You track your clients' deadlines carefully. Nobody tracks yours.
Accounting practices, corporate service providers and consultancies sell attention, in units of time, against deadlines. It is the one business model where the thing being sold is invisible unless someone records it — and it is remarkable how often the firm that enforces this on its clients does not have it internally.
Recognise any of this
Where the money goes before anyone calls it a problem
If more than two of these are true this week, the cost is already larger than the system you would replace.
- 01
Work is tracked per document, in folders, rather than per engagement.
Nobody can say what state a client's file is actually in without opening it, and nobody can say how many engagements one person is carrying until they miss one.
- 02
Time is recorded at the end of the week, from memory, if at all.
Time reconstructed on a Friday is always less than time spent. Fixed-fee work that has quietly become unprofitable stays that way because the evidence was never captured.
- 03
Recurring compliance work is remembered rather than scheduled.
VAT returns, corporate tax filings, licence renewals and audit deadlines repeat on a known calendar. Rebuilding that calendar from memory each cycle is both a risk and a tax on your best people.
- 04
Client profitability is a feeling, usually a generous one.
Firms consistently discover that their largest client by revenue is not their largest by profit — and by then the fee has been renewed at the old number twice.
- 05
Work in progress and unbilled time are known at month end.
Unbilled work is a loan to the client at zero interest. The longer it sits, the harder it is to bill, because the client no longer remembers the work.
What we build
The system that removes those, specifically
Not a feature list. Each of these exists because one of the problems above cost somebody real money.
The engagement as the unit of work
One record per client engagement with its stages, its owner, its deadline and everything filed against it — instead of a folder per document and a state that only exists in someone's head.
Time that reaches the invoice
Timesheets against the engagement, billable and non-billable separated, and invoices generated from what was actually recorded rather than from what was estimated at the start.
Recurring obligations scheduled once
Compliance work that repeats on a calendar is created on that calendar automatically, with the owner and the lead time set, so the firm's own deadline list is as reliable as the ones it manages for clients.
Profitability per client and per engagement
Fee against recorded cost, by client, by engagement type and by partner. The fixed-fee work that stopped making sense two years ago becomes visible while it can still be repriced.
Capacity you can actually see
Who is carrying what, and when the next month is full. Taking on the wrong work is usually a scheduling failure rather than a sales decision.
The firm's own books on the same system
Invoicing, collections and reporting on the same records as the delivery work, which is also the honest position for a firm that recommends systems to its clients.
In this industry
Businesses we do this for
Paperless
Company formation and business services
A project management system built around how the service actually runs, one file per client engagement rather than one folder per document.
- Projects run through it
- 1,500+
MS Plus
Chartered accountants
We implemented Odoo for their own practice first. They then started putting their own clients on it, and we have delivered alongside them ever since — the count is past thirty and still moving.
- Of their clients delivered with us
- 30+
- Firm running its own books on it
- 1
Questions
What people in this industry ask us first
We are an accounting firm. Could we resell this to our clients?
Several do. The pattern that works is the firm running its own practice on it first — you cannot recommend a system you do not use — and then bringing us in alongside for client implementations. We have delivered past thirty client implementations that way with one practice.
Our people will not fill in timesheets.
They will not if the timesheet is a separate chore with no return. They generally will if it is attached to the work they are already opening and if they can see what it changes. If it stays a chore after that, the design is wrong, not the people.
We are small. Is this overkill?
The engagement record and the deadline calendar are worth having at almost any size, and they are the cheap part. Time and profitability analysis start paying when you have enough people that you cannot hold the whole picture yourself — usually well before firms expect.
How we deliver it
Professional and business services
Start with a diagnosis, not a demo
Two weeks. We walk your floor and your books, and you get the list of where money is leaving the business with a cost against each item. The list is yours whether or not you work with us afterwards.
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (GST)
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