people how their time records inform pricing and workload decisions. Ask them to log time daily rather than leaving it until Friday. Automated reminders can help build the habit, but a manager reviewing timesheets every week has more impact.
Yes. A small firm with straightforward hourly billing can get most of the value from a free or low-cost tracker. A platform becomes useful when retainers, fixed fees or several projects make reconciliation a regular task.
Jenna Green
Head of Growth
at Magnetic
Jenna Green leads marketing at Magnetic. She's worked across agencies, startups, and B2B SaaS, giving her first-hand experience of the operational challenges service firms face.
Magnetic is an all-in-one workflow management platform designed and built for professional services firms.
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