Run each consulting engagement in its own workspace

What makes consulting work hard to track

A consulting engagement has a fixed shape: a proposal, a kick-off, a discovery phase, interviews and analysis, draft findings, a steering committee, a final report. Around that shape sit two things that decide whether the engagement is profitable and whether the client comes back: how many hours it really took, and how clearly the client could see progress.

Many firms run engagements across email, a shared drive, a slide tool, a meeting calendar and a timesheet system that nobody fills in until Friday afternoon. The partner cannot see which workstream is behind without a status meeting, and the manager rebuilds the weekly client update from memory.

One space per engagement

In Emitii each engagement gets a space, named after the client and the project, for example "Operating model review, Q4". The Project type suits most engagements because it switches on the Board and the Timesheet. Turn on Docs & Files, which will hold most of the work.

The workplan

Consultants tend to plan in phases and workstreams, and Emitii offers two ways to hold that:

• Tasks for phase checklists. A list called "Discovery" holds to-dos like "Interview CFO", "Collect org charts" and "Draft current-state map", each with an owner and a due date.
• Board for deliverables that move through review. Columns such as "Drafting", "Manager review", "Partner review", "With client" and "Final" make the review chain visible. Labels mark the workstream, for example "Finance" or "People".

A to-do that grows into a real deliverable can be sent to the Board as a card, and due dates from both show on the Schedule. See the project management feature for how the two fit together.

Working documents

Docs & Files holds the engagement file: the signed proposal, interview notes as Markdown docs, data the client sent, and draft reports uploaded as new versions of the same file. Docs have comments, so a manager's review notes sit on the document itself. A doc can be downloaded as PDF when the client wants a copy.

Meetings

The space Schedule holds kick-off, weekly check-ins, interviews and steering committees, with invitees, RSVP and recurrence. If your office has meeting rooms, book one from the event and Emitii checks availability. Each consultant's My calendar combines every engagement they are on.

The client inside the engagement

Client sponsors and their project leads join as guests. They see only their engagement's space and only what the team shares, commonly their meetings, a deliverables folder and Posts, while working drafts stay internal. A weekly Post becomes the status report the sponsor reads and comments on, and day-to-day questions go in Guest Pulse, so the conversation stays on the record. The team keeps its own Pulse for internal discussion. The client management use case covers this pattern.

Hours, utilisation and the weekly close

Every consultant logs time against the engagement's cards and to-dos in quarter hours, marked billable or non-billable. On Friday each person submits the week; the engagement manager approves or rejects it and can reopen a week that needs correcting. The By work view shows hours per deliverable, which is exactly the question at a budget review. CSV export feeds your billing or ERP process. More on the flow in time tracking and billing.

Emit for the engagement manager

When AI is enabled for the space, Emit can "Catch me up on this space" before a steering committee, list what is overdue, draft the weekly status Post from the board, or produce a PowerPoint or Word summary into Docs & Files. It asks for approval before any change and knows only that engagement, so nothing leaks between clients.

Keeping engagements apart

Access is set per space. Consultants see the engagements they are staffed on, and admins can grant a whole practice group access through Groups. Access always adds up, so adding someone to a group never removes anything they already had. See access control. Firms comparing tools often look at Emitii vs Basecamp, since both use a per-project space model.