Contact Info
USA
What should a US consulting firm get from an ERP consultant?
A US consultancy needs one record that follows an engagement from proposal and statement of work through staffing, time, expenses and invoice. I map how your firm sells, staffs and bills, including labor categories for public sector work, 1099 associates and per diem rebilling, then support selection and rollout of a platform whose utilization and bench reports match how your partners define them.
Last reviewed by Vikas Saroj
I work remotely with American consultancies: strategy and operations boutiques, technology advisory firms, public sector specialists and niche experts who staff engagements from a shared bench. Work arrives under a master services agreement and a stack of statements of work, each with its own rate card, cap or fixed fee, and the people delivering it may be employees or independent associates.
The trouble usually starts at the handoff between sale and delivery. A signed SOW lives in the CRM, the staffing plan lives in a resource manager's spreadsheet, and the invoice is built in QuickBooks from timesheets exported by hand. Before any software discussion, I document how each of those steps works in your firm today.
What I Do
I work with managing partners, COOs and finance leads in US consulting firms on the processes and systems behind every engagement.
I define how master agreements, statements of work, rate cards, caps and change orders are stored, so every timesheet line and invoice traces back to the commercial terms a client signed.
Requirements for resource requests, skills, clearances, soft and hard bookings and bench visibility, with pipeline probability feeding forward demand rather than sitting in a separate sales report.
For firms selling to federal, state or local agencies, I map internal grades to the labor categories in each contract so time, rates and invoices line up with what the agency expects to see.
Design for 1099 associates and subcontractor firms: onboarding records, agreed rates, invoice matching against approved time, and engagement margin that includes every person who worked.
Policies built into the system: which expenses are rebillable, which follow a client's travel policy or per diem limits, and how markups or caps apply on the invoice.
Scripted demos built on your own engagements, a scored fit-gap across ERP suites and services automation tools, and a review of implementation proposals before you sign.
What to Measure
An ERP for consulting should make these numbers available without a spreadsheet. I design the data model and reports around them from the start.
Platform Fit
How I Work
Your engagement and staffing reality
Partner and resource manager interviews
Sample SOWs and rate cards
Associate and subcontractor review
Current utilization reports
Rules written before configuration
Utilization formula signed off
Labor category crosswalk
Expense and per diem policy
Weighted fit-gap scoring
Implementation you can verify
Implementer coordination
Open SOWs and balances migrated
UAT on active engagements
Partner and bench dashboards
The flow I map in American consultancies usually runs: opportunity, qualification, proposal and pricing, master services agreement, statement of work, resource request, staffing, kickoff, time and expense capture, invoice review, collection and an engagement retrospective. Firms that sell retainers add a monthly drawdown step, and firms on capped time and materials add a burn check before every invoice.
Three handoffs break most often. The first is between sales and staffing: a partner promises a start date before the resource manager knows who is free. The second is between the SOW and the system: rates, caps and billing milestones are retyped from a PDF, so the first invoice is the first time anyone checks them. The third is change control. A client asks for extra scope by email, the team delivers it, and nobody raises a change order until the cap is breached.
I document each handoff with the people who own it, then write the requirements so the signed SOW becomes structured data the moment it is countersigned. The broader pattern for consultancies is on my consulting industry page. For law, CPA and design practices, see professional services ERP in the USA.
Many US consultancies sell to federal, state or local agencies, often through pre-competed contract vehicles and task orders rather than one-off proposals. That work brings structure the commercial side of the firm may not have. Rates are usually tied to labor categories defined in the contract, each with qualification requirements, and the person you staff must fit the category you bill.
I build a crosswalk between your internal grades and each contract's labor categories, so a senior consultant can be billed under different categories on different vehicles without anyone editing a rate by hand. Timekeeping discipline matters too. Agencies and their auditors generally expect time to be recorded promptly against the right charge code, with corrections approved and traceable. If your current tool lets people edit last month's timesheets freely, that needs to change before government work grows.
Some contracts are cost-reimbursable rather than fixed rate, which brings indirect cost pools, allowable and unallowable costs and provisional billing rates into the ledger. That is specialist accounting territory: I define what the ERP must capture and work alongside your government contracts accountant rather than replace their judgment. Commercial and public sector engagements can live in one system, but the chart of accounts and project structure have to be designed with both in mind from the start.
