The work is done. It just has not been billed.
Practices with full diaries run out of cash for a specific reason: work sits finished and unbilled while everyone is too busy delivering to notice. It is the most fixable problem in the sector and the least visible from any single system.
Three questions a practice rarely gets a straight answer to.
The answers are split between the diary, the case or matter file and the ledger.
How much finished work is unbilled right now?
Work in progress by age, by fee earner. Past ninety days it is not a cash-flow problem, it is a write-off waiting to happen.
What is our realisation rate?
Billed against billable, per fee earner and per work type. The gap is where the pricing conversation actually belongs.
Where does non-billable time go?
Admin that grew into the role, meetings that became standing, and the client whose questions are free.
A full diary, a healthy pipeline, and no cash.
Three readings from three places, none of which is a warning on its own.
Illustrative example
- Practice management
Work in progress up 40%, average age 84 days
Looks like a busy quarter.
- Billing
Invoices issued down 9% on the same delivered hours
Looks like a timing difference.
- Diary
Two senior fee earners at 96% booked
Looks like strong demand.
Billing is done by the same two people whose diaries are full, so it happens last and it is slipping. Roughly eleven weeks of delivered work is sitting unbilled, and the oldest of it is approaching the point where clients dispute it. Move billing off the critical path - a fixed weekly slot and a chase that runs whether or not anyone remembers - and the cash gap closes without winning a single new client.
The pipeline was never the problem. Nothing in a sales report would have shown this.
What Aptic reads in a practice.
Read-only by default, and nothing changes in any of them without your approval.
- Practice or case management: matters, stages, work in progress by age
- Time and diary: capacity, utilisation, and where the non-billable hours sit
- Billing and accounts: realisation, write-offs, debtor days
- Referral and enquiry sources, so capacity planning has something to plan against
Who looks at what first.
All six offices read your business. In professional services, these three set the agenda.
Finance
Work in progress ageing, realisation and debtor days - the three numbers that decide whether a full practice has cash.
Operations
Capacity, bottlenecks at senior level, and the administrative work that should not be sitting there.
Management
Billing and follow-up as recurring work that fires on schedule instead of depending on a spare afternoon.
What the first thirty days produce.
- 01
A work-in-progress ageing you can act on
What is finished, unbilled, and how old - by fee earner, with the oldest flagged before it becomes a write-off.
- 02
Realisation by fee earner and work type
Where discounting is happening informally, and which work types are systematically underpriced.
- 03
A billing routine that does not depend on anyone remembering
A weekly cycle with owners and chases, and a check two weeks later on whether debtor days actually moved.
Find out how much finished work is sitting unbilled.
Aptic is in private beta. Tell us how the practice runs and what you have connected, and we will tell you honestly whether it is a fit.