Professional services firms are deceptively hard to run well. There is no stock and no production line, your inventory is your people's time, and your profit turns on how much of it is billable, how accurately you price projects and how well you manage the gap between doing the work and getting paid for it. We help agencies, consultancies and practices see those numbers clearly and act on them.
Where does the profit actually sit?
In a product business you can count what you make. In professional services the equivalents are subtler but just as decisive, and most firms do not measure them closely enough. The levers that drive your profit are usually these:
- Utilisation, how much of your team's available time is billable, rather than lost to admin, pitching or downtime.
- Project margin, what each engagement actually makes once the real time spent on it is counted, not just the fee you quoted.
- Rates and pricing, whether your charge-out rates and fee structures genuinely cover your costs and your target profit.
- People costs, salaries, recruitment and the cost of carrying capacity ahead of the work that pays for it.
Project profitability and work in progress
Two engagements can win the same fee and deliver very different profit, depending on how much time they actually eat up. Without tracking time against budget by project, a firm can be busy and growing yet quietly subsidising its least profitable clients. We help you put reporting in place that shows profitability by project, client and service line, so you learn which work to chase, which to reprice and which to let go.
Work in progress, time worked but not yet billed, together with unbilled or disputed fees is where cash and profit hide in professional firms. Letting WIP build up, or being slow to invoice completed stages, ties up money you have already earned. We help you measure your WIP, tighten your billing cycle and turn finished work into cash faster.
People are your biggest cost and your capacity
Payroll is typically the largest line in a professional firm, and people decisions are growth decisions. Hiring ahead of confirmed work builds capacity but carries cost before the revenue arrives; hiring too late caps your growth and burns out your team. Getting pay, bonuses, pensions and any profit-share right matters both for keeping people and for the numbers. We run accurate payroll and help you model the cost and timing of each hire, so you can grow your team with your eyes open.
Structuring and scaling the firm
As firms grow, questions of structure come up: how the business is owned, how profits are shared between partners or directors, how to bring people into ownership and how to take profit out tax-efficiently. The right answer depends on your people and your plans, and it ties into both company and personal tax. We advise on the structure and on tax planning, and where succession or employee ownership is on the agenda, we can talk you through options such as employee ownership trusts.
How we help professional services firms
Project profitability
Management reporting showing your margin by project, client and service line.
Learn moreWIP & cash management
Measuring work in progress and tightening billing so earned work becomes cash sooner.
Payroll & hiring models
Accurate payroll and clear modelling of what each hire costs and when it pays back.
Learn moreStructure & tax planning
Advice on ownership, profit extraction and growth, with the tax planned around it.
Numbers that keep pace with the work
Decisions in a professional firm, such as a new hire, a change of rates or taking on a big client, happen in real time, so year-end accounts on their own are not enough to steer by. We lean on regular management figures and forecasting, built on good bookkeeping and cloud software, so partners and directors can make the call on current information rather than last year's.
Working with us
Understand the firm
We look at how you sell, how you price and where your time and cash are really going.
Put the measures in place
We set up reporting on utilisation, project margin and WIP, and run your payroll and compliance.
Advise on growth
We help you price, hire and structure the firm so growth is both profitable and sustainable.