US consultancies rarely staff every engagement from payroll. Independent associates paid on a 1099 basis, small subcontracting firms and occasionally staffing agencies fill skill gaps and absorb peaks. Whether a given person is properly treated as an independent contractor is a legal and tax question with federal and state tests, and it belongs with your employment counsel. My job is to ensure the system holds the facts those advisors need.
That means an associate record with the contracting entity, the agreement on file, the agreed rate and tax documentation status, kept separate from employee records in payroll. Approved time from associates should flow into the same engagement as employee time, so the engagement lead approves everyone's hours in one place and the margin report includes associate cost at the rate actually paid.
The other common gap is matching. An associate invoices monthly, often in their own format, while the client is billed on a different cycle. I design a match between approved timesheets and associate invoices, with a hold when the hours differ, so the firm does not pay for time it cannot bill. For firms that use associates heavily, I also ask whether utilization should include them, because the answer changes how bench and capacity are read in partner meetings.
Consultants in US firms often travel to client sites in several states during a single engagement. Each SOW tends to say something different about expenses: some clients reimburse actual costs with receipts, some cap daily meals and lodging at a per diem, government clients usually apply their own travel regulations, and a few engagements include travel in a fixed fee. When those rules live only in the SOW PDF, expense reports get rebilled wrongly or not at all.
I write the expense rules per engagement into the requirements: rebillable or not, receipt requirements set by client terms, per diem limits or actuals, any markup the contract allows, and how expenses appear on the invoice. The expense tool, whether it is part of the ERP or a separate app, should tag every line with the engagement and a rebill flag before approval, not after.
Multi-state travel also touches payroll and tax. Consultants working for extended periods in another state can raise withholding and registration questions for the firm, and some states treat certain consulting or digital services as taxable. Those are questions for your CPA. My part is making sure the system records where work was performed and what was sold, so your advisors have the data when they need it.
US consultancies are usually offered three broad routes: a professional services automation tool sitting beside an accounting system, an ERP suite with project, resource and billing modules, or a CRM-centered stack extended with timesheets and invoicing. Each can work. The right one depends on how many engagement types you sell, how much public sector work you carry, how heavily you use associates and how much your partners rely on forward staffing views.
I stay independent of vendors and implementers. I turn your requirements into scripted scenarios, such as a capped SOW with a change order, a retainer that rolls over and an associate billed under a labor category, and ask each shortlisted option to run them. Then I review the vendor proposals so you compare scope and assumptions, not just license lines.
Everything runs remotely: video workshops, shared process maps and written specifications, with sessions scheduled to suit your team's time zone. For the wider picture, my ERP consulting work in the United States and the US hub explain how I work with American businesses, or you can book a first conversation.
Tell me about your business and current systems. I’ll suggest the most sensible first step.
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FAQ
Often yes, if the project structure, chart of accounts and timekeeping controls are designed for both from the start. Government work adds labor categories, stricter time correction rules and sometimes cost-reimbursable accounting. I define those requirements early and involve your government contracts accountant, so the commercial side is not slowed down by controls it does not need.
It depends on the question the number answers. If partners use utilization to judge whether employees are productively deployed, associates usually stay out. If the board wants to see total delivery capacity, a separate capacity measure that includes them is more useful. I agree definitions with partners and finance first, then configure reports to match.
Most platforms can flag or cap expenses against limits stored on the engagement, though how far they automate it varies. I store each client's expense rules with the SOW, apply them at approval and leave a reviewer step for exceptions. That keeps rebilling accurate without making consultants learn every client's travel policy.
Not always. Some US consultancies keep QuickBooks as the ledger and add a services automation tool for staffing, time and billing. Others outgrow it when they add entities, public sector work or heavy associate use. I map your engagement cycle and reporting needs first, then show where the current ledger fits and where it limits you.
My delivery is remote: workshops by video, shared process maps, written requirements and online UAT sessions with your engagement leads and finance team. That suits consultancies, whose own people are often at client sites. If a specific workshop would benefit from being in person, we can discuss it by arrangement.
Every business is different. Share where you are today and what you want to fix, and I’ll tell you honestly whether and how I can help.
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