Configure admin settings

Configure global parameters for time tracking, leave, currencies, public holidays, and integrations.

The admin settings page lets administrators configure key parameters for Consult features such as time tracking and leave applications. To open it, click your user profile icon in the top-right corner and select Admin Settings.

General

Configurations

Configure the global settings that affect how users and managers interact with timesheets and reporting:

• Daily Hours Required: The number of working hours required per day for employees. Once updated, timesheets that have not been submitted must meet the new hourly requirement before submission is allowed. It sets the hours a user is expected to work each week, which utilisation calculations and resource allocation both measure against.
• Max Weekly Hours: The maximum number of hours a user may be allocated or log per week. This is a separate, higher figure to what the organisation expects a user to work, and an allocation that goes over it is blocked rather than flagged. See approve resource requests for how the two figures are used together.
• Work at Risk Target: The organisation’s work at risk target. Once updated, it is displayed on dashboard charts.
• Target Revenue: The organisation’s target revenue. Once updated, it is displayed on dashboard charts.
• Allow Overriding Actual Hours: Enables project managers to upload or import actual hours directly into timesheets. When enabled, imported actual hours replace manually captured hours for the same period. It applies to every project format, including both WBS structures.
• Timesheet Submission: Enables timesheet submission for users. When enabled, users must submit their timesheets for approval by their resource manager. Before activating this option, ensure that each user has a designated resource manager and that the process has been communicated to all users.
• Timesheet Overdue Reminder: The number of days after the last weekday of a week to email employees who have not submitted their timesheet for that week. Enter 0 to switch overdue reminders off.
• Timesheet Overdue Escalation: The number of days after the employee reminder to email the employee’s resource managers, if the timesheet is still outstanding. Enter 0 to switch the escalation off. This field can only be set once Timesheet Overdue Reminder is greater than 0, since employees are always reminded before their manager is involved.

Neither reminder is sent unless Timesheet Submission is enabled. Setting the reminder to 3 days and the escalation to 2 days, for example, emails the employee on the Monday after the week closes and their resource managers on the Wednesday. Employees who have no resource manager assigned are never escalated. See overdue timesheet follow-up for the full follow-up behaviour, including who is left out of the reminders.

Warning: Enable Allow Overriding Actual Hours only when absolutely necessary, since changes to actual hours directly affect utilisation, billing, and project reporting.

Approval notifications

Consult provides standard notifications for users based on their roles. In some cases, certain notifications are required for specific users to support a company’s business processes. To enable this, Consult supports specifying custom recipients for the following notifications:

• Approved expenses, excluding training.
• Approved training.
• Approved leave.

Countries

Manage countries

Manage the list of countries where the organisation operates. Adding a country enables country-specific regions, public holidays, projects, and users to be created within Consult.

Currencies

Manage the currencies supported by the organisation.

Each currency includes the following fields:

• Currency: The currency code, such as ZAR or AUD.
• Ex. rate: The conversion rate relative to the base currency.
• Tax acronym: The short label used to identify the tax applied to this currency, such as VAT, GST, or Sales Tax. It is displayed on invoices, expense reports, and financial summaries.
• Tax percentage: The tax rate applied when calculating tax amounts for this currency, such as 15 for 15%. It is used to automatically calculate tax on invoices, expenses, and other financial records.
• Mileage rate: An optional rate used for mileage calculations.

The currencies added determine which options are available when creating projects and users. They are also used for financial records such as user rates, project rate cards, expense reports, and invoices. If a currency is not added, it is not available in workflows that require financial values.

Note: The exchange rate defines how much one unit of the base currency is worth in the selected currency. For example, if the base currency is ZAR and the exchange rate for AUD is 0.14, then 1 ZAR = 0.14 AUD. Conversely, 1 AUD is equal to approximately 7.14 ZAR.

