Use case · Consultancies
Track engagements across hourly retainers and fixed-fee scopes. Give partners visibility into burn before the invoice ships. Send clients a defensible breakdown — without rebuilding the spreadsheet on the 30th.
Why this page exists
Quarter-end review
The partner pulls up the engagement that closed three weeks ago. Fixed-fee scope, $40,000. Originally planned: 200 hours. Tracked hours: 287. The work was good. The client was happy. The margin was a write-off.
Most consultancies don't lose money on the invoice. They lose it inside the engagement, in the weeks before anyone reviews the burn — when there was still time to have the conversation.
Where consultancy billing breaks today
Hourly engagements bill themselves — the meter just runs. Fixed-fee scopes quietly compress margin until a partner reviews them at quarter-end. Talix stores tracked hours against the fixed-fee project so you see burn against scope before it becomes a write-off, not after.
When a consultant skips logging a 90-minute call until Friday, half of it is gone. The desktop menu bar timer plus offline queue means time gets captured at the moment of the work — even on a flight, even on bad Wi-Fi at the client site.
Talix keeps every invoice line connected to its underlying tracked entry — with timestamp, project, and consultant. The answer that used to take 30 minutes of email back-and-forth takes 30 seconds and a screenshot.
The Talix workflow
Set the engagement model — hourly, retainer, or fixed-fee — and store the rate at the project level. Consultants don't have to remember it; the system applies it on every entry that lands.
Consultants log time per engagement from the menu bar or the web. Hours stay attached to the project, the client, and the engagement model — even on fixed-fee scopes where the time is for internal margin tracking, not client billing.
Partners and project leads review tracked time mid-engagement, not at month-end. Burn visibility means a fixed-fee scope running hot triggers a conversation early — before it becomes a margin write-off.
Approved hours convert to invoice line items with the right rate, the right engagement detail, and the right level of audit trail for the client. Send PDF, or attach a Stripe link for one-click payment.
What changes for the partner reviewing the work
See burn against scope mid-engagement so the conversation with the client is proactive, not a quarter-end retrospective on a write-off.
When a client audits a number, the supporting evidence is already inside the invoice. The answer doesn't require a meeting.
Lower-friction capture — menu bar timer, offline queue, idle review — catches calls and short tasks that used to slip past Friday cleanup.
Talix is built around company and member workflows, not a freelancer-tool single-user model. Each role sees what it needs without exporting anything.
Where Talix fits
Talix is built for consultancies in the 3–25 consultant range — boutique strategy shops, design consultancies, research firms, small legal and accounting practices. It is not a Big-4 PSA replacement, it is not a full GL or AP/AR accounting system, and it is not a CRM. If your firm needs full project P&L roll-up across hundreds of engagements, Talix sits underneath those tools. If you're at the size where a partner is still personally reviewing margin on engagements before they ship, this is the operating layer that makes that easier.