Professional services

Your people are the cost and the product.

Agencies, consultancies, recruiters and professional practices. When the main cost is salaries and the main asset walks out at six, the numbers that matter are utilisation, recovery and work in progress.

What we see

The pattern in this sector.

In a professional services business almost the entire cost base is people, and almost the entire revenue depends on what those people spent their time on. That makes two numbers decisive, and neither appears in a set of statutory accounts: how much of available time was billable, and how much of what was billed actually got recovered.

We see plenty of firms with healthy turnover and thin profit, and the cause is nearly always the same. Time is written off quietly at the billing stage, scope creeps without a conversation, and work in progress ages until it is uncomfortable to invoice. None of that shows up until the year end, by which point it is history rather than a decision.

The other thing worth measuring is profit by client. Most professional firms have one or two clients that absorb far more time than they pay for, and the owners usually know which they are without ever having proved it. Proving it tends to change the conversation.

Watch outs

Where it goes wrong.

Revenue recognition on long engagements. Work billed in advance, or delivered ahead of billing, has to be recognised in the right period. Getting it wrong flatters one year and punishes the next, and it is one of the more common things we correct on taking over a file.

Work in progress. Unbilled time is an asset and, in a badly run practice, a slowly rotting one. The longer it sits the less of it gets billed. Ageing it monthly changes behaviour in a way that talking about it does not.

Employment status of associates. Freelancers used regularly, under direction, on your systems, are a status risk. In a people business it is the single most expensive thing to get wrong.

Director remuneration. Owner-managers in professional services often have the most room to plan between salary, dividends and pension, and the least time to think about it. April 2026 changed the arithmetic.

What we do

The whole job, on a fixed monthly fee.

Business accounting

Year-end accounts, corporation tax, VAT and payroll, done properly and done early.

Bookkeeping

In-house bookkeepers alongside the accountants, so the numbers are current rather than annual.

Live reporting

Margin by job, product or client, refreshed rather than rebuilt. Where the sector-specific answers actually live.

Finance Partner

A whole finance team on one fixed monthly fee, when you need more than compliance.

Talk to someone who has seen it before.

A first conversation costs nothing and takes about half an hour. We will tell you what we would do and what it would cost.