All-in-one software for 20+ industries
Software for Consultants
Win clients, run engagements, track your time and get paid — all from one platform built for consultants.
7-Day Free Trial for $1 · No credit card required to explore · Cancel anytime
- 4.8/5 average rating
- 20+ industries
- Multi-currency & multi-language
Consulting software purpose-built for independent consultants and small consulting practices has to bridge the gap between winning engagements and delivering them profitably — a gap that generic project tools and standalone CRMs consistently fail to close. Small Elephant puts the entire consulting lifecycle — lead nurturing, proposal management, engagement delivery, time tracking, expense capture and invoicing — into a single platform behind one login. Whether you are a solo strategy consultant, a boutique IT advisory firm or a specialist management consultancy with a small team, Small Elephant scales to fit the way you actually work.
Consultants are in the relationship business. Every engagement begins with trust, and trust is built through consistent, professional communication — timely proposals, clear scopes of work, progress updates that reach clients before they have to ask, and invoices that match what was agreed. When those touchpoints are handled through a patchwork of email drafts, spreadsheet trackers and separate invoicing subscriptions, the cracks show in ways that erode client confidence and slow repeat business.
Small Elephant replaces that patchwork with one coherent system. Enquiries flow into a structured pipeline, proposals are generated from templates, active engagements run on trackable project boards, and time entries convert to invoices automatically at billing milestones. Marketing automation keeps past clients warm between engagements, and reports tell you exactly which service lines, client sectors and project types are driving your most profitable growth. Start exploring the platform today with a 7-day free trial for just $1.
Quick answers
Small Elephant at a glance
What does Small Elephant's consulting software do that a basic CRM cannot?
Small Elephant combines CRM with proposal management, engagement delivery, time tracking and invoicing in a single platform — so consultants manage the full client lifecycle without switching tools. When you select 'consultants' during signup, the platform automatically loads consulting-specific fields, pipeline stages, project workflows and billing templates. A basic CRM handles contacts and deals but leaves the delivery and billing side entirely unmanaged.
Can I track time against specific client engagements and bill from those entries?
Yes. Each project record in Small Elephant includes a time log where you or your team record hours against deliverables, phases or billing codes. At invoice time, the system compiles those entries into a professional time-based invoice automatically, supporting fixed-fee, time-and-materials and retainer billing models.
How does Small Elephant help consultants manage proposals and scope of work documents?
Small Elephant's Documents module stores proposal templates and scope-of-work documents linked directly to the relevant client and opportunity record. You can create new proposals from saved templates, track which version was sent, record client acceptance and convert accepted proposals into active engagement projects — all without leaving the platform.
Can Small Elephant support a solo consultant as well as a small consulting team?
Absolutely. Solo consultants use Small Elephant to manage their entire pipeline, project delivery and billing from a single dashboard. As the practice grows, additional team members are added with role-based access — consultants see their own time and projects, while practice owners see the full picture across all engagements and financials.
Does Small Elephant help consultants stay top of mind with past clients?
Yes — the Marketing Automation module lets you set up targeted nurture sequences for past clients and warm prospects. Schedule check-in emails, share relevant thought-leadership content and send personalised updates at intervals you define, so your name is front of mind when a new need arises.
What billing models does Small Elephant support for consulting engagements?
Small Elephant supports time-and-materials billing from recorded time entries, fixed-fee milestone invoicing, monthly retainer billing and hybrid arrangements. You configure the billing model at the engagement level, and the invoicing module applies the correct structure at billing time — no manual calculation required.
Challenges Consultants Face
Independent consultants and small consulting practices operate in an environment where reputation and relationships are the primary currency. Winning a new engagement depends on a fast, professional response to an enquiry — a proposal that clearly articulates value, lands before the client has heard from three competitors, and reflects a deep understanding of the client's specific problem. When your pipeline is managed in a personal spreadsheet and proposals are written from scratch each time, that speed and polish is difficult to sustain consistently.
Delivering engagements profitably is a second major challenge. Scope creep is endemic in consulting; without a clear record of what was agreed and a running tally of hours invested, it is easy to deliver significantly more than you billed for. Consultants who track time informally — or not at all — regularly discover at invoice time that their effective hourly rate was far below target. Project visibility suffers too: without milestone tracking, it is hard to know whether a multi-phase engagement is on track until a deadline is already threatened.
Cash flow is the operational reality that underpins everything else. Consulting engagements can run for months, and if billing is ad hoc — sent when the consultant remembers rather than at agreed milestones — payment can lag delivery by weeks or more. Chasing late invoices is time-consuming and professionally awkward, yet many consultants do it manually because they have no automated system to handle the follow-up.
Finally, business development suffers from feast-or-famine dynamics. While deep in a demanding engagement, consultants neglect relationship maintenance with past clients and warm prospects — only to emerge from the project into an empty pipeline. A systematic approach to keeping relationships warm between engagements is the difference between sustainable growth and a perpetual scramble for the next contract.
