Engineering consultancy firms face a particular challenge: their profitability depends on managing people's time, delivering projects efficiently, controlling costs, and ensuring that completed work is invoiced correctly.
An engineering firm may be working on dozens of projects simultaneously. Engineers divide their time between different clients, project managers coordinate deadlines and resources, and financial managers need to understand which projects are profitable.
When project planning, time tracking, budgets, and invoicing are handled in separate systems, maintaining a reliable overview becomes difficult.
The solution is to connect project management, resource planning, time tracking, financial management, and invoicing in one system.
This guide explains how engineering consultancy firms can organize these processes and how Starbrix Flex supports the entire workflow, from customer inquiries and quotations to project delivery, invoicing, and profitability analysis.
1. Manage the Entire Process from Quotation to Invoice
For engineering consultancy firms, project management often begins long before the actual engineering work starts.
A typical customer engagement may involve:
- Receiving a customer inquiry.
- Preparing a quotation and estimating the required work.
- Agreeing on the scope, price, and delivery schedule.
- Creating the project and assigning resources.
- Planning tasks, schedules, and budgets.
- Reporting hours and monitoring progress.
- Managing additional work and changes.
- Invoicing completed work.
- Evaluating project profitability.
If these activities are managed in separate applications, information must repeatedly be transferred between systems.
This creates opportunities for errors, duplicated work, and missing information.
How Starbrix Flex helps
Starbrix Flex supports the complete process, from sales opportunities and quotations to project execution and invoicing.
Customer information, quotations, project plans, resource assignments, budgets, reported hours, and financial information can be managed within the same system.
When a quotation becomes an accepted assignment, the relevant commercial information can be carried forward into the project.
This helps maintain continuity between what was promised to the customer, what the engineering team delivers, and what is ultimately invoiced.
2. Plan Engineering Projects with Gantt Charts and Task Management
Engineering projects often contain several interconnected phases.
For example, a structural engineering assignment might include:
Each phase may involve different specialists, and some activities cannot begin until others have been completed.
Use Gantt charts to coordinate schedules
Starbrix Flex provides Gantt charts for planning project schedules, tasks, and dependencies.
Project managers can establish relationships between tasks, such as requiring design calculations to be completed before final drawings can be approved.
When schedules change, dependencies help identify which subsequent activities may be affected.
Starbrix Flex also supports critical path analysis, helping project managers identify tasks that influence the overall project completion date.
Coordinate multiple projects
Engineering consultancies rarely work on just one project at a time.
A project manager may be responsible for several customer assignments, while individual engineers participate in projects managed by different people.
Starbrix Flex provides organization-wide portfolio views that help management monitor projects across the company.
Projects can also be grouped into operational areas, such as Structural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Infrastructure.
These additional groupings make it easier for department managers to monitor their own operations while company management maintains visibility across the entire portfolio.
3. Plan Resources and Monitor Engineering Capacity
In an engineering consultancy, people are usually the most important resource.
A profitable project requires not only the right expertise but also sufficient available capacity at the right time.
Consider a consultancy with 20 engineers working on 15 active projects.
Several project managers may need the same senior specialist during the same week. Without company-wide resource visibility, conflicting assignments can easily occur.
Schedule planning versus capacity planning
Two different questions need to be answered:
Schedule planning: Who is assigned to which tasks, and when should the work take place?
Capacity planning: Do we have enough available working hours to complete the planned assignments?
Starbrix Flex supports both.
Its resource and workload management capabilities help organizations compare planned workloads with available capacity across projects.
This allows managers to identify potential overloads, redistribute work, and evaluate whether the organization has sufficient capacity to accept additional assignments.
Example: Engineering workload planning
Illustrative example.
In this situation, management can identify the overallocated engineer before the workload becomes a delivery problem.
Capacity planning is also useful during quotation preparation. Before promising a delivery date, the company can evaluate whether the necessary resources are likely to be available.
4. Track Engineering Hours Against Projects and Tasks
Time tracking is essential for engineering consultancies, regardless of whether projects are billed hourly or at a fixed price.
For hourly projects, reported hours provide the basis for invoicing.
For fixed-price projects, reported hours reveal how much work the assignment actually requires and whether it remains profitable.
