Reporting for Accounting: Realisation by Client, WIP Ageing and Capacity Before the Season Hits

Practices worry about winning work and losing clients. The larger and quieter loss is a client who has been on the same fee for years while their records got worse and their scope grew. Reporting for an accounting practice should start there, then move to the timing problems that cost recovery and the capacity problems that cost sanity.

Realisation by client

Fee billed against time recorded, client by client, ranked worst first. It decides which fee reviews get scheduled. A bad number is a group of long standing clients consuming well beyond their fee. The action is a fee conversation supported by the hours, or a scope conversation about the state of the records, and both are far easier with the figures in front of you.

Work in progress ageing

Unbilled time by client and age, oldest first, with the responsible manager. It decides the weekly billing run. A bad number is a long tail older than two months. The action is a fixed weekly billing routine rather than a monthly scramble, because recovery falls with age and no later report will bring it back.

Season capacity against committed work

Committed recurring hours against available hours, week by week, through the peak period. It decides hiring, deadline scheduling and whether to accept new work. A bad number is peak weeks already oversubscribed before the season begins. The action is to move cooperative clients earlier and to decline additions deliberately rather than by accident.

Proposal to engagement conversion

Proposals converted, split between recurring compliance and advisory, by partner. It decides where business development effort goes. A bad number is advisory proposals converting poorly while compliance holds up. The action is usually to look at how the advisory scope and fee were framed, since compliance buyers are being sold a project they did not ask for.

Advisory cross sell coverage

Compliance only clients by fee, tenure and owning partner. It decides who gets a conversation this month. A bad number is a large untouched base. The action is a small monthly quota per partner with outcomes recorded, so the list shortens rather than being reviewed each year and left alone.

Ageing improves cash and recovery immediately using data you already have, and it creates the billing discipline that everything downstream needs. Realisation should follow once billing is regular, because realisation calculated on irregular billing describes the billing habit rather than the client. Capacity planning comes third and needs a full cycle of recurring job data to be trustworthy, so start collecting for it now and read it next season.

Partner meetings in a practice circle for the same reason they do in a law firm: everyone brings their own extract. These reports each close one specific argument.

Time recorded promptly against the correct client and job. Recurring jobs carrying genuine due dates rather than being rolled forward by habit. One partner or manager owning each relationship. Services tagged on every engagement. Churn reasons from a closed list. Client groups merged so related companies form one relationship rather than several disconnected records.

Merging client groups is the step that decides whether realisation and cross sell reporting mean anything. A family or a group of companies handled as four separate records will show four modest relationships, none large enough to attract a fee review, while the combined relationship may be one of the least profitable in the practice.

An annual utilisation figure can look entirely healthy for a practice that is drowning for three months and quiet for the rest of the year, which is exactly the pattern that damages margin and drives good staff out. Cumulative fee graphs and job profitability reports produced after completion have the same flaw: they describe a period nobody can now influence.

HelloGrowthCRM keeps clients, enquiries, proposals and conversations in one place so origination, conversion and cross sell coverage sit alongside whatever your practice software already produces. Pricing is ₹899/user/month in India and $10/user/month billed annually elsewhere, with a free plan available while a small practice decides what it needs.

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