Time Leak Audit
I map how the work happens today, estimate the hours that could be recovered and rank the opportunities against your goals. Under two hours of your time.
From £950 · fixed fee · excluding VATAutomate invoicing & payment chasing
Stop rebuilding invoices by hand.
Stop remembering to chase.
Billing is the one job that pays for everything else, and it is usually the one that waits until the weekend.
At a glance
- The task
- Raising invoices and following up on late payment
- Who it hits
- Anyone who bills repeat clients on a cycle
- What changes
- Invoices prepared from recorded activity, reminders sent on their own
- Proof
- A payroll firm serving around 200 clients, see below
The problem
Why invoicing eats a weekend
The work is already done. The client is happy. And yet getting paid still needs a human to open one system, read what happened, open another system, retype it, check it, send it, then write the date in a diary so somebody remembers to chase.
None of it is difficult. That is exactly why it never gets fixed. Each invoice takes a few minutes, so it never feels like a problem worth solving. Multiply it by every client, every month, and it is a weekend.
Chasing is worse, because it is uncomfortable. A reminder that should go out on day 31 goes out on day 45, if it goes out at all. The money is not lost, but it arrives late, and late money is what makes a profitable business feel tight.
Getting paid should not depend on you remembering.
The change
What it looks like before,
and after
Today, by hand
- You open the system, read the month’s activity and retype it into an invoice
- You check the figures twice because retyping is where mistakes happen
- You send each invoice manually, one client at a time
- You enter direct debit amounts into the bank, client by client
- You try to remember who has not paid, and when you last chased them
- Chasing feels awkward, so it slips
Once it runs itself
- Invoices are prepared from the activity already recorded, without retyping
- Figures come from one source, so there is nothing to reconcile
- Invoices go out at the agreed point in the cycle
- Payment collection is raised from the same approved data
- Overdue payments surface on their own, with the history attached
- Reminders go out on schedule, in your wording, without you deciding to send them
≈12 → <1hours of monthly admin, at a payroll firm serving around 200 client companies
Premium Paye · payroll services
Every month, invoices were rebuilt by hand from the activity recorded in the payroll software, and direct debit amounts were keyed into the bank one client at a time. Three connected processes removed the manual work. The founder reported going from around twelve hours a month to under one.
Read the Premium Paye case studyHow we get there
Three paid phases.
You decide after each one.
The billing cycle is usually the first thing I look at, because the cost is easy to measure and the fix pays for itself in visible time.
Process Design
A working session with your team, then detailed mapping: the steps, the data, the business rules and the exceptions that decide how the build behaves.
Separately scoped · fixed fee · excluding VATImplementation and handover
I build it in the tools you already use, test it against the agreed scenarios, document it and show your team how to run it without me.
Fixed project price · quoted after Process DesignBefore any of it, a free fifteen minute conversation. Bring the process as it actually happens, not as it should.
Will it send invoices without me seeing them?
Only if you want that. Most clients keep an approval step: the invoice is prepared automatically and waits for a human to release it. The time saving comes from removing the preparation, not from removing your judgement.
We use Xero. Does that work?
Yes, and the same applies to most accounting and billing tools with a proper connection. I start from what you already pay for. The question is never which accounting system is best, it is whether the data it needs can reach it without a person retyping it.
What about clients whose billing is not standard?
Exceptions are the heart of the design phase. We agree which cases the system handles and which ones it flags for a person. A system that quietly guesses on an unusual case is worse than no system.
Will chasing emails sound automated?
They are your words, sent on your behalf, at the moment you agreed. Most clients write two or three versions with a rising tone. Nobody on the receiving end should be able to tell, and nobody should be embarrassed by what goes out.
How much can we expect to save?
I will not put a number on your business before looking at it. The Time Leak Audit measures the hours your billing cycle actually takes and what recovering them is worth, and tells you whether the change is worth making. Sometimes the answer is that it is not.
Keep reading
Related
Your business
How long did billing take you last month?
If you do not know, that is the answer. Fifteen minutes, no charge, and we will work it out together.
15 minutes · No charge
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