How Small Elephant Helps Consultants
Small Elephant gives consultants a structured, professional backbone for every phase of the consulting lifecycle. New enquiries land in a configured pipeline — Discovery, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Engagement Confirmed — giving you a clear view of where each opportunity stands and what the next action needs to be. Proposal templates stored in the Documents module let you produce a professional, branded proposal in minutes rather than hours, and linking the document to the opportunity record means you always know what was sent and when.
Once an engagement is confirmed, a project is created from the opportunity with phases, milestones and tasks inherited from a consulting project template. Fee earners — whether that is just you, or a team — log time against specific deliverables throughout the engagement. At billing milestones, the invoicing module pulls those time entries into a draft invoice for review and dispatch. Automated payment reminders take the awkwardness out of chasing overdue invoices.
Between engagements, Marketing Automation keeps your brand in front of past clients with scheduled check-in emails, thought-leadership newsletters and personalised updates — so you re-enter the conversation naturally rather than cold-calling when your pipeline is empty. Reports track engagement profitability, realization rates, client acquisition cost and service-line revenue, giving you the analytical foundation to make smarter decisions about which work to pursue and which clients to invest in.
Consultant CRM Use Cases
Enquiry-to-Proposal Pipeline
Manage every inbound enquiry through a structured pipeline with defined stages from first contact to signed engagement. Each pipeline card holds the client details, conversation history, proposal documents and follow-up tasks — so nothing gets forgotten during a busy delivery period.
Client Relationship History
Every interaction — emails, calls, meetings, proposals, invoices — is recorded on the client's contact record. When re-engaging a past client after months away, you can review the full history in seconds and open the conversation with the kind of contextual awareness that signals a premium service provider.
Referral Network Management
Track professional referral partners — other consultants, advisors and industry contacts — in Small Elephant alongside your clients. Log referrals received, send timely thank-you notes via automated workflows and measure which referral relationships generate the most valuable engagements.
Past-Client Nurture Sequences
Segment past clients by sector, service line or engagement type and enrol them in tailored nurture sequences. Schedule a mix of educational content, case study shares and personal check-ins over a rolling 12-month calendar — keeping your practice top of mind without manual effort.
Key Account Planning
Identify your highest-value clients and map the relationships within their organisations that matter most. Track decision-makers, influencers and economic buyers as separate contacts linked to the same account — and record which new services or adjacent problems might be worth exploring in future conversations.
Consulting Business Management Use Cases
Engagement Project Delivery
Structure each confirmed engagement as a project with phases, milestones, deliverable tasks and assigned team members. Track progress against the agreed timeline, flag risks early and give clients confidence that delivery is on track — without managing a separate project management tool.
Time Tracking and Profitability Analysis
Record hours against specific engagements and deliverables throughout the project. At the end of the engagement, compare budgeted hours against actual hours to calculate realized margin — and use that insight to price future engagements more accurately.
Milestone and Retainer Billing
Configure billing events at project milestones or monthly retainer dates. Small Elephant generates draft invoices automatically at the billing trigger point, pulls in the relevant time entries or agreed amounts, and queues them for your review — turning billing from a chore into a near-automatic process.
Expense Capture and Reimbursement
Log client-reimbursable expenses — travel, accommodation, third-party services — against the relevant engagement throughout the project. At billing time, expenses are appended to the invoice automatically, eliminating the end-of-project scramble to reconstruct receipts from memory.
Document and IP Management
Store frameworks, methodology documents, proposal templates and deliverable precedents in the Document Management module. Link reusable assets to the relevant service lines so that new engagements benefit from accumulated intellectual capital without requiring a file-hunt.
Suggested Modules for Consultants
- Lead Management — structured pipeline for enquiries from Discovery through to Engagement Confirmed
- Contact Management — client, prospect and referral partner records with full interaction history
- Documents — version-controlled storage for proposals, scope documents and deliverable templates
- Projects — engagement delivery with phases, milestones, tasks and team assignments
- Invoicing — time-and-materials, fixed-fee and retainer billing with automatic invoice generation
- Workflow Automation — proposal follow-up reminders, payment chasers and client check-in sequences
- Marketing Automation — past-client nurture campaigns and thought-leadership distribution
- Reports and Analytics — engagement profitability, realization rates and service-line revenue breakdown
Benefits for Consultants
- Win more proposals by responding to enquiries faster using pre-built proposal templates linked to the CRM pipeline
- Protect margin by tracking time against deliverables throughout every engagement and spotting scope creep early
- Simplify billing with automatic draft invoices generated from recorded time entries at each billing milestone
- Eliminate awkward payment chasing with automated overdue reminders that maintain a professional tone
- Break the feast-or-famine cycle with nurture automation that keeps past clients warm between engagements
- Grow your referral network systematically by tracking partners, logging introductions and automating thank-you touchpoints
- Make informed pricing decisions using historical engagement profitability data from built-in analytics reports
- Replace multiple subscriptions — project tool, CRM, invoicing app — with one platform at a lower total cost
Reports and Dashboards for Consultants
Engagement Profitability Report
Compare budgeted versus actual hours and revenue for every engagement. See realized margin by client, service line and engagement type — and use that data to refine your pricing model and identify which types of work to prioritize.
