Your expertise is the deliverable. Price it accordingly.
Aeto keeps each engagement in its own project, tracks the hours behind every session and deliverable, and invoices from that record, whether the client pays hourly or a fixed fee.
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Why do consultants undercharge for fixed-fee work?
The fee gets priced on the visible work, and the prep gets left out. A half-day workshop is four hours in the room, but the interviews, design, materials, and readout around it can take several times that. Unless those hours are tracked, the fee for the next workshop is based on memory, and memory tends to shrink prep. In Aeto, each piece of an engagement is a task with its own timer, and a fixed-fee project shows the effective hourly rate as those hours come in. That number is what the next quote should be built on.
What does a fixed-fee workshop engagement look like in Aeto?
Illustrative example. A strategy workshop for a 40-person operations team, at a fixed fee of $6,000.
| Task | Hours |
|---|---|
| Stakeholder interviews (5) | 6.0 |
| Workshop design and agenda | 7.0 |
| Materials and exercises | 5.0 |
| Facilitation (half day) | 4.0 |
| Readout document | 8.0 |
| Follow-up call | 1.0 |
| Total | 31.0 |
Time in the room was 4 of 31 hours. Aeto shows the effective rate as about $194 an hour. If the consultant's target is $250, the next workshop should be priced around $7,750, or the readout should be scoped down.
How do you manage hourly and fixed-fee clients in one place?
Keep each engagement as its own project, set up with the billing arrangement it actually has. In Aeto, you choose hourly or flat fee for every project. An hourly engagement bills tracked time at the client's rate. A fixed-fee engagement invoices at the agreed amount while you track hours, and Aeto shows the effective rate you're earning on it. The dashboard and Kanban board show every active engagement across clients, so a deliverable due for one client stays visible while you're deep in work for another.
How do you track time during client calls?
Start the timer when the call starts, on the task the call belongs to. On the Mac app, the Aeto timer sits in the menu bar, so you can start it with one click while Zoom or Teams is already open. Stop it when the call ends, and the time logs to that task. Calls are one of the easiest places to lose billable time, especially short ones that run past their slot. A timer running from the first minute catches all of it, including the ten minutes after the agenda ends.
What doesn't Aeto do for consultants?
Aeto is built for one person. It has no team seats, so if you bring in subcontractors, their time can't be tracked in your account. It doesn't connect to QuickBooks, Xero, or other accounting software. Reports export to CSV for your accountant instead. It also doesn't track expenses, so travel and materials need to be handled outside Aeto.
I've run a consulting practice, Ebrius Creative, alongside my in-house roles. Aeto started as the app I built to track and bill that work, because the prep hours kept disappearing from my invoices.
Jim MacLeod, founder
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Answers to the questions we get most.
Everything you're likely to ask before you download the trial.
Q.01Can I see how much each client has paid over time?
Yes. Each client has its own view with a separate board, outstanding invoices, and the total paid over the life of the relationship.
Q.02Can I export my numbers for my accountant?
Yes. Reports cover revenue, outstanding invoices, active projects, and payments received, and export to CSV.
Q.03Which devices does Aeto run on?
Aeto runs in any modern browser at app.aeto.app, including on Windows and Linux, and as a native Mac app for Apple Silicon. The Mac app adds a menu bar timer, which is the one feature the web app doesn't have. An iOS app is in progress. There's no native Windows app, and the web app covers the full feature set there.