This Practice Management system really can increase your chargeable time, improve your cash flow and the overall profitability of your practice.

It contains nuggets that have been disclosed to me during the nearly 40 years I have been implementing practice management solutions for accountancy firms. Now for the first time I have made this available in a software product at a fraction of the traditional cost and that out-competes systems costing thousands of pounds more.

Ensuring that every possible minute of available time is chargeable and that your clients’ fees properly reflect the skill and expertise provided by your firm is not easy – unless you have the right tools. These must be affordable so they are available to all who need them, are easy to use and deliver the promised solutions.

These tools are in one product – its called Panache - and it comes with a 100% money back guarantee.

Imagine knowing at the start of each day the non-chargeable time for the previous day so you can take action immediately. Think how much better it would be if your time costing system was fully integrated with your job planner – and with your document management system, for a total Practice Management solution.

Knowing the up to date position on "lockup" each day is only possible if everyone posts their own time sheets daily. Many practices are still entering time sheets on a weekly basis as an administrative function – often re-keying a time sheet from an Excel spreadsheet. So not only are they risking posting errors but their staff are doing the job twice. You can do this if you wish but you will be missing a golden opportunity if you do.

Because Panache is interactive time entry is very accurate. You can see the name of the client and job description as you make a posting and a running total of time booked each day ensures that everyone books at least their standard hours.

The possible 250 characters of narrative means a time recorder can describe each activity in as much detail as necessary. This helps you when monitoring the progress on a job and importantly helps you to justify a higher fee when you’ve undertaken extra work for the client.

Minimising non-chargeable time is essential to maximising your W.I.P. and by monitoring on a daily basis you can take immediate action. This may mean re-allocating staff but the job planner will help you here too.

Some systems force you to change your billing procedures to suit the system – Panache lets you choose the method that suits you.

You can choose whether you want to bill time by job, by date or individually select each time posting. You can even bill one client and charge another, e.g. a director’s tax work. If you are billing in advance you may want to post an accrual or write back some time that you may be able to recover later.

Before you bill you will want to see the W.I.P. in detail with the narrative entered at the time of posting. But wouldn’t it be useful to see the previous bills and recoveries too and in detail if necessary. It may help you to decide the amount to charge for the extra work undertaken or possibly to decide upon the fee to be quoted for next year.

Although a pro forma invoice/payment request is provided you are likely to want to adopt your own house style and the integration with Microsoft Word achieves this. The software helps you with the process and you simply store your invoice template and it’s automatically used when you raise a bill. You can then view your invoices at any time in the future and also any correspondence you send to your clients. This feature alone will save you many hours each week.

If you decide that your fee earners will raise the bills, write off the time and generate the invoice or payment request then the system needs to be very easy to use and require the minimum amount of time. Panache meets this requirement whilst not restricting the flexibility for each user.

Any system that encourages managers and partners to perform tasks that were previously undertaken by secretaries needs to provide tangible benefits and be enjoyable to use. But you can use the secretarial function to raise bills if you wish – it’s your choice. You can set up Panache to suit your own way of working.

Knowing precisely the detailed work undertaken for a client before the fee is raised is possible if each time entry is described in as much detail as necessary. Only then can you justify increasing the previously agreed fee for additional work undertaken.

Enabling your fee earners to raise tax invoices or requests for payment to a professional standard speeds up the billing process provided it is integrated with your time & fees system. It also ensures that the documents contain the correct information so avoiding the all too frequent queries often used to delay payment. And more importantly it can be a "selling document" to reinforce the expertise used to provide the service to the client.

You are probably using a "wall planner" to plan jobs a few months ahead. Typically these show the client & job and the people allocated on a day by day basis. Being a manual exercise it is unlikely to be up to date, is difficult to monitor unless the chart is in your office and it’s not easy to compare the budgeted time to actual time booked. How much better it would be if your computer system included a job planner.

To plan a job you simply enter the planned time by person and date – just like you’d make an actual time posting. Then later on you can monitor on a job by job basis and compare the planned time to that booked. As it’s interactive you get an up to date picture each day and take action if it looks like a job will run over budget. You can even export the planned jobs into Excel so you can replicate your wall chart if you like seeing things that way.

If yours is a smaller firm and you like using a PC then you won’t need a lot of reports – but they are available if you do.

Reports are useful to see the overall picture for the practice, partner, manager …… Indeed some are essential for you to manage your business effectively. These include:

• W.I.P. & Debtors Lockup

• Non-chargeable time analysis

• Recovery rates by person

• Billing profitability

• Clients due for billing

• Fees & Cash Budgets

• Individuals performance analysis

• And Graphs too. You can also simply export any report to Microsoft Excel.

Some systems provide some or all of this information but in a predetermined way – fine if you can change your procedures and structure to suit. But how much better if you can choose.

Panache includes up to 7 analysis heads of your own choosing - partner, manager, client type … you define and decide your report structure. You may opt for a non-chargeable report by time recorder and manager. W.I.P. report by job type, manager and partner and so on. It’s flexible and easy to use.

If you’re already using Practice Net Rapport then because Panache is fully integrated with it your client details are immediately available – including names & addresses. If you’re not then you can probably import your client names & addresses from your existing computer system. Just get your data into a "csv" file or Excel spreadsheet and it then takes 10 minutes or so to import it into Panache. If you’re unsure of the procedure then you simply call our Help Desk and we’ll talk you through it. Or we’ll arrange an online session via the internet to help you.