Report time where the work takes place
Starbrix Flex allows employees to report hours against projects and tasks.
An engineer working on several assignments can record the time spent on each project and activity.
For example:
This creates a detailed record of how working time is distributed.
It also enables project managers to compare actual hours with the original estimates.
Separate customer work from internal activities
Not all working hours are directly billable.
Engineers also participate in internal meetings, training, business development, and administrative activities.
These hours should not disappear from the company's operational overview.
One practical approach is to create internal projects for activities such as training, administration, and business development.
This makes it possible to distinguish customer project work from internal activities and better understand how the organization's capacity is being used.
5. Review and Approve Reported Hours
Accurate time reporting is important, but the approval process is equally important.
Before reported hours are used for invoicing or financial analysis, they may need to be reviewed.
Starbrix Flex supports configurable time-reporting approval workflows.
Depending on the organization's requirements, the process can include:
- Reporter: The engineer reports and confirms the hours worked.
- Checker: A project manager or supervisor reviews the reported hours.
- Final approver: An authorized person gives final approval.
This helps ensure that hours have been assigned to the correct projects and tasks and that reported work is consistent with the project agreement.
For smaller organizations, a simpler approval process may be sufficient.
For larger consultancies, a more structured workflow can provide additional control.
Establish a regular approval routine
A practical approach is to have engineers complete their time reports weekly, with project managers reviewing them shortly afterward.
Before invoicing, the responsible person should verify that the relevant hours have been reviewed and approved.
This reduces the risk of missing billable work or including incorrect hours on customer invoices.
6. Manage Hourly Rates and Labor Costs
One of the most important financial distinctions in an engineering consultancy is the difference between an employee's cost and the price charged to the customer.
These are two separate values.
Hourly labor cost represents the company's cost of the employee's work.
Hourly billing rate represents the price charged to the customer.
Starbrix Flex supports both.
Employee hourly costs
A default hourly labor cost can be defined for each employee.
This cost can be based on salary and other employment-related expenses.
When an employee reports hours, those hours can be used to calculate the corresponding labor cost for the project.
The hourly cost can also be overridden for specific projects or tasks when necessary.
Customer billing rates
Hourly billing rates can be defined for individual employees at project and task levels.
This is useful because the same engineer may work on projects with different contractual rates.
For example, an engineer might be billed at €110 per hour for one customer and €125 per hour for another.
Example: Project labor profitability
In this example, the difference between the billable value and direct labor costs is €6,510.
However, this is not necessarily the project's final profit. Other project expenses, overhead, and contractual adjustments must also be considered.
By maintaining both labor costs and billing rates, engineering consultancies gain a much clearer understanding of their project economics.
7. Manage Different Engineering Consultancy Billing Models
Not every engineering project is invoiced in the same way.
A consultancy may use several billing models, sometimes even within the same customer relationship.
Time and materials
The customer is charged for the actual work performed, usually based on agreed hourly rates.
Reported and approved hours provide the basis for invoicing.
Additional expenses, such as purchased services or materials, may also be included according to the agreement.
Fixed-price projects
The consultancy agrees to deliver a defined scope of work for a fixed amount.
In this case, time tracking remains essential even though the customer is not billed directly for every reported hour.
The project manager needs to monitor whether actual labor costs and other expenses remain within the approved budget.
Milestone-based invoicing
Larger engineering assignments may be invoiced in stages.
For example:
Starbrix Flex supports planning project income as multiple dated payments, making it possible to monitor expected income throughout the project.
The exact invoicing procedure can be configured to match the organization's contractual and operational requirements.
Mixed billing models
Some projects combine fixed-price work with additional services billed by the hour.
For example, a consultancy may agree on a fixed price for the original design while charging separately for customer-requested modifications.
In such cases, it is important to distinguish the original scope from additional work and maintain a clear record of the associated hours, costs, and billing arrangements.
Starbrix Flex provides the project, task, budget, and invoicing capabilities needed to support these different approaches.
8. Monitor Project Budgets, Costs, and Profitability
For engineering consultancies, project profitability can change significantly during execution.
A project may begin with a reasonable budget but become less profitable because of additional design iterations, unexpected technical challenges, or underestimated work.
Starbrix Flex supports project financial management by connecting planned income and costs with actual results.
