A calendar for consultants
Your inventory is hours. A tool that tracks tasks and ignores hours is tracking the wrong thing.
What the week actually looks like
Four engagements at different intensities, a proposal that has to go out Friday, and a calendar that fills with other people’s meetings because it is easier to say yes than to explain what Thursday already contains. The admin happens in the evening because the day got sold.
Where it goes wrong, and what answers it
The unbillable hours are invisible until you invoice
Proposals, admin, the call that was going to be fifteen minutes. None of it is on a task list and all of it is on the week.
In UnaTask: Everything goes on the same calendar, billable or not, so the honest picture of the week exists before the month ends.
Scheduling a call costs four emails
Every new client relationship starts with a thread about availability, which is time spent selling time.
In UnaTask: A booking link that respects your focus blocks, so the slots on offer are ones you actually want to give away.
The engagement notes and the engagement work live apart
What was agreed on the call is in your notes. What has to happen is in your head.
In UnaTask: A notetaker turns the call into assigned tasks on that client’s project.
Every engagement starts the same way, rebuilt from scratch
Kickoff, discovery, the same three deliverables. You have done it eleven times and set it up eleven times.
In UnaTask: A template per engagement type, applied in one click.
What consultants usually weigh this against
Sunsama
The daily ritual is genuinely good for people who sell their attention, and consultants are exactly that.
It is single player and around twenty dollars a month, and it pulls tasks in rather than holding them, so client work still lives somewhere else.
Sunsama alternative for consultants
Todoist
Cheap, fast, and a list per client is a perfectly reasonable way to start.
A list has no hours in it, which for somebody who sells hours is the one thing missing.
Todoist alternative for consultants
Notion
Consultants love Notion because deliverables are documents and the client sometimes gets the page.
Writing is where it wins and scheduling is where it shrugs. The week is still improvised.
Notion alternative for consultants
Motion
When the calendar is chaotic enough, handing it to an algorithm is a rational response.
It moves your blocks, which is fine for your own work and awkward when the block was a client commitment, and there is no free plan to try it on.
Motion alternative for consultants
Common questions
Is it free if I work alone?
Yes, with every feature and no card. You pay when somebody joins you.
Can clients book time with me?
Yes. Booking links offer only the slots you are willing to give, and they respect the focus blocks already on your calendar.
Does it track billable time?
It plans hours rather than stopwatching them. The blocks you place are the record of where the week went, which for most consultants is closer to how they invoice than a timer is.