110 Analytics. We load a professional services firm's time recording, practice management, billing, accounts, CRM and payroll data into one warehouse in the firm's own cloud account, and define utilisation, realisation, work in progress and client margin once with the partners. Every night, AI tests the new entries against those definitions. We sell no practice systems and give no accounting or legal advice, so your systems, suppliers and advisers keep their roles.
What a managing partner might hear
When hours, invoices and costs live in separate systems, a partners' meeting can sound like this.
- Utilisation looks healthy, yet the fees billed fall well short of the value of the hours recorded.
- Work in progress is a printout before the partners' meeting, and every partner questions their own lines.
- Everyone knows who records the most hours. Nobody knows which clients those hours earn money on.
- Write-offs are agreed one invoice at a time, so nobody sees the pattern across a year.
- Lock-up is a line in the budget, not a figure anyone watches during the month.
- Each partner keeps a spreadsheet of their own clients, set out their own way.
Where a firm's figures come apart
A firm that bills for its people's time runs on several records. Hours are captured in a time recording or practice management system against a client and a matter or engagement; fees are raised in billing, which may be the same system or a separate one; and the cash lands in the accounts.
What the time cost sits elsewhere again: salaries in payroll, overheads in the ledger, and sometimes a cost rate per grade in a finance spreadsheet. Proposals and pipeline may live in a CRM.
The questions partners ask run across all of them. Which clients pay for the time the firm gives them? How much recorded time never reaches an invoice, and at which step does it fall away?
Every hour, invoice and cost on one screen
Each night, a copy of each agreed system's data lands in one warehouse that sits in your firm's own cloud account. Time entries, invoices, receipts, costs and pipeline arrive together, current to yesterday, and nobody exports anything.
In the warehouse each time entry is tied to its client, matter or engagement, fee earner and rate, and each invoice, where the billing system records the link, to the time it billed. Utilisation, each realisation measure, work in progress, lock-up and client margin are agreed once with your partners and finance lead, and AI checks every night's entries against them: time on a closed matter, a matter with no rate for the period, an invoice that matches no client. Each is flagged to the person who recorded it.
The managing partner opens the 110 Command Centre to the whole practice each morning, and each partner sees their own clients on the same figures. The reporting runs in the firm's own account, beside the systems it reads, and nothing is written back into them.
Questions that need more than one of a firm's systems
Each one draws on data held in two or more of the firm's systems.
From hours to invoice to cash
Recorded time at standard rates, set against what was billed and then collected, by client, matter, partner and fee earner. It shows at which step value falls away.
Utilisation that holds up
Chargeable hours against the hours each person was available, using leave from the HR or payroll record where it is held, and counting non-chargeable work the way the firm agrees.
Work in progress and lock-up
Unbilled time from the practice system and unpaid invoices from the accounts, aged side by side, so the journey from work done to cash received can be followed per client and partner.
Margin by client and by partner
Fees collected against the cost of the hours spent and the direct costs each client carries, using the cost rates finance agrees.
Write-downs and write-offs with a pattern
Every reduction between recorded and billed value, and every invoice written off unpaid, grouped by client, matter type and approving partner.
Fixed fees against the time they absorb
Each fixed-fee or capped engagement set against the hours recorded on it, so the partners can see which fee levels deserve a second look.
Realisation: three measures, each named
A firm's month, before and after
Picture a firm in Malta with four partners and three service lines: accounting, advisory and company secretarial work. Time is recorded in a practice management system, invoices go out from a separate billing tool, the ledger runs on an accounting package, proposals sit in a CRM, and an outside bureau runs payroll.
- Recorded time sits in the practice system and invoices in the billing tool, with no link kept between the two.
- Partners judge their clients by hours recorded, because the cost of those hours is kept somewhere else.
- Fixed-fee company secretarial work is assumed to pay, but nobody has set its hours against its fees.
- The monthly figures depend on the finance manager, who exports four systems to build them.
- Each night the practice system, billing, the ledger, the CRM and payroll totals are copied into the firm's warehouse, held in its own cloud account.
- Utilisation, each realisation measure and lock-up are defined once, and every partner reads them the same way.
- Each partner opens a page showing their clients' recorded time, billed fees, cash received and margin together.
- Write-offs roll up by client, matter type and approving partner, so the pattern is visible during the year.
- Invoices past their due date are flagged each morning to the partner who owns the client.