Pipeline Value and Conversion Dashboard
See the total value of opportunities at each pipeline stage, conversion rates from enquiry to proposal to instruction, and average time-to-close — so you can forecast revenue with confidence and focus effort on the highest-probability opportunities.
Time Utilization Report
Track billable hours recorded, billable hours invoiced and the realization rate for each team member over any period. Identify capacity gaps, over-servicing patterns and opportunities to improve billing efficiency across the practice.
Receivables Aging Report
Monitor outstanding invoices by age, client and engagement. The report surfaces accounts overdue beyond your standard payment terms and triggers automated reminder workflows — keeping cash flow predictable without manual follow-up.
Client Revenue and Retention Dashboard
See total revenue per client over time, average engagement value, and the interval between repeat engagements. Identify your most valuable client relationships and flag accounts that have gone quiet — before a competitor fills the gap.
Automation Examples for Consultants
- 1
New enquiry received via contact form → Lead created in the CRM pipeline, automated acknowledgement sent to the prospect within minutes, follow-up task created for the consultant with a 24-hour deadline.
- 2
Proposal sent → Status updated to 'Proposal Sent' automatically, follow-up reminder scheduled for 3 business days later if no response is logged, proposal document linked to the opportunity for one-click retrieval.
- 3
Engagement confirmed → Project created from consulting project template with pre-set phases and tasks, welcome email dispatched to the client, billing schedule entered and invoicing reminders configured.
- 4
Billing milestone reached → Draft invoice generated automatically from recorded time entries and approved expenses, sent to the consultant for review, then dispatched to the client on approval — all without manual data re-entry.
- 5
Invoice overdue by 7 days → Polite automated payment reminder sent to the client's billing contact, status flagged on the receivables dashboard, second reminder scheduled for 14 days overdue.
- 6
Engagement closed → Project marked complete, client satisfaction survey dispatched automatically, client enrolled in the 12-month nurture sequence for past clients, next-steps task created for the consultant within 60 days.
Why Consultants Choose Small Elephant
Consultants choose Small Elephant because it was built for practices where the person doing the billable work is also responsible for winning the next engagement, managing the client relationship and sending the invoice. That reality demands a tool that handles all four without requiring the consultant to become a software administrator. Small Elephant's unified platform means less time managing tools and more time generating value for clients.
Small Elephant automatically loads industry-specific fields, workflows, dashboards, reports and forms based on the industry you select during signup — so the platform fits how your consulting practice actually works from day one. Consulting-specific pipeline stages, proposal document workflows, time-recording templates and engagement profitability reports are all pre-configured the moment you sign up, with no lengthy setup required.
From solo practitioners billing their first retainer to boutique firms managing a portfolio of concurrent engagements, Small Elephant scales naturally. And with a 7-day free trial for just $1, you can validate that the platform fits your practice before making any commitment.
Questions, answered
Frequently asked questions
Consulting software manages the full lifecycle of a consulting practice — from lead generation and proposal management through engagement delivery and invoicing — in a single connected platform. Standard project tools handle tasks and timelines but leave CRM, billing and client relationship management to separate apps. Small Elephant unifies all of those functions, so consultants manage everything from one login.
Yes. You configure the billing model at the engagement level — fixed fee with milestone triggers, time-and-materials from recorded hours, monthly retainer or a hybrid arrangement. At billing time, the invoicing module applies the correct structure automatically and generates a professional draft invoice for your review.
Small Elephant keeps every active opportunity in a structured pipeline so no prospect is forgotten, and stores branded proposal templates in the Documents module so you can produce a tailored proposal in minutes. Automated follow-up reminders ensure you stay in front of prospects at the right intervals without having to track that manually.
Small Elephant is equally well-suited to solo practitioners and growing consulting teams. Solo consultants use it to manage their entire pipeline, delivery and billing from a single screen, while teams benefit from role-based access, shared project boards, time tracking per consultant and consolidated profitability reporting.
When an invoice passes its due date, Small Elephant can automatically send a series of polite payment reminders on a schedule you define — for example, at 7 days, 14 days and 28 days overdue. The receivables dashboard shows which invoices are outstanding at a glance, so you always know your collection position without manually checking.
Yes — Small Elephant offers a 7-day free trial for just $1, giving you full access to all modules including CRM, project delivery, time tracking, document management and invoicing. That is enough time to run a real engagement workflow from enquiry through to invoice and see exactly how the platform fits your practice.
Yes. The engagement profitability report compares budgeted hours and fees against actual hours recorded and invoiced, calculating the realized margin for each engagement. Over time, this data helps you identify which service types and client sectors generate the strongest returns and price future engagements more accurately.