Plan project income and costs
Project budgets can include expected income and several cost categories, such as:
- Internal engineering labor
- External consultants and subcontractors
- Materials and purchased services
- Travel and other project expenses
Costs can be planned as totals or calculated from quantities and unit prices.
They can also be assigned planned dates or periods, supporting financial forecasting.
Budgets can be created at the project level, task level, or using a combination of both.
Compare planned and actual results
Consider an engineering project with the following financial situation:
Illustrative example.
Although the project generated the expected income, its margin decreased by €10,000 because actual costs exceeded the original budget.
With financial information connected to project execution, managers can identify deviations and investigate their causes.
Starbrix Flex also provides detailed financial views that help users examine the underlying transactions and cost items behind budget deviations.
Take action before the project is completed
Financial monitoring is most valuable while there is still time to influence the outcome.
If an engineering task is consuming more hours than planned, the project manager can investigate whether the problem results from underestimated work, changing requirements, inefficient execution, or additional customer requests.
Depending on the situation, the company may need to revise its schedule, allocate resources differently, negotiate additional compensation, or update the project forecast.
The objective is not merely to explain why a project became unprofitable afterward, but to recognize problems early enough to take corrective action.
9. Connect Project Invoicing with Accounting
Once work has been completed and the relevant hours or other billable items have been reviewed, the next step is invoicing.
In many consultancies, this is where unnecessary administrative work occurs.
Hours are exported from one system, prices are checked in spreadsheets, and invoice information is entered manually into accounting software.
This creates duplicate work and increases the risk of errors.
Invoicing in Starbrix Flex
Starbrix Flex supports project invoicing based on the work and financial information maintained in the system.
For time-based invoicing, the process can use reported and approved hours together with the relevant billing rates.
The system also supports other project invoicing arrangements, depending on the agreed implementation.
A typical workflow is:
- Engineers report their hours against projects and tasks.
- Reported hours are reviewed and approved.
- The project manager reviews the billable work and any contractual adjustments.
- Invoice information is prepared in Starbrix Flex.
- The invoice is transferred to the accounting system where applicable.
- Financial information is used to follow up project income and profitability.
Accounting integrations
Starbrix Flex supports integrations with accounting systems including Netvisor, Procountor, Fennoa, Fortnox, Visma, and Lemonsoft.
The precise information exchanged and the workflow depend on the accounting product and the integration configuration.
Connecting project invoicing with accounting reduces the need to transfer information manually and helps maintain consistency between project operations and financial administration.
10. Monitor Cash Flow Across Projects
Profitability and cash flow are related, but they are not the same thing.
An engineering consultancy may have several profitable projects while still experiencing cash-flow challenges because customer payments arrive later than major project expenses.
For example, employee salaries must be paid monthly, even when a customer contract provides for invoicing only after a major project milestone.
Forecast income and expenses
Starbrix Flex supports cash-flow forecasting based on planned project income and costs.
Forecasts can be viewed for individual projects, operational areas, and the entire organization.
This helps management understand when income is expected and when expenses are planned to occur.
It can also highlight periods when multiple projects require significant resources before corresponding customer payments are expected.
For engineering consultancies managing long-running assignments, this provides an important additional perspective beyond project profitability alone.
11. Manage the Entire Engineering Project Portfolio
Individual project managers need detailed information about their own assignments.
Company management, however, needs to understand the combined performance of all projects.
Typical questions include:
- Which projects are currently active?
- Which projects are behind schedule?
- Where are costs exceeding budgets?
- Which projects are generating the strongest margins?
- How much work is planned for the coming months?
- Do we have sufficient engineering capacity for new assignments?
Starbrix Flex provides organization-wide project portfolio views that help answer these questions.
Management can review project schedules, resource requirements, planned and actual hours, financial performance, and forecasts.
Operational areas provide an additional way to group projects by department, business unit, or other organizational responsibility.
This supports a management structure in which company leadership monitors the overall portfolio, department managers oversee their respective operations, and project managers remain responsible for individual assignments.
12. Build a Consistent Way of Working Across the Consultancy
Implementing project management software is not simply a matter of introducing another application.
The real benefit comes when the organization adopts a consistent way of planning, reporting, reviewing, and managing its work.
