# How a consulting firm recovered $380k in billable hours in year one > A 22-consultant boutique firm replaced Asana + Harvest + manual invoicing with BlueHill and recovered $380k in previously unbilled hours during year one. Industry: Professional services / consulting · Team size: 22 consultants + 4 PMs · Use case: Time tracking + billing + project delivery ## The challenge A boutique consulting firm with 22 consultants and 4 project managers across 40 active client engagements was losing significant revenue to time-tracking leakage. Their setup: Asana for project work, Harvest for time tracking, QuickBooks for invoicing, three spreadsheets to reconcile across the stack. **Symptoms**: - Consultants forgot to start timers; estimated time after the fact (always under) - 22% gap between hours worked and hours billed (firm benchmark: under 5%) - Invoices took 2 weeks to prepare each month (reconciliation hell) - New consultants took 6 weeks to feel productive in the stack ## The solution BlueHill rolled out in 3 weeks: 1. **Stopwatch on every interaction** — opening a client task auto-suggests starting a timer. Time entries auto-link to customer, project, and category (billable/non-billable). 2. **Weekly time-sheet review** — every consultant reviews and approves their week in BlueHill before it ships to invoicing. Discrepancies surface instantly. 3. **QuickBooks export** — end of month, BlueHill generates the invoice draft from billable time entries grouped by client + project. PM reviews and sends. 4. **Internal notes per project** — separated from client comments, so the team can discuss strategy and bill structure without confusing the client. ## The results (12 months post-migration) - **Billable-hour leakage: 22% → 4%** (mostly from short tasks now being tracked) - **Annual revenue recovered: $380,000** (at avg $200/hr blended rate) - **Time from month-end to invoices sent: 14 days → 2 days** - **New-consultant ramp time: 6 weeks → 2 weeks** (one tool to learn instead of three) - **PM time spent on reconciliation: 12 hrs/week → 1 hr/week** ## The financial picture $380k in recovered billable revenue against $21k/year in BlueHill Professional subscription cost = **18× return** in year one. PM time recovery (44 hours/month × $80 fully-loaded rate = $3,500/month or $42k/year additional value) brings the return closer to **20×**. ## In the customer's words > "We knew we had leakage — every consulting firm does. We didn't realize it was 22%. After three months on BlueHill, we could finally see which clients were over-running our quoted scope and which consultants were under-tracking. We re-priced two engagements based on what we learned." > > — Managing Director > "The invoice cycle used to be the worst week of every month. Now it's a Tuesday afternoon. The QuickBooks export does most of the work and the PMs just review." > > — Finance Lead ## Want similar results? [Start a 14-day free trial](https://app.usebluehill.com/sign-up) or [book a demo](https://cal.com/himanshu-minocha/bluehill-intro) to see how BlueHill would work for your professional services firm.