Can time entry narratives be licensed as AI training data?

What are time entry narratives, and why do they have value?

A time entry narrative is the sentence a consultant, engineer or accountant writes beside logged hours: "Reviewed vendor SLA draft with client counsel and marked three liability clauses for revision." It states the task, the work product and often the reason, tied to hours and a project code.

That combination is what AI developers look for in work records. The narrative describes a task in the words of the person who did it. The hours show effort. The matter or project code ties entries into a sequence, so a model can see how a multi-week engagement breaks down into steps. Public text rarely shows that.

If your clients are consulting, engineering or professional services firms, you probably see time systems from the inside. This page covers what to check before raising them.

Where do the narratives live?

What makes one firm's narratives better than another's?

Use the TASK test: Texture, Age, Structure, Keep.

• Texture: Entries are specific sentences, not "meeting" or "admin".
• Age: Five to ten years of entries, including archived systems.
• Structure: Entries carry project codes, phase or deliverable fields.
• Keep: The firm can export them without manual reconstruction.

A firm with strict billing standards, where clients review invoices line by line, tends to have richer narratives than one that bills fixed fees and logs hours only for internal use.

Which firms may license them?

SourceX considers US companies with 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), several years of documented operations and rights to license. For narratives, that points to:

• Management and technology consulting firms with a time-and-materials practice.
• Engineering and architecture firms that bill by project phase.
• Accounting, tax and advisory firms, subject to the confidentiality points below and to their own professional and independence rules, which the firm checks with its professional body.
• Agencies and IT services firms that log hours to client work.

Law firm narratives are a special case because of privilege and client confidentiality rules that differ by state; those need the firm's own counsel and are not a topic for a partner to decide.

What are the confidentiality pitfalls?

Narratives name clients, counterparties and sometimes sensitive matters. A line like "Prepared diligence summary for acquisition of {client}" reveals a deal.

• Client confidentiality: engagement letters may bar reuse of work information. The firm must check each one.
• De-identification: names, deal details and individuals are stripped under requirements agreed with the company before any work begins.
• Third-party data: some entries mention individuals or regulated facts.
• Ownership: the narrative is the firm's record, but the content describes the client's affairs. The firm decides what is in scope with counsel.

Partners never see the entries. You describe the type of record, not its content.

Illustrative scenario

Illustrative: a fictional 120-person engineering consultancy has nine years of timesheet narratives across two billing systems. The managing director tells a board member that client contracts bar reuse for about a third of engagements. The firm confirms a smaller scope with counsel, de-identifies project names and keeps the rest out. That narrower scope is still a coherent dataset, and the decision about scope stays with the firm.

What do you say?

The partner for this conversation could be a consultant who advises on billing, practice management or operations. The wider playbook for consultants is in the management consultant referral guide, and the same logic shows up in M&A: see referral opportunities for M&A advisors.

How should a consultant handle the first conversation?

Start with the managing partner or CFO, not the project teams. Ask whether the firm has a policy on using engagement information beyond the client's project. If the firm has a clear policy, the sponsor can decide quickly. If not, the question becomes part of the firm's own review with counsel, which is a normal result and not a failure.

Related decision records

Time narratives sit next to other work-in-progress records. Engineers also keep architecture decision records and OS&D and freight claims records in logistics. Contractors keep construction RFI logs, and sales teams keep win-loss interview notes. For a plain definition of buyer demand, see what is AI training data.

How rewards work

Rewards are 25% of the eligible platform fees SourceX actually collects, capped at $100,000 cumulative per referred company, and become payable only after the buyer pays and SourceX receives its fee; no reward is guaranteed. The reward is a share of SourceX's fee, never deducted from the company's payment. Check the program terms and your own professional rules before accepting any referral fee; this is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice.

When not to bother

• The firm bills fixed fees and logs hours without descriptions.
• Engagement letters prohibit reuse across the board.
• Fewer than 50 full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded.
• The owner will not consider an exclusive license for AI training.

Next step

Screen the firm with the data inventory builder, then register as a partner and send the introduction.