Time Tracking for the Admin Staff Behind a Consulting Firm

The first thing to get right is that a consulting firm almost certainly already has a time-tracking system, just not the kind this comparison is about. Consultants log billable hours against client codes for invoicing and utilization reporting, usually inside a practice-management or professional-services tool. Buddy Punch and Deputy solve a different problem: recording when an hourly, non-billable employee actually worked, for payroll purposes. Keeping those two systems mentally and operationally separate avoids a confusing rollout where staff aren't sure which tool tracks what.

If the firm's hourly staff work a fairly consistent schedule, such as a receptionist at the front desk or an office coordinator in five days a week, a straightforward time clock with location or photo verification may cover the need without much overhead. GPS or IP verification confirms the person was actually in the office, which matters if remote work policies are inconsistent across the firm, and the record is clean enough to hand to payroll without much reconciliation.

Some firms staff up temporary research or administrative support around a specific engagement, a data-heavy diligence project, a large proposal push, and that kind of variable staffing is where Deputy's shift-based model earns its keep. Building a short-term schedule for a research assistant brought on for six weeks, and letting them pick up or swap defined blocks of work, is a cleaner fit than trying to force a temporary engagement into a fixed weekly punch-clock pattern.

Firms sometimes try to consolidate everything into one tool, including billable consultant hours, because it seems simpler than running two systems. This usually backfires. A time-tracking tool built for hourly payroll doesn't handle the reporting a billable-hours system needs, client codes, realization rates, write-offs, and forcing salaried consultants to punch a clock for a payroll purpose that doesn't apply to them creates confusion about why they're suddenly being asked to clock in and out.

Start by listing every hourly, non-exempt role at the firm and how steady each one's schedule actually is. A role that's the same five days a week points toward the simpler tool. A role that flexes with deal flow or project staffing points toward the shift-based one. It's a short exercise, but skipping it is how firms end up paying for scheduling features an office coordinator with a fixed schedule will never use.

Work through these steps before choosing a tool:

1. List every hourly, non-exempt role at the firm and note how steady each role's schedule actually is from week to week.
2. Point roles with the same schedule every week toward the simpler time clock, and roles that flex with deal flow toward the shift-based tool.
3. For each role, ask whether the schedule ever needs to be built or adjusted, or only recorded, and let that answer decide the tool.
4. Keep salaried consultants' billable hours in the practice-management system instead of forcing them onto a payroll punch clock.
5. If the firm has several offices, check each location's pay rates and state overtime rules before running one setup everywhere.

A consulting firm with more than one office, or with distinct practice groups that each staff their own admin support, adds a coordination layer that a single-office firm doesn't have to think about. An office coordinator in one city and a research assistant in another may have completely different schedules, pay rates, and even applicable state overtime rules, and running both through one undifferentiated setup risks getting a state-specific rule wrong for one of them.

Set up the tool by location or practice group rather than as one flat roster, and confirm which state's wage and hour rules actually apply to each hourly employee based on where they physically work, not where the firm's headquarters happens to be.

Rather than running a full vendor evaluation for what's often a two- or three-person hourly team, ask one question about each role: does this person's schedule ever need to be built or adjusted, or does it just need to be recorded? A receptionist working the same hours every week just needs recording, which points toward the simpler tool. A research assistant staffed project by project needs both recording and active scheduling, which points toward the shift-based option.

That single question resolves most of the decision for a firm this size faster than comparing every feature on both vendors' pricing pages, and it keeps the rollout focused on the actual problem rather than the tool with the longer feature list.