Time tracking and HR software for consulting firms
PeopleMuster is time tracking and HR software for consulting firms. Consultants log hours against each client project, and a partner or manager approves every sheet from one queue. Leave, utilisation, capacity and the audit trail live in the same database. You pay $3 per person per month, with every module included.
How a consulting year runs
Office hours, with seasons. One named shift covers most firms, and nothing about the roster changes from month to month.
The load is what moves. A year end, a client's filing deadline or a case going to court packs a quarter's work into a fortnight, while the roster stays exactly the same.
Leave is where that bites. Quotas are annual and per type, and the leave view shows who is out in the next seven days, so you plan a busy fortnight around real absences.
Capacity planning reads the same leave. The allocation grid lays each consultant against each day and bands the hours under, partial, full or over. Approved leave and company holidays come out before you commit anyone to a client.
Timesheets with manager approval
Consulting firms keep two records, and PeopleMuster keeps them apart on purpose.
Time recording is the daily recap: hours logged against a client project by the person who did the work. Entries move from draft to submitted and land in an approvals queue.
Approvals belong to a person, not a rule. A partner or manager works the queue and accepts or returns each sheet, so every approved hour has a name behind it. A Needs Attention view sits beside the queue for sheets that need a second look.
The logging window stops the month-end rebuild. An administrator sets how far back anyone may log. The live setting is five working days, so hours get written down while people still remember them.
Attendance is presence, and it's separate. A fingerprint terminal on the office network or browser check-in inside each person's shift window gives check-in, check-out, working hours and late minutes.
Every change sits in the audit trail with its before and after values. If you ever need to explain a recorded hour long after it was logged, that trail is the answer.
The number consulting firms argue about
Recoverable hours. How much of the time recorded against a client holds up when the fee is discussed.
PeopleMuster gives you the recorded side of that: hours by project, by department and by person, week over week, with a completion percentage against expected hours. Every project carries a billable or non-billable flag and an hourly or fixed-price flag, and the project list filters billable from non-billable.
Utilisation here is the split every firm ends up making: hours on client work against hours available. Admin, training and business development show up as projects, so how you set up projects decides what the number means.
Price is the other number. Harvest lists its Teams plan at $9 per seat a month on annual billing and $11 monthly (getharvest.com/pricing, checked 24 September 2026). PeopleMuster is $3 per person per month, and leave, shifts, capacity planning and the policy library come in that same price.
Which modules run here
Switched on
- Daily recap
- Hours per client project, with draft, submitted and approved states.
- Utilisation reporting
- Hours by project, department and person, week over week.
- Resource allocation
- Who is free next week, with leave and holidays already out.
- Clients
- Client records with several contacts each, and each client's local time.
- Activity log
- Field-level before and after values on every change.
- Leave
- Annual quotas per type, with approvals and usage analytics.
- Shifts
- One window for most staff, which late minutes and browser check-in both read.
- Policies
- A published policy library, with an assistant that answers from it.
Left off
- Devices
- Worth switching on once the laptop fleet outgrows a list.
Questions people ask
Can managers approve consultants' timesheets?
Yes. Each sheet moves from draft to submitted and lands in an approvals queue, where a partner or manager accepts or returns it. Every approved hour keeps its history in the audit trail.
How do you stop consultants filling in a month of hours at once?
With the logging window. An administrator sets how far back anyone may log, and five working days is the live setting, so time is recorded within the week it was worked.
Does it separate billable and non-billable work?
Yes. Every project is flagged billable or non-billable and hourly or fixed-price, and both the project list and the capacity plan filter billable from non-billable work.
What does it cost for a consulting firm?
$3 per person per month, from the first person, with every module included. There's no seat minimum and no setup fee, and every new customer gets 14 days free with no card.
Does leave reach the capacity plan?
Yes, the moment it's approved. Leave and timesheets share one database, so a consultant's week off comes out of the allocation grid before anyone books them onto a client.