| Topic Name: |
ghosting hours |
| Message Name: |
Frankly... |
| Date Posted: |
03/09/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Reston_hokie,
Here is my situation:
A Consulting Engagement Manager that I work for instructs their consultants not to bill all of their hours on a "fixed price" client contract in order to decrease the contract expenses and thus artificially increasing the engagement profit margin? In other words, the consultant is working full-time and traveling out of town to a client engagement account. The Engagement Manager who negotiated the "fixed price" contract scoped out that billable hours needed to complete the engagement within the 5 month period. The consultant iwas scoped in the contract to work and bill against the engagement contract 40 hours per week over a 5 month period. However, when the Engagement Manager realizes that the profit margin is going to be lower than expected because the project is taking longer than scoped, the Engagement Manager tells the consultant not to bill all the hours (only 12 of the 40) for each week in order to decrease the consulting billable hours against the contract for a longer period of time. At the end of the year, the consultant is challenged by management as not meeting their billable hour quota and falls 140 billable hours short. The consultant looses over $5,000 of incentive compensation due to not meeting the quota. Again, this is the direct result of the Engagement Manager directing this consultant's reduction in hours and the consultant could not possibly bill on another engagement becasue they were full-time on their present one.
What is your take on this type of consulting billing and accounting practice? Should I report this to the SEC? The "true" expense of the Consultant's incentive compensation that should have been paid never hits the bottom expense line because of the practice of "ghosting hours". What if this is happening to 10 consultants, 100 consultants, 1000 consultants over a 2,3,4,5 year period? What if the consultant has e-mails showing the Engagement Manager directing this?
Regards,
Ghoster |
| Message: |
I won't join the debate if your complaint is "real" or not. But I have seen soooooo much shady behavior on the part of management with regard to ghosting that I think sum element of it is true. The real tragedy? I know of a fine senior manager that was just laid off in products. She was asked multiple times over a period of many months to ghost hours for sales efforts, chargeable work, etc. At the end of the day, she was let go for low chargeability. So to all of the idiots who write "who cares who you are billing to - ACN pays your salary" I say BS! You will get run ragged, especially if you are a manager or higher, on non-chargeable projects and then get fired. If you see ghosting hours is not leading to chargeable work - back off and enjoy your salary before you get canned. Cause that is what will happen.
Don't waste your time with the SEC and all of that crap. It is like pi**ing in the wind. Learn from your lousy ACN experience and move on. So long as I need a paycheck and my babies need diapers, I'll be here.
I do find it hard to believe that you were flown out of town for weeks on end and only billing 12 hours...but what am I to say. I've seen really awful ghosting stuff so anything is possible.
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