Hello. Before consulting I used to work for fin.advisory and assurance in the same firm. Admin part was more or less the same, except for this: consultants have never been asked to adjust the charged hours and been even encouraged to charge realistic (efficient) hours/days, and if there was an overbudget - it was managers+ who used to adjust their hours. And now this. I know it doesn’t affect my salary but makes me feel as if my work was undervalued. Is it normal? Does it happen everywhere?

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likefunny
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Please don’t equate your self worth with a number on a time sheet.

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I’ve seen this a few times on my journey. It’s just crude budget management in cases where there’s a fixed fee and work can’t be delivered within budget.
Don’t take it too personally, it’s someone trying to fix a problem that’s likely not yours.

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That’s exactly the kind of email I would write. Projects have fixed budgets that clients are paying for. Cannot damage project profitability, just because someone on the team works too slow.

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But see OP’s note above- charging these hours means they will be underutilized. That is pretty uncool

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I am even put on projects without being able to bill, just because I have some free time. (I can bill 38 hours a week and legally we have to work 40, and internal work takes up an additional 10 - resulting in about 60/week now.)
So I think as long as you like what you’re doing and it’s not you who’s affected by less billable hours, don’t bother too much.

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Have been part of a large program where some there was a cross practice team. We had SMs from other consulting sub service lines charging >35 hours because they'd worked that much. Ultimately led to "right sizing" of the team, by bringing in one more SM. I've worked across two Big 4s. It depends on project to project and also differences within each project are there. I remember an advice I received from an SM early on in my career: "Charge what you work and work what you charge." Still holds true for me. Have not seen an email like this though. Maybe your project had wafer thin margins?

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The proper phrase is "charge what you work and work what you charge... up to 40 hours."

Otherwise this is simultaneously a) a lie b) spoken ironically c) a CYA.

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Maybe I'm not understanding the issue here so sorry for this if it's out of line. The PM in the project seems to be ensuring you are aware of the allocated hours based on how the engagement was solutioned. If you join the project and find out it's more work than the allocated hours, you'd be expected to communicate that.

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Oh no, he is just making sure we don’t charge more than it was budgeted. I am stuffed on this project for 8 weeks but am allowed to charge only 25 days (5 weeks)

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I am on a project where I work 102-16 hour days but can only charge 50%. Accenture really SUCKS when it comes to negotiating deals with clients at a lower price and then punishes the workers who deliver the service/work! I've had enough of this place! My Big4 experience was not as bad as Accenture's.

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I would love to just bill to a code, whatever hours they tell me to bill, and not have to worry about util

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Happened to me

This is very common. My entire time at KPMG, this was an unsaid rule - a total opposite of what the senior partners publicly advocated but pulled a blind eye to operationally. Any noise against it was seen as a troublemaker or not willing to work with the team to grow the business (leading to no promotions).

This is normal

I find this kind of stuff helpful in managing my own time. If I get an email like this I understand how much effort I should be putting into my work, I have a better sense of where we need to push back against client demands, etc.

I definitely think think this is just good project management. One of my previous projects had a PM that didn't communicate this and was walked all over. The project had to roll off analysts early because the SMEs had blown out the budget, leaving just 2 to finish the work of 6

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