The firm kept every system and supplier it had. Partners' meetings now start from one set of figures and move straight on to what to do about them.
What the firm settles before the figures agree
Partners and finance make each of these choices once. From then on, every report uses the same answer.
| Item | Where it usually starts | What the firm decides |
|---|---|---|
| Client | CRM, practice system and billing | Whether a client is the group, each company in it or each matter, so the systems' different codes map to one client |
| Value of an hour | Practice system and rate history | Which rate values recorded time (standard, agreed or discounted), and from which date each rate applies |
| Cost of an hour | Payroll or a finance spreadsheet | A cost rate per grade set by finance, including a notional rate for partners' hours, which payroll does not hold; or pay loaded as totals, so individual salaries need not reach the warehouse |
| Available hours | Time recording and leave records | Which hours count as available once leave, sickness and, if the firm chooses, training are taken out |
| Time on general codes | Time recording | Whether it is charged to a client, a service line or the firm as a whole |
| Work in progress | Practice system | Whether unbilled time is valued at standard rates or on another basis, and when it is written down |
From first call to first report
- Strategy callThirty minutes with Glen, free of charge. Bring the question the partners keep asking and a list of the systems you run, and you will hear plainly whether a data audit is worth your time.
- Data auditAbout three hours with Glen, the managing partner, finance and whoever runs the practice system. Every source and every report assembled in spreadsheets is mapped, and a quote closes the audit.
- BuildAccess to each agreed system, read-only wherever possible, loads every night, clients and matters matched, and the partners' sign-off on each definition. The first live screen is due three to four weeks after the partners accept the quote.
- Fractional data teamFrom the second month a senior team runs the loads and the checks, adds a new service line or system when it arrives, and takes on the next question. Larger programmes can call on our partner network.
What we do not do
- We give no accounting or legal advice, and we neither prepare nor audit accounts.
- We do not sell, implement or support practice management, time recording or billing systems.
- We do not set your rates, fees or partner pay; the figures are there for the partners to decide with.
- Client files, documents and correspondence are not part of this reporting; it works from time, fees, costs and pipeline.
- Your systems are never written to, and the warehouse sits in the firm's own account.
Glen Sultana founded 110 Analytics after a career built where the numbers move daily. Our people have run analytics for tier-one companies, S&P 500 firms and high-growth technology businesses. Glen is the person on the first call, and he runs every data audit himself.
- Built in your environment, under your account
- Every connection approved by you first
- Based in Malta
Straight answers
Does our practice management or time recording system stay as it is?
Yes. Every system carries on with the same supplier and the same job; the warehouse works from an overnight copy of each, so nobody in the firm changes how they record time or bill.
Can utilisation and realisation be worked out from the time records we already keep?
If time is recorded against a client or matter with a rate, yes. The data audit checks how your time is coded and shows any gaps, such as hours on general codes or rates missing for some periods, before anything is built.
Who would see partners' and staff figures?
Only the roles you clear. A managing partner can see the whole firm and each partner their own clients and teams, while individual pay is visible only to the roles you name in the audit.
Do you load client files or correspondence?
No. The reporting needs the hours, codes and rates on each time entry, with invoices, receipts and costs, not documents. Whether the narrative written on a time entry is loaded at all is agreed with you before the build, and everything loaded goes into a warehouse in the firm's own cloud account.
Can it help with overdue invoices?
It can show them. Each morning, invoices past their due date are flagged to the partner who owns the client, with the client's recorded time and work in progress beside them. What to do about each one stays the partner's call.
How do you connect to our systems?
By whichever route each system supports, confirmed in the audit: the supplier's own interface, a connector built for it, a database link that can only read, or a file it sends on a schedule. Wherever a system can limit us to reading, that is all we ask for, and you approve every connection first.
What will it cost?
A quote follows the data audit. It turns mainly on how many systems there are and how much matching each one needs, and warehouse running costs are billed to the firm's own cloud account.
Practice terms, in plain English
- Utilisation
- The share of a person's available hours recorded as chargeable. The firm agrees what counts as available.
- Realisation
- How much of the value of recorded time turns into fees and then cash, measured at billing, at collection or across both.
- Work in progress
- Time recorded but not yet billed, valued on a basis the firm sets, such as standard charge-out rates.
- Lock-up
- How long value stays tied up between work being done and cash arriving, counted as days of work in progress plus days of unpaid invoices.
- Write-off
- Recorded value that is never billed or never collected. A write-down reduces it rather than removing it.