Establish common project practices
Engineering consultancies should agree on a minimum set of information that every project must contain.
This might include:
- Customer and project identification
- Responsible project manager
- Project scope and key deliverables
- Planned schedule and major tasks
- Assigned resources
- Approved budget and estimated hours
- Reported hours and actual costs
- Billing arrangements
- Relevant project documentation
Project templates can make this easier by providing reusable structures for recurring types of engineering assignments.
For example, a consultancy could create separate templates for structural design projects, technical inspections, feasibility studies, and engineering documentation assignments.
Avoid parallel spreadsheets
A common problem is introducing a project management system while continuing to maintain the same information in spreadsheets.
This creates two competing versions of the truth.
Instead, organizations should aim to maintain their project information in Starbrix Flex and use the system for regular project reviews.
When information is still maintained outside the system, investigate why. The cause may be insufficient training, unfamiliarity with existing functionality, or a genuine need to adapt the system.
Appoint an internal Starbrix coordinator
It is useful to designate someone within the organization who understands how Starbrix is used across departments.
This person can coordinate training, answer internal questions, collect improvement suggestions, and communicate with Starbrix when new requirements arise.
Engineering businesses evolve, and their processes change over time. Their project management environment should be able to evolve with them.
Starbrix Flex is designed to support this through configurable workflows and functionality that can be adapted to organizational requirements.
13. Example: Managing a €150,000 Engineering Consultancy Project
Consider an engineering consultancy that receives an assignment to design the technical systems for a new industrial facility.
The contract value is €150,000, with payments linked to agreed project milestones.
From quotation to delivery
Quotation: The consultancy prepares a quotation based on estimated engineering hours, external services, and the required project margin.
Project creation: Once the quotation is accepted, the assignment is established as a project in Starbrix Flex.
Planning: The project manager creates a schedule covering initial design, detailed engineering, reviews, and final documentation.
Resource allocation: Engineers are assigned to tasks, and their workloads are evaluated against other ongoing projects.
Budgeting: Planned income, labor costs, purchased services, and other expenses are entered into the project budget.
Execution: Engineers report their hours, and the project manager monitors progress and planned-versus-actual performance.
Financial control: As actual costs accumulate, the project manager reviews whether the remaining budget is sufficient to complete the work.
Invoicing: Customer invoices are prepared according to the agreed payment milestones, with project financial information supporting the process.
Completion: The project is closed with its schedules, documentation, reported hours, financial records, and other relevant information retained for future reference.
The important advantage is continuity.
Instead of maintaining separate records for quotations, schedules, resource plans, time reports, budgets, and invoices, the organization manages the connected process within Starbrix Flex.
14. Why an Integrated System Matters for Engineering Consultancies
The benefits extend beyond reducing administrative work.
Better project control: Project managers can monitor schedules, assignments, reported hours, and financial performance together.
Improved resource utilization: Management can identify workload conflicts and make better decisions about future assignments.
More reliable invoicing: Project work, approved hours, billing rates, and invoicing information are connected.
Earlier financial visibility: Budget deviations and cost overruns can be identified while projects are still underway.
Better company-wide decisions: Management can evaluate the entire project portfolio instead of relying on separate departmental reports.
Long-term continuity: Project records, documentation, agreements, and operational knowledge remain available when employees or project managers change.
For engineering consultancy firms, this last point is particularly important. Projects may continue for years, and customers may return for modifications or additional engineering work long after the original assignment was completed.
Maintaining accessible project history helps the organization preserve knowledge and support long-term customer relationships.
Conclusion: Connect Engineering Work with Business Performance
Successful engineering consultancy management requires more than delivering technically sound projects.
Companies must also coordinate resources, control costs, maintain accurate time records, invoice correctly, and understand the profitability of their operations.
When these processes are disconnected, managers spend unnecessary time collecting information and reconciling figures.
Starbrix Flex brings project planning, resource management, time tracking, approvals, budgeting, financial monitoring, and invoicing together in one flexible system.
This gives engineering consultancy firms a more consistent way to manage their work, from the first customer inquiry to the final invoice and project closeout.
Want to manage your engineering consultancy projects and finances in one system?
Explore Starbrix Flex and discover how it can be adapted to your organization's project management, resource planning, and invoicing processes.
