Know which client projects are losing money — before they finish.
Hourglass is project profitability and time tracking software built for agencies, consultancies and MSPs. Get real-time visibility into budget burn, team utilisation and delivery risk — while there's still time to act.
14-day free trial · Full feature access · No credit card required
9
Built-in reports
14
Day free trial — full access
UK
Built & supported in the UK
GDPR
Data isolated per organisation
Every KPI your professional services team needs — at a glance
The Hourglass dashboard gives agency directors and consultancy managers a live snapshot of active projects, budget health, team hours and overdue tasks — without opening a single spreadsheet.
- Live revenue and projected profit for the month
- Budget burn and RAG health across all active projects
- Hours logged this week vs previous week
- Projects at risk, overdue and closing this month
Profitability, utilisation and billing reports — no setup required
From project profitability and resource utilisation to client billing summaries and executive overviews — every report your consultancy or agency needs is built in and ready to run across any date range, team or client.
- Project Profitability — margin per project vs billing rates
- Resource Utilisation — billable vs non-billable time split
- Client Billing — export-ready summaries for invoicing
- Executive Summary — organisational performance in one view
Give clients a read-only window into their projects
Invite client contacts directly from their client record. They get a secure, branded portal showing their projects, budget consumption, team and upcoming milestones — with no access to your internal data.
- Invite by email in one click from the client record
- Budget bars, hours logged and remaining per project
- Upcoming milestones and project end dates at a glance
- Fully isolated — clients never see your rates or financials
Budget at a glance
Per-project progress bars show hours logged, budget consumed and hours remaining — colour-coded by health.
Team visibility
Clients see which team members are working on their projects, with names and roles — nothing more.
Milestones & dates
Upcoming milestones and project end dates surface automatically — no manual client updates needed.
Completely isolated
Clients only ever see their own projects. Billing rates, internal reports and other clients are hidden at database level.
Why agencies and consultancies lose profit on projects they should win.
Most professional services firms track time. Very few connect that time data to delivery risk, team utilisation and project profitability — until it's too late to act.
No clear view of where time is actually going
Engineers are busy. Clients are demanding. But when a project overruns, no one can explain why — because time data lives in spreadsheets, email threads, and memory.
Utilisation is a guess, not a number
You know some people are overloaded and others are underused — but you cannot quantify it, cannot report it, and cannot fix what you cannot see.
Project overruns that surprise everyone
Budgets burn quietly. By the time you notice a project is in trouble, it's already 30% over. There's no early warning, no RAG status, no live burn rate.
Profitability is hard to understand, harder to improve
Revenue is easy to track. Profit per project, per client, per team? That requires pulling data from three different places and rebuilding a spreadsheet every month.
Hourglass is built to solve exactly these problems. Not with complexity — with the right data, in one place.
Professional services software that connects time, delivery and profit.
Stop discovering project overruns at month-end. Hourglass gives agencies, consultancies and MSPs the data to intervene while the project is still live.
Live project margin visibility
See profit and loss per project as work is logged — not at month-end. Hourglass maps every hour against billing rates and budgets automatically, surfacing which projects are making money and which are quietly draining it.
Utilisation & capacity planning
A drag-and-drop weekly planner showing every engineer's scheduled work, capacity, and time off. Spot who's overloaded and who has room — and rebalance before delivery slips.
Early warning alerts
Budget burn triggers, RAG status scores, and overdue milestones — all surfaced before the project becomes a problem. Stop discovering overruns after the fact.
AI-powered delivery intelligence
Every report can be summarised and analysed with AI. Budget risks are flagged with burn-rate projections, anomalies are detected automatically, and client-ready narratives are generated in seconds — no prompt engineering needed.
9 reports. Every answer included.
Professional services firms run on data. Hourglass includes every report you need — from individual utilisation to executive summaries — across any date range, team or project, with CSV and PDF export built in.
Team Performance
See logged hours, utilisation rate and output per engineer across any time period. Identify who is overloaded and who has capacity.
Project Profitability
Compare planned vs actual hours against billing rates. Understand true margin per project and surface unprofitable work before it repeats.
Budget Tracking
Track budget consumption as time is logged, with RAG health scores. Know which projects are on track and which are at risk the moment you check.
Client Billing
Generate billing-ready summaries by client and project. Export to CSV or PDF for invoicing without manually compiling time data.
Executive Summary
A single-page view of organisational performance: total hours, billable percentage, project health and profitability for leadership reporting.
Resource Utilisation
Understand billable vs non-billable time split across the team. Identify utilisation trends and make informed resourcing decisions.
Time Audit Log
A full chronological record of all time entries with approval status. Essential for compliance, billing disputes and capacity audits.
Project Health
RAG status, budget burn percentage, overdue tasks and delivery risk for every active project — in one dashboard view.
Task Time Breakdown
See exactly how much time has been logged against each task, filterable by project, client, team or individual — down to a single engineer's contribution.
Common questions about project profitability and time tracking software for professional services.
What is Hourglass?
Hourglass is a professional services automation (PSA) platform built for agencies, consultancies and MSPs. It combines time tracking, project management, resource planning and profitability reporting in one tool — giving teams real-time visibility into which projects are making money and which are at risk.
