Which clients are profitable?
Compare client fees with recorded time and agreed work. See where extra requests or overruns are reducing profitability and which engagements need a conversation about fees or scope.
For partners, practice managers and outsourced-finance leaders
Reporting for accountancy practices.
Keep client work moving.
See which clients take more time than their fees cover, where the team is stretched and what is holding up the next reporting deadline. We help UK accountancy and outsourced-finance practices connect their data and reduce the manual work behind recurring reports.
Discuss your practice’s challenge ↗A free 30-minute conversation with Liam
Where to start
Client profitability. Team capacity.
Reporting that takes less work.
For growing practices, typically with 20–100 employees. Start with one recurring problem in how you manage the practice or prepare reports for clients.
Can the team meet the next deadlines?
Bring recurring jobs, deadlines and team availability into one view. See where work is piling up, who has capacity and which tasks are waiting on a colleague or client.
Why do client reports take so long?
Reduce the repeated collecting, checking and formatting of information for management accounts and client reporting. Automate suitable preparation steps, using AI only where useful. Your team keeps responsibility for review and sign-off.
Illustrative application
From the monthly reporting chase
to a clear view of what is ready.
An example for an outsourced-finance team preparing monthly client reports. This is illustrative, not a client case study or a guarantee of time saved.
- 01
Bring the relevant information together.
Bring together approved financial data and reporting checklists for the agreed clients. Check the numbers against their sources and confirm who can access them.
- 02
Show what is ready and what is missing.
Show which reports have the information they need, which are waiting on a client and which need review. Automate suitable preparation steps and flag issues for the team.
- 03
Make the next action clear.
Assign outstanding tasks to named people so everyone knows what needs to happen before a report can go out. Your practice retains professional judgement and final sign-off.
Built around the practice
Use the systems you have.
Join up the work around them.
Start with your existing bookkeeping, practice-management, time-recording and reporting tools where sensible. We confirm access, data quality and integration options before agreeing what can be delivered.
Liam stays accountable from scope to handover. Any specialist input and access arrangements are agreed in advance.
A practical first conversation
Bring the recurring problem.
Keep client detail private.
Use the free 30-minute call to explain the problem in general terms. If there is a potential fit, we may offer one free walkthrough of up to 45 minutes, led by your team using redacted or representative information. Please leave client records and login details out of your enquiry.
The free stages help us decide whether to work together. They do not include data analysis, process mapping, solution design, prioritisation, a business case or a written roadmap.
A practical reporting question
How do you compare client fees with delivery time and scope?
Match the fee and time to the same client, service and period. Otherwise an annual fee compared with one busy month can give a misleading view.
The figures below are synthetic. They illustrate a management calculation, not a client result or accounting advice.
1. Agree what the comparison includes.
Use net fees for the agreed service period, excluding VAT. Agree how to treat credits, work in progress, unrecorded time and costs with the responsible finance lead. Keep missing client matches visible.
2. Reconcile before ranking clients.
Suppose one client has £24,000 in annual fees and 300 recorded hours at an agreed delivery cost of £50 per hour. Recorded delivery cost is £15,000; contribution before overheads is £9,000, or 37.5% of fees. Reconcile fees and hours to the source exports before using the comparison.
3. Put the result beside the agreed scope.
If 80 of those hours relate to extra requests, flag them for review. Check whether they were agreed and billed, and whether time is complete. A manager can then decide whether to clarify scope, change delivery or discuss the fee. The report does not make that decision automatically.
4. Make the checks visible.
A usable view includes the period, last refresh, source totals and unmatched records. If 20 hours are still awaiting a client match, show that exception rather than silently excluding it. Keep the client ranking provisional until the responsible person has reviewed the missing information.
5. Test the decision, not just the chart.
In this synthetic example, another 30 hours at £50 would reduce contribution from £9,000 to £7,500, or 31.25% of the same £24,000 fee. That sensitivity gives the manager a concrete reason to check time completeness and scope before discussing price. It is not a forecast or a promised saving.
See a bounded client-profitability engagement ↗Our services for your practice
Build the report or workflow you need.
Or get ongoing support.
Choose Data & Reporting for dependable management information, or Operational Analytics & Improvement to understand a performance problem and improve the process behind it. Focused projects typically run for 6–10 weeks, with scope and fees agreed after discussing your requirements. Ongoing Analytics & AI Partner provides continuing expertise with a three-month minimum.