Between doing the work and sending the invoice sits a number most practices only see at year end. Record how far each activity has got, month by month, and work in progress stops being an accounting exercise and becomes something you can act on.
Start a free trial Book a demoThe same job looked at three ways: where it has got to overall, which activities are carrying it, and how that has moved across the months.
Every activity on the job with a progress bar against it. Somebody enters a percentage, and the entry is stamped with who said so and when.
The job as a whole, which is what a director wants when they are looking across a portfolio rather than into one appointment.
Progress plotted month by month, per activity. A line that goes flat for a quarter is a conversation; a line that jumps from ten to ninety in one month usually means nobody was recording it.
Progress across jobs rather than within one, which is the view that answers the only question anybody really asks about work in progress: how much of it is there and how old is it.
Four numbers that only mean something next to each other. Pick a numbered point to see what each one is telling you.
Four points on this screen.
Unbilled work is the practice lending money to its clients, interest free. Set your own numbers.
A negative figure is not a mistake. It means you are invoiced ahead of delivery, which is comfortable for cash and a liability if a job stops.
An illustration from the figures you entered, not a measured result. Your own position depends on how each job is staged.
Work in progress earns its keep in three conversations.
Work done and not invoiced is money the practice has already spent on salaries and not yet asked for. Seeing it per job turns a vague feeling that billing is behind into a list of which jobs to bill this week.
It is usually the fastest cash improvement available to a practice, because nothing has to be sold or negotiated. The work is already done.
Progress recorded against the fee is how you find out that a stage is 45 per cent delivered and 70 per cent spent, while there is still time to do something other than absorb it.
Recorded time answers how much has been spent; only progress answers how much is left, which is why one without the other explains nothing.
Work in progress is a figure your accountant will ask for, and the usual answer is a spreadsheet assembled under pressure from people's memories of the spring.
Entries carry the person and the date they were recorded, so the figure is a record rather than a reconstruction.
Usually a job runner, once a month, against the activities they own. It takes a few minutes per job because the activities are already there and only the ones that moved need touching.
The month by month chart is also the quality check on that habit: a flat line followed by a jump tells you nobody recorded anything for a quarter.
Nothing here is a separate system. The same job, the same people and the same numbers run through all of it.
A free trial takes a few minutes to set up, and no card. Or let us walk you through it against the way your practice actually runs jobs.
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