Invoicing and chasing
The billing cycle that always waits until the weekend.
Automate billingAutomate reporting and alerts
Nobody should have
to ask where
the work stands.
I build useful reports from the records your team maintains, with alerts for agreed exceptions. You get a shared view of activity and a clear next action, alongside checks that the sources and connections are current.
At a glance
- The task
- A view the team can read, and an alert when something slips
- Who it hits
- Anyone running several clients, projects or matters at once
- What changes
- One current view, alerts on exception, and a weekly digest nobody has to build
- Proof
- A London recruitment agency, with reporting built around the founder’s questions
The problem
Three things go wrong
when nobody can see the work
The client chases you. Not because anything is late, but because nobody told them where things were, and the update was sitting on somebody’s list behind more urgent work.
A deadline passes unnoticed. Nobody decided to miss it. It simply was not visible to the person who could have acted, and by the time it surfaced it had become a problem rather than a task.
Work gets delivered and not invoiced. This is the expensive one, and the one founders find hardest to believe until they look. A stage is signed off, the next stage starts, and the invoice for the one just finished never gets raised.
A missed deadline shows up eventually. Work you did and never billed often does not show up at all.
The change
What it looks like before,
and after
Today, by hand
- The current state lives in a spreadsheet, an inbox and somebody’s memory
- Finding out where anything stands means asking a person
- Client updates get written one at a time, often in the evening
- Deadlines depend on somebody remembering at the right moment
- The founder runs a personal list of daily checks that only exists in their head
- Nobody can say which work was delivered but never invoiced
Once it runs itself
- One current view of every client, project or matter in progress
- Client updates drafted from the data, so the work is reviewing rather than writing
- An alert when a date passes, a stage completes or a threshold is crossed
- Alerts cover the sources and thresholds we agree, with separate checks for missing data and failed connections
- A weekly digest that arrives without anyone building it
- A flag when work is marked complete and no invoice has followed
Every daythe founder reads the activity instead of assembling it
Recruitment agency, London
Activity lived across spreadsheets, email and notes. It was all recorded and none of it could be used to decide anything. Reporting built backwards from the founder’s own questions changed that.
Read the case study“This will allow me to see the bigger picture and understand where to go next, using real data rather than guesstimates. I am looking forward to analysing the reports and making informed strategic decisions.”
In practice
A report your team can use
Choose the question
Start with a management question: what is overdue, where effort goes or what has changed.
Check the source
Define the fields, owners and update dates. Show missing or stale records instead of hiding them.
Route the action
Deliver the report or exception to a named person. Client updates remain drafts for review and sending.
How we get there
From your first question
to a working solution.
The first step is checking the data and agreeing what a complete, current record looks like. A report is only useful if the information behind it can be trusted.
First, a free 15-minute conversation to understand the challenge and agree the appropriate next step.
Understand your business
We explore the process, what you want to achieve and how your team prefers to work. I challenge the proposed solution if the underlying problem is different.
You receiveA clear process map, written recommendations and an agreed priority.
Check the tools and feasibility
During separately scoped Process Design, I check the connections, permissions, costs and exceptions that could affect the solution.
You receiveA documented workflow, feasibility findings and the requirements for a reliable build.
Agree the scope and price
Before implementation, we agree what will be built, the timeline, responsibilities and how we will check that it works.
You receiveA written proposal with a fixed build price, acceptance checks and any ongoing costs.
Build and test
I build the agreed solution and test normal cases, exceptions and approvals. Your team reviews it against the checks we agreed.
You receiveA working solution, a demonstration and the agreed checks completed before handover.
Document, train and hand over
I show your team how to use the solution, what to monitor and how to handle exceptions. We clarify ownership and support.
You receivePractical instructions, a walkthrough and clear support terms so your team can run it.
One recurring processFocused Process Review · £350Several connected prioritiesBusiness Process Review · from £650
Discovery, Process Design and implementation each have an agreed scope and fee. You choose the appropriate discovery service; buying both is not required. Testing, documentation and team handover are included in the agreed implementation scope.
Is this a dashboard project?
Only if a dashboard is what you would actually open. Many founders do not want another screen to check. They want to be told when something needs them, and to have the weekly summary arrive without building it. The view matters most for the team. The alert matters most for you.
How do you decide what triggers an alert?
We agree the sources, owners and thresholds: how late is late, what counts as complete and when a record needs attention. We also check data freshness and connection failures. No alert means no detected exception within that monitored scope, not a guarantee that nothing needs attention.
Do we need a new tool for this?
Often not. This tends to be built on the tools you already pay for, because the data is already in them. What is missing is that nothing reads across them. If a new tool is genuinely required I will say so, and say what it costs, before anything is built.
Our data is a mess. Is it too early?
It is almost always a mess, and that is part of the job rather than a reason to wait. Agreeing what a complete record looks like, and getting the existing ones there, is often the first phase of the work.
Will this replace our management meeting?
No, and it should not. It changes what the meeting is for. When everyone arrives already knowing the state of the work, the time goes on the decisions rather than on the status round.
Keep reading
Related
Your business
Where does the work stand
right now?
If answering that needs a conversation with three people and a spreadsheet, there is something worth fixing.
15 minutes · No charge
Prefer to write? [email protected]