Country-specific settings

Country-specific configurations are based on the countries that have been added. Select a country from the dropdown to manage its settings:

• Regions: Define geographical regions within a country to enable region-specific public holidays.
• Export or import public holidays: Manage the public holidays for the selected country.

To update public holidays:

1. Click Export/Import to download the current public holidays as an Excel file.
2. Update the file as needed.
3. Upload the updated file back to the app.
4. Click Import to save the changes.

Note: If you get the warning “There was an error on row 2. The name field is required.”, it might be because you opened the file with Excel, which then automatically formatted the CSV contents. This can be confirmed by viewing the imported data, which will be missing the double quotation marks (") around the first words:

In this case, open Excel first and then import the CSV data using the Data > Get Data > From Text tool. This approach retains the format of the CSV data, but you should still ensure that you save the file as a CSV.

Leave

The Manage Company Leave page lets administrators configure how each leave type behaves per country, including how balances are calculated, accrued, and reset. To open it, go to Admin Settings > Leave.

Note: Leave configuration is country-specific. Each country is managed independently, with no shared configuration across countries.

Each leave type falls into one of three categories:

• Monthly accrual
• Fixed value
• Other

General configuration rules

If a leave type is not configured, available days are not calculated or displayed. Although Unpaid Leave and Special Leave are not configurable and both belong to the “Other” category, the number of days taken by employees is still tracked.

Monthly accrual leave

Leave types in the “Monthly accrual” category automatically add the configured accrual amount at the start of each month.

Note: Each country has a default accrual amount of 1.75 for annual leave.

Fixed value leave

Fixed value leave types allocate a predefined number of leave days to an employee for a specific period, for example over a year. The full allocation is granted at the start of the allocation period. Employees can use these days until the balance is exhausted or the allocation period expires.

Fixed value leave calculations for current and new users

For active users, balances are calculated by deducting previously approved leave from the total number of available days.

Note: This calculation considers the validity period that the user is currently in. For example, suppose the leave balance for sick leave is configured as 25 days over two years. If this configuration is made three years after a user is onboarded to Consult, then only the leave taken in the past year is deducted from the amount, since the first two years were part of the first validity period and are considered irrelevant to the current second validity period.

Configure fixed leave types

To configure a fixed leave type:

1. From the Manage Company Leave page, click the edit icon next to the leave type you want to configure. The Name, Country, and Type fields are pre-populated.
2. Enter the following values:
   • Default Starting Value: The number of leave days allocated at the start of each validity period.
   • Validity Duration (Months): The number of months the leave days remain valid.
   • Description: A brief description of the leave configuration.
3. Click Save.

Note: If the fixed leave type has already been configured for the selected country, the Default Starting Value and Validity Duration are displayed in the Configure Leave view.

Other leave

“Other” leave types do not maintain balances and are not configurable. The leave days are recorded for visibility and reporting only. This currently applies to Unpaid Leave and Special Leave.

Non-billable tasks

Create and manage categories for non-billable tasks such as training or internal meetings. Once created, a category becomes available for all users on their timesheets, so they can log hours under it.

Note: If a category is deleted after hours have already been logged against it, those hours still appear under an unlinked category. To restore the original category, recreate it using the same name.

Integrations

Integrate with external products to improve Consult’s usability.

Xero integration

To connect to Xero:

1. Click Connect Xero.
2. On the Xero login page, use the organisation’s Xero details to complete the form and click Log in.
3. Click Allow access. This gives Xero access to the details of the invoice exported from Consult.

The status below Xero should now indicate that it is Connected.

QuickBooks integration

To connect to QuickBooks:

1. Click Connect QuickBooks.
2. On the QuickBooks login page, use the organisation’s QuickBooks details to complete the form and click Sign in.
3. Select the QuickBooks company account to integrate.
4. Click Next. This gives QuickBooks access to the details of the invoice exported from Consult.

The status below QuickBooks should now indicate that it is Connected.

Sage integration [in progress]

Sage details can be configured but the full functionality is yet to be enabled.