Stage 3 was quoted at 60 hours. By the time the invoice goes out at the end of the stage, it has taken 94. You find this out in the month-end timesheet reconciliation, which is to say after the money has gone.
The data to catch it earlier was there the whole time. Your fee proposal has a fee per stage. Your timesheets have hours per project. What was missing was anyone putting one next to the other more than once a quarter.
The system reads the timesheet, whatever it is in: a Google Sheet, Xero projects, a timesheet app with an export. Each entry is matched to a project and a stage. Each stage has a budget in hours, worked back from the fee in the signed proposal and the rate for whoever is doing the work.
When a stage passes 70 per cent of its hours with the work less than 70 per cent done, you get one line in your inbox. Elm Road, Stage 3, 42 of 60 hours used, drawings at about half. Another at 90 per cent, and one more if it goes over. There is no dashboard to remember to open.
What you do with it is up to you. Sometimes it is a scope conversation with the client while there is still time to have it. Sometimes it is a quieter note to yourself that the next loft conversion gets quoted at 80 hours.
This is the kind of thing we build. It runs in your own accounts, your timesheets, your Xero. Which stage are you over on this month, and do you know yet?