In a consultancy, every point of utilisation is a salary you are either covering or carrying. The hard part is not knowing the firm-wide number at month end — it is knowing, on a Tuesday, that a principal is on the bench for a fortnight, that the data lead everyone wants is already over 100%, and that the engagement due to start in three weeks still has no named team. A spreadsheet can describe that. It cannot warn you while there is still time to act.
Kavaro is resource planning software for professional services firms. It keeps capacity, skills, open roles and commercial impact on one live plan, so staffing decisions are made against what is actually booked rather than what someone remembers. The agent proposes; partners and resource managers confirm or reject. Nothing changes the plan on its own.
Challenges consultancies face
Bench is expensive and quiet. A firm-wide 78% can hide a specialist sitting under 40% for a fortnight. By the time it shows in the monthly pack, you have already paid for it and lost the chance to sell them into something.
Billable and non-billable are both real work. Proposals, IP and business development occupy the same calendars as delivery. If only client work is planned, your best people look under-used right up until the proposal is late.
Skills constrain the plan, not hours. A data lead seat cannot be filled by whoever has space. Staffing is a matching problem, and matching from memory is how the same three people end up on everything.
Pipeline demand arrives before names do. Opportunity-stage work still needs seats held. Without that, you find out you cannot resource the win in the week you are meant to start it.
Hire or contract is a capacity call, not a hunch. Peak load, roll-off dates and contracts ending should drive it. Made on instinct, it is either a headcount you regret or a contractor rate you did not need to pay.
How consulting resourcing actually moves
- Roster and skills — people, roles, domains and availability, including contractors with an end date.
- Engagement staffing — named consultants or open role seats, tentative until the work is confirmed.
- Utilisation review — planned load from bookings, then actuals from timesheets, per person rather than per firm.
- Bench and roll-off — who comes free in the next fortnight with nothing behind them.
- Pipeline seats — opportunity work that needs a role filled before it starts.
How this shows up in Kavaro
People records hold roles, skills and employment dates. The schedule books them onto engagements as % or hours, with tentative bars for unconfirmed work, and open role rows that hold demand until a named consultant is confirmed. The resource team can run the week from that view, while operations can see whether the wider plan supports the pipeline and the next hiring decision.
Chat answers the staffing question directly — who is under-utilised with the right skills, whether an opportunity has anyone under 60% load — and proposes the bookings. A person confirms them. Insights flag under-utilisation, over-allocation, employment ending soon, roll-off with nothing behind it, and opportunities with no bench to cover them.
Timesheets log actuals against booking suggestions, so utilisation reporting comes from the plan rather than a parallel exercise. Permission-controlled finance views and PDF or Excel exports give partners and finance a number they can trace back to live work. Standing agents can run the weekly utilisation check into Inbox or Slack — you still approve anything that changes the plan.
Why Kavaro for consulting
Bench and overload in the same view
Person-level planned load and logged time, so a healthy average stops hiding the consultant you are paying to wait.
Hold seats for work you have not won yet
Open roles keep pipeline demand visible without pretending it is confirmed, which is what makes the hire-or-contract decision early enough to matter.
Match experience, not just free hours
Ask who has the skills and the capacity. The agent checks live allocations before anyone commits a partner's name to a proposal.
Roll-off becomes a decision, not a surprise
Insights surface contracts ending and bookings with nothing behind them while there is still time to sell or redeploy.
Every change is confirmed by a person
Chat and Inbox propose; resource managers and partners confirm. That keeps day-to-day staffing with the people closest to the work, without asking leadership to trust a plan that can rewrite itself.
Related industries
- Resource management software for agencies → Pitch, retainer and project load on one schedule.
- Resource management software for IT and software teams → Delivery squads, specialists and kickoff coverage.
Calculate utilisation first
For a snapshot from hours you already have, use the free utilisation calculator or read how to calculate utilisation rate. Kavaro then reports utilisation from live bookings and timesheets — there is no import from the calculator.
See how Kavaro handles this work
Try Kavaro free for 30 days. Bring a live plan, ask who can take the next piece of work, and approve the staffing before it goes live.