You sell hours. So they had better add up.
In professional services your revenue sits in time and in case files. Yet hours are still often filled in from memory on a Friday afternoon, and what is known about a client is spread across mailboxes, folders and the recollection of whoever happened to be there.
We build the systems that capture that as it happens: hours, files, invoicing and a portal where your client finds their own documents.
Your most valuable asset gets written down on Friday afternoon.
A firm sells time and knowledge. Yet that is precisely the worst-recorded part of the business. Hours are filled in afterwards, the file is scattered across mailboxes, and what is known about a client lives in the head of whoever happened to be there.
While the team is small that works. Grow to thirty or forty people and each of those habits becomes a risk. Someone drops out and a file stalls. An invoice is wrong and the discussion costs more than the line was worth. Work in progress is only known after the month closes, and by then you cannot steer it.
What you reconstruct on Friday is always less than what you worked.
There is also a risk you only see once it bites. At most firms a few people know everything about their clients and have written none of it down. When one of them leaves, half the file leaves with them. That is not a software problem until the moment it is.
What we build captures that as it happens rather than afterwards. Not because recording is fun, but because in professional services it is your revenue.
What we build for firms.
Often a shell around the packages you already have, sometimes a platform of your own when your service does not fit standard software.
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Time tracking nobody hates
Recording from your calendar, your tasks or your mail, in a few taps and on the day itself. With a nudge when there is a gap in your week, because that gap is usually money.
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The file in one place
Documents, agreements, contact moments and versions with the client or matter they belong to. Searchable, so a colleague takes over a file in ten minutes instead of a day.
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Invoicing with your rules
Fixed fees, hourly rates, tiers, retainers and that one client with their own arrangement. The proposal is prepared automatically, you check it and it goes out.
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A client portal with documents
Your client signs, uploads and follows the status themselves, with secure access to their own documents only. That ends the email chains full of drifting attachments.
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A workflow for your service
Request, review, approval and delivery in fixed steps, showing whose turn it is and what is stuck. Especially valuable when statutory deadlines are attached.
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Figures that hold up
Utilisation, billability, work in progress and margin per client or service. On the day itself, instead of in a quarterly report you can no longer act on.
Four things we hear at firms.
Almost every firm has a package for time and a package for invoices. The trouble sits in between, and in everything your firm does slightly differently from the rest.
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Hours arrive afterwards
On Friday the week gets reconstructed. That takes time, it is not accurate and it nearly always yields fewer billable hours than were actually worked.
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The file lives in mailboxes
Agreements, versions and decisions are spread across personal mail and shared folders. If someone drops out, bringing a colleague up to speed on a file costs a day.
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Invoicing is a monthly day
Collect hours, check them, apply the exceptions and only then send. The same day gone every month, and the same discussion about a line that should not have been on there.
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Clients ask where things stand
What has been done, what is still needed. Answerable, but every time it costs someone fifteen minutes of gathering it from three places.
How we usually start here.
By following a month on paper. What goes wrong in four weeks will go wrong in the system too.
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Walk through one month
From assignment to invoice: which steps are in it, who does what and where it stalls. There is nearly always one step holding up the rest.
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Build that piece first
Usually the hours or the invoicing, because that is where the direct gain is. In use with one team within weeks, so you find out whether it fits.
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Then the file
Once the basics run, we extend to the file, the portal and the figures. In short rounds, because in a firm the work changes faster than an annual plan.
What it connects to.
Your bookkeeping, your mail and your calendar stay where they are. We build the layer that ties them together and the piece no package exists for.
At service firms the most requested custom work is not a new system but one screen where everything finally sits together.
- Unit4 Common at larger service firms; we connect through their API.
- AFAS Keep hours, leave and payroll together.
- Exact Online Raise invoices from approved hours.
- Twinfield Run work in progress per project alongside.
- Simplicate Leave existing projects and hours where they are.
- Gripp Add what the package just does not do.
- Salesforce Leave relationship management be and build the workflow beside it.
- Microsoft 365 Login, calendar and documents from one account.
- Google Workspace Same story, other side of the aisle.
- DocuSign Signing digitally without going through email.
- Zivver Send confidential documents without a separate password.
- Peppol E-invoices to clients who require them.
- Mollie A payment link on the invoice saves you reminders.
- Power BI Management figures from the same source as your invoices.
Using something else?
Usually no problem. The question is not which package you have but whether it lets go of its data. Call and we will work that out together before you commit to anything.
Questions from this corner.
If your question is not here, give us a call. You get someone who builds it themselves.
Book a callThere are plenty of time tracking packages. Why custom?
For time alone, rarely. Custom becomes interesting once your service has its own workflow, your invoicing rules do not fit a package, or you run four systems that contradict each other. If a package fits, we simply recommend it.
Can you migrate our existing data?
Yes. Files, clients and history come across, with a clean-up round first. What does not belong stays behind; moving old mess along makes a new system unreliable from day one.
What about confidentiality?
The data sits on our own servers in the Netherlands, we sign a non-disclosure and a processing agreement, and access is recorded per role and traceable. If you work under professional privilege, we set the rights tighter than usual.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
A first working piece is usually there within six to ten weeks. A time or invoicing component starts around fifteen to thirty thousand euros; a full platform sits higher. What it will be for you, we say in the first conversation.
We are eight people. Is that too small?
No. At smaller firms the gain is often sharpest, because one badly running step hits a large part of the week. We do deliberately keep the job small then, so it pays for itself within a year.