How do agencies improve team utilisation?
By making utilisation visible in real time. Hourglass shows planned vs logged hours per engineer per week, highlights over and under-utilisation, and lets project managers rebalance workloads before delivery suffers. Billable utilisation rates are calculated automatically across any date range.
How do consulting firms track project profitability?
By connecting time logged to billing rates and project budgets. Hourglass calculates cost vs revenue per project automatically, showing true margin per client engagement without manual spreadsheets. Project profitability reports can be exported as CSV or PDF.
What is the best PSA software for small professional services firms in the UK?
Hourglass is designed specifically for small to mid-size UK professional services firms — agencies, consultancies, and MSPs — that need the delivery visibility of enterprise PSA software without the cost or complexity. Starter plan is free; Pro is £12 per user per month.
How do you prevent project overruns in a professional services firm?
With always-current budget tracking and RAG health scores. Hourglass shows budget burn rate as work is logged, flags projects at risk with amber and red status, and gives project managers the data to intervene before overruns happen.
How do professional services firms reduce reporting effort?
By using a platform where all data is captured at source. Hourglass generates 9 built-in reports — from executive summaries to client billing — instantly, across any date range, without manual data collection. Reports can be summarised with AI in one click.
What time tracking software is best for agencies?
Agencies need more than a timer — they need to see how logged time affects project budgets, client billing and team utilisation. Hourglass combines time tracking with live profitability and delivery management, purpose-built for agency workflows.
Can Hourglass replace spreadsheets for project budget tracking?
Yes. Hourglass replaces manual budget spreadsheets with live budget tracking that updates as time is logged. Budget burn rate, hours remaining and RAG health scores are always current — no exports, no formulas, no reconciliation needed.
Does Hourglass include a client portal?
Yes. You can invite client contacts directly from their client record in Hourglass. They receive a secure, read-only portal showing their projects, budget consumption, hours logged, team members and upcoming milestones — with no access to your internal data, billing rates or other clients. Clients log in with their own account and are completely isolated from your internal app.
Free resource
Delivery Visibility Health Check
A practical self-assessment for professional services teams. Understand where your delivery visibility gaps are, what they're costing you, and which metrics to track first.
Free tool
Project Profitability Calculator
Enter a project's fee, hours and cost rate, drag the scope-creep slider, see the margin instantly. No signup required.
Why I built Hourglass.
Hourglass started as a fix for a problem I was living with every day. My employer had moved away from an expensive enterprise PSA (professional services automation) platform onto a free time tracking tool, and while the switch saved the company a genuine amount of money, we lost most of the features we'd come to rely on. Budget visibility, utilisation reporting, project profitability — all of it disappeared overnight, and the replacement setup left us stitching together several separate applications just to get through a normal working day.
That wasn't a good way to work. Switching between tools to track time, check budgets, plan resource and pull reports for clients was slow, error-prone and, frankly, demoralising for a delivery team that just wanted a clear view of how projects were actually performing. So I built Hourglass to close that gap: one platform with the core features a professional services firm actually needs, without the enterprise price tag or the months-long implementation.
Since then, Hourglass has gone from strength to strength, and I'm now confident it can help other agencies, consultancies and MSPs in the same position — businesses that don't want (or can't justify) an enterprise PSA, but still need real project profitability tracking, team utilisation reporting, and increasingly, AI-driven insights to help them run delivery more effectively.
Hourglass isn't trying to be another bloated enterprise platform. It's a modern, sensibly-priced alternative built by someone who's actually lived the problem — and who's still building it with that same problem in mind.
More than a time tracker.
Hourglass isn't built to count hours. It's built to turn hours into delivery intelligence.
Toggl tracks time. Hourglass connects time to delivery, utilisation and profitability.
Harvest is a timer with basic invoicing. Hourglass adds real-time project profitability, team utilisation, resource planning and client invoicing — all in one platform.
Clockify is a timer. Hourglass is a platform for professional services delivery visibility.
Kantata is enterprise PSA with enterprise pricing and implementation. Hourglass covers the same core workflow, self-serve, from free.
Deltek is a full project ERP built for six-figure implementations. Hourglass is delivery and invoicing that plugs into Xero, live the same day.
Birdview is a broad portfolio management platform with a client portal built in. Hourglass is leaner and built specifically around UK billing and Xero.
Pricing
14 days free.
All features included.
Every new account gets a 14-day trial with full access — no credit card required. All prices in GBP.
Starter
Up to 3 users · forever
- 14-day full-feature trial
- Time tracking
- Project management
- Basic reports (3)
- Up to 3 members
Pro
- Everything in Starter
- Engineer Planner
- All 9 reports
- Teams & roles
- Budget tracking & RAG scores
- Time off management
- CSV & PDF export
- AI report summaries & insights
Business
- Everything in Pro
- Priority support
- Custom billing rates
- Full audit log
- SLA guarantee
- Dedicated onboarding
- AI budget risk & anomaly analysis
Stop discovering overruns at month-end.
Hourglass moves project profitability from retrospective to real-time — so your team can fix problems while there's still time.