Financial leadership built for professional services firms that are ready to scale.

Works out which clients and service lines actually earn after the hours put in, gets work billed instead of sitting in WIP, and puts partner drawings on a policy. Most firms measure revenue and never measure realisation.

When partners can no longer track client economics personally, or when the firm has grown past a couple of partners and drawings start causing friction. Often triggered by a merger, a new office or a partner exit.

An accounts head handles billing, payroll, GST and statutory work. A CFO decides pricing, client mix, partner compensation and how the firm funds itself. Most firms have the first and no one doing the second.

For most firms, yes. Few practices are large enough to keep a full-time CFO busy or to justify the cost against partner income. Multi-office firms with a hundred plus fee earners are where a full-time hire begins to pay.

Yes. The economics are common across professional practices — time-based delivery, WIP, realisation, receivables and partner drawings. The regulatory context differs; the financial problems rarely do.

Load fully-costed time to each client, including non-billable and write-offs, then compare against what was actually collected. Firms consistently find long-standing clients that generate turnover and almost no profit.

The share of recorded time you actually collect, after write-downs and discounts. A firm can be busy, fully utilised and still unprofitable if realisation sits low. It is the number most practices never calculate.

The share of available hours that are chargeable. Utilisation and realisation together determine practice profit. High utilisation with poor realisation just means people are busy working for free.

Scope agreements in writing, bill scope creep as it happens rather than absorbing it, and stop discounting at invoice stage to avoid an awkward conversation. Most write-offs are decided by whoever raises the bill.

Price from fully-loaded cost per hour and target realisation, not from last year's rate card or what a competitor charges. Fixed fees need an effort estimate and a scope boundary, or they become open-ended commitments.

Rank by realised fee per hour after write-offs and by how quickly they pay. The result usually surprises partners — the largest client by billing is frequently not the most profitable.

Because profit sits in WIP and receivables while salaries go out monthly. Work is done, not yet billed, then billed and not yet collected. The gap widens as the firm grows.

Work in progress is time recorded but not invoiced. Every day it sits unbilled is a day you have paid for it and not been paid. Ageing WIP also gets harder to bill, because clients dispute old work.

Bill on a cycle rather than when someone gets to it, age WIP and receivables weekly, and give collections a named owner. In most practices collections are everyone's job and therefore nobody's.

Age by client and partner, escalate on a fixed schedule, and make the relationship partner accountable rather than the accounts team. Partners collect faster than accounts staff, because clients answer them.

Track them by partner and client and discuss them monthly. Write-offs made quietly at billing stage never get examined. Once they are visible by owner, they fall without any policy change.

Set drawings to a policy — a fixed monthly amount against agreed profit share, with true-up after year end. Drawings taken against the bank balance are how firms distribute money still sitting in receivables.

Documented drawings policy, no personal expenses through the firm, and a clean current account per partner. Blurred lines cause problems at partner exits, mergers and any external review.

Whatever the partners agree, provided it is written, measurable and applied consistently. Problems arise from informal arrangements everyone remembers differently, not from the split itself.

By testing each hire against pipeline, expected utilisation and cash. A fee earner takes months to reach full chargeability, and hiring ahead of work is the most common cash mistake in growing practices.

Capital account settlement, share of WIP and receivables, goodwill treatment if any, and the cash impact of paying it out. Firms without a written formula negotiate this at the worst possible moment.

A monthly pack with client and service-line profitability, realisation and utilisation, WIP and receivables ageing, partner-wise performance and a cash forecast. Fixed date, followed by a partner review.

Around fee earners and clients rather than around accounting heads. Recorded time, billed value, collected value, write-offs and ageing. A standard P&L tells a practice almost nothing useful.

They keep billing, payroll, GST and TDS. We add the management reporting layer and take it into partner decisions. The accounts team usually welcomes having defined formats to work to.

Planning and coordination — GST on professional fees, reverse charge items, TDS on payments received and made. Filing stays with your qualified filer. The aim is preventing cash surprises.

Hire against signed work, keep WIP and receivables ageing tight as headcount grows, and hold working capital to cover a full delivery and collection cycle. Growth in professional services consumes cash long before it generates it.