Everhour connects consultant hours to projects and budgets, while your client records stay organized by campaign and deliverable.
Enter your time in and out for each day. Overtime and gross pay are calculated automatically.
| Day | Time In | Break Start | Break End | Break | Time Out | Total |
|---|
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
Use this page to organize consulting hours by client, account, campaign, and deliverable before billing or reviewing workload. A marketing consultant's week can include strategy sessions, audience research, ad campaign planning, client calls, reports, presentations, and internal admin. A usable log separates those streams, so a two-hour positioning workshop and a 30-minute invoice review do not land in the same bucket.
Independent consultants and small practices need the same discipline even without a profession-specific mandate. The IRS allows any small-business recordkeeping system that clearly shows income and expenses; it does not require a special time-tracking system for marketing consultants. The practical standard is simpler: each entry should explain who the work was for, which scope item it supported, and whether the time was billable.
Start each entry with the client name, account or project, campaign, task type, date, duration, person responsible, and billing status. Add a short note when the entry affects scope, budget, or a client decision. For U.S. billing records, rate and invoice fields normally use U.S. dollars. Separate non-billable business development, internal planning, and admin time from client-facing work, because blended totals hide margin and capacity problems.
A clean consulting entry reads: Acme Health, spring lead-gen campaign, market research, March 5, 2026, 1.75 hours, billable, "reviewed competitor landing pages and summarized offer gaps." A second entry for Acme can use the same campaign label but mark a client status meeting separately. That structure keeps research, meetings, reports, presentations, and campaign execution visible without turning the log into a diary.
Marketing consulting time becomes more useful when it ties to the economics of the engagement. Proposals commonly define the schedule, work plan, and cost, so the time record should mirror the contract or statement of work. Use budget names that a client or finance contact recognizes, such as "Q2 paid social audit" or "website conversion research," rather than private shorthand that only you understand.
Billable and non-billable labels matter for ROI, P&L, expenditure, and profitability reviews. A strategy call may be billable under a retainer, while a proposal for the next phase may belong to sales time. Client-facing and cross-functional work also needs clear ownership. Entries that identify the consultant, task owner, and deliverable make it easier to explain time spent with art directors, sales, finance, product, public relations, and the client.
A one-off tracker is enough when you need a quick weekly total for a single client, a draft invoice, or a personal check on where the day went. It also works for a solo consultant testing a new time category. Keep the file clean, export or save the result, and store it with the invoice or project notes so the record survives past the current week.
A managed workflow becomes necessary when tracked hours need to drive budgets, retainers, approvals, and client billing every week. Everhour Project Budgeting supports hour-based and money-based budgets, recurring budget periods, client-level budgets across multiple projects, billing methods for fixed-fee or time-and-materials work, and budget alerts at 75%, 90%, and 100%. That gives a consulting practice one budget trail instead of scattered spreadsheets.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
High Performer
G2
Summer 2026
Best Ease Of Use
Capterra
Summer 2026
Rated in the top time trackers across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — with consistent praise for ease of use, integrations, and support.
Use categories that match the way the client buys and reviews the work: strategy, campaign planning, market research, meetings, reports, presentations, and internal admin. Add client, account, campaign, and deliverable labels to each entry. A single "marketing" bucket makes invoices harder to defend and prevents you from seeing whether the work matched the proposal.
Retainers need budget visibility as much as time totals. Track the same fields as hourly work, then add the retainer period, included scope, and billable status. A monthly retainer for campaign management should separate routine optimization from new landing page strategy if the contract treats those as different scopes. That prevents retainer burn from hiding change-request work.
Keep non-billable entries that explain the cost of running the engagement: proposal work, internal planning, account administration, billing review, and client-development calls outside the signed scope. Excluding all non-billable time makes utilization look better than reality. Label it clearly so client reports show only the work the client should see.
No profession-specific federal mandate requires marketing consultants to use a special time-tracking system. The IRS allows any small-business recordkeeping system that clearly shows income and expenses. For employees, the FLSA requires covered employers to keep accurate records for nonexempt workers, and records for employees covered by the FLSA minimum wage or overtime provisions must include hours worked each workday and total hours worked each workweek.
Employee classification and the workweek control the answer. Under the FLSA federal baseline, covered nonexempt employees must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a fixed, regularly recurring 168-hour workweek at not less than 1.5 times the regular rate. Hours cannot be averaged across two or more workweeks. Self-employed consultants do not earn employee overtime for their own business hours.
Everhour Project Budgeting lets a consulting practice track hour-based or money-based budgets with recurring budget periods for monthly retainers. Client-level budgets can cover multiple projects, and alerts at 75%, 90%, and 100% show when a campaign or account is nearing its limit.
Use Everhour Project Budgeting to connect every consulting hour to the right client budget, retainer period, and alert threshold, giving marketing consultants a cleaner path from time records to budget control.
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