Sounds familiar?
- Out-of-scope work — the "quick question", the extra notice, the rushed certificate — is done and never billed.
- Fees were set years ago and raised only when a client is lost.
- Collections drag for months because nobody owns follow-up.
- Revenue grows only when headcount grows.
- Advisory is "something we should do" rather than a service with a price.
What good looks like
Hours reconcile to invoices. Every client has a known profit per hour, and the pricing conversation is based on it. Collections run on a schedule. A share of revenue is recurring advisory — MIS, cash-flow, virtual CFO — sold as a package, not as favours. Growth is a decision about which services and markets to add, not a hope.
Five moves
1. Find the leak
Reconcile last quarter's hours against invoices by client. Firms doing this for the first time typically find 15–20% of delivered work was never billed. Fix the capture first: every request becomes a task; every task carries a fee or a scope flag.
2. Rank clients by profit per hour
Fees divided by hours, not fees alone. The bottom 20% get a repricing conversation or a respectful exit. This is the hardest move and the one that changes partner income fastest.
3. Put collections on a system
Invoice from the task on completion, with payment links; reminders on a schedule; an owner for every overdue account. Days-sales-outstanding is a growth metric.
4. Package one advisory service
Pick one — monthly MIS, cash-flow review, virtual CFO — define what the client gets, price it monthly and offer it to your twenty best clients. Compliance earns trust; advisory earns margin.
5. Decide how to scale
A second branch, a niche (NRI, start-ups, healthcare), a merger, or a white-label offering for other practices. Each is a different business; choose deliberately with the numbers from stages 2 and 3 in hand.
How ERPCA helps
Billing and receipts invoice from the task, with GST-compliant e-invoices, payment links and collection follow-ups; practice analytics shows profit per client and service; and when you are ready to scale, ERPCA's white-label edition lets you offer the platform to other firms under your brand. See plans for how firms step up.
