Time tracking for professional services
practise what you preach
Flexible hours, two days of remote work and peak seasons (tax filing, closings, audits). The legal exposure is identical to any other company, with one aggravating factor: if you are the one being inspected, the reputational damage is billed separately. Flexible recording, without the factory-floor image.
Quick answer: there is an uncomfortable irony in this sector: the advisory and tax firms that explain the time-recording obligation to their clients are, more often than not, the ones who handle it worst at home. "We work on trust here" is not a recording system. In a firm with flexible hours, remote work and peak seasons, the legal exposure is identical to any other company, with the added twist that if you are the one being inspected, the reputational damage is billed separately.
The 4 challenges of a firm
A firm's flexibility is legitimate. Undocumented, it is an informal time bank that someone, some day, will settle on their own terms.
Real flexibility without chaos
Flexible start times, condensed summer hours and time in lieu. The system records what actually happens and compares it against the agreed hours. A time bank done properly, not scribbled on a sticky note.
Remote and hybrid work
The same clock-in from home, a client site or the office with the Chrome extension, mobile app or web. No screenshots, no spyware: this is time recording, not surveillance.
The "we don't clock in here" culture
The real objection is about image: clocking in sounds like a factory floor. Recording protects the employee (their hours count) and the partner (the firm won't risk €7,500 over administrative laziness). One click, and the friction is gone.
Client visits and travel
The consultant who spends the day at a client clocks in from their phone, with optional location on the entry. The travelling employee's day is documented without a single call to the office manager.
How Cleverfy works in a firm
Time recording, not billing hours to clients. Two obligations, two tools, zero dangerous mix-ups.
Chrome extension
Clocking in is one click at the start and another at the end. That is where the friction dies.
App and web
For visits, remote work and anyone who prefers their phone. The same record wherever you are.
Flexible and condensed hours
Configurable flexible and condensed schedules, with automatic totals and time in lieu.
Peak-season overtime
Tax filing season, month-end closings and audits totalled daily, with alerts, so you compensate them on time instead of arguing about them in September.
Official ChatGPT app
Check your hours and clock in from the chat itself, with controlled access. No other Spanish time-tracking tool has it.
Reports by team and 4-year history
Tax, employment, accounting: who absorbs the peaks, with a full audit trail. The record an inspector expects to find in a professional firm.
Set up in 10 minutes. And if you advise SMEs, multiply it: the partner programme turns time recording into recurring income with 20% per client.
Clock-in systems for a firm, compared
Shared Excel sheet
Filled in on Friday, no audit trail, undermines your credibility in an inspection (and you are the ones giving the advice)
"Trust-based, we don't clock in here"
€751-7,500 fine + presumptions against you in any dispute
The module in the payroll software
Built for payroll; the recording (employee access, audit trail, real flexibility) tends to be a poor add-on
Full HR suite
Minimums of €80-115/month for a 12-person firm, over-engineered
Cleverfy (Chrome + app + web)
One click when you open the laptop, flexible, remote, traceable, from €1.20
What the record must contain (and what the Labour Inspectorate looks at)
The Labour Inspectorate knows that in a professional firm you know better: the same breach that reads as an oversight in another SME reads here as deliberate neglect, and the margin for leniency narrows.
Employee identification
Advisers, technicians, admin staff and the intern on an employment contract
Real start and end times
The real ones, even with flexible hours: elasticity is recorded, not hidden
Breaks
Lunch and disconnections according to your policy, with consistent criteria
Remote work
The same record from home as in the office (Law 10/2021)
Peak-season hours
Tax season, closings, audits: totalled as overtime or a documented time bank
Agreed working time
Weekly or monthly: the system compares what is clocked against what was agreed
How to roll it out in 5 steps
Write down your flexibility framework
Flexible start 8-10, common core hours, monthly totals, condensed summer hours, remote-work days. Everything that is custom today becomes documented tomorrow.
Roll out the channels
Chrome extension for everyone (one click when you open the laptop), the app for client visits and web as a backup. No terminals at the entrance: you are not a factory.
Set up profiles and peak seasons
Tax with its filing-season peak, employment with its month-end closings, accounting with the year-end close. Each team with its own schedule and totals.
A two-week run-in
The office manager reviews missed entries daily (2 minutes). The cultural objection dissolves once the team sees that clocking in is one click and their peak-season hours finally exist.
Peak-season routine
Before tax season, plan the time bank (what gets compensated, when). Afterwards, an overtime report and documented compensation in June-July, not argued about in September.
Tax and employment advisory firm with 14 employees
The risk: "verbally flexible" hours, a shared Excel sheet filled in on the last Friday of the month and a tax filing season with 10-hour days "that get compensated in summer". A tax technician leaves the firm burned out after her fourth season and claims the overtime from two of them: with no record, her estimate is presumed correct, more than €6,000, with the irony that another employment law firm files the claim. And the resulting Labour Inspectorate case points at the rest of the staff.
The result with Cleverfy: €16.80/month on the annual plan. The first season with a record reveals that tax concentrates 80% of the excess in 3 people; the workload is redistributed and reinforcement is hired from February to June with the numbers in hand. And the firm activates the partner programme: it rolls Cleverfy out to 9 clients in the first quarter and time recording goes from a risk to a line of recurring income.
Frequently asked questions about time tracking in professional services
Other sectors
Advise by example
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