ERP for professional services. Time captured, work accepted, invoice raised: realisation you can see.
A firm sells hours it has not worked yet. Kinnow follows each engagement from proposal to cash, so time captured, work accepted and the bill raised sit on one record and realisation is a number you can read.
From December 2026How does Kinnow help a professional services firm in the UAE and Saudi Arabia? Each engagement carries its own timesheets, deliverables, milestones, invoices and support cost. Approved time and completed milestones become tax invoices with no double billing, and you can see work in progress and realisation per engagement. Nothing is billed, filed or paid without a person. This edition opens from December 2026 and is not live in the region today.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell expertise by the hour, the milestone or the retainer: consulting, legal, architecture and design, engineering studies. Revenue is partners and consultants, so margin depends on who is billable and who is on the bench. Timesheets arrive late, work in progress is a guess, and the bill goes out a month after the work. Engagement letters and renewals live in email, and a client's support calls after delivery are rarely charged to the engagement they came from.
Three things keep the managing partner awake: unbilled work that never becomes a bill, an engagement that lost money and nobody saw it until the final invoice, and a talented consultant sitting idle while another is stretched past 100%.
How your month runs on Kinnow
The ready-made routine for your industry (we call it an industry pack) is Engagement to realisation: opportunity, scope, proposal, terms, staffing, delivery, time and expense, deliverable accepted, bill against WIP, collected, closed. Amounts below are in dirhams (AED) for a UAE firm.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Opportunity to proposal | Partner | The pipeline in Sell carries the opportunity from first scope discussion to proposal; a drafting agent can prepare the proposal text. | Winning the engagement is a step-up approval. |
| 2. Open and staff | Engagement lead | An engagement is opened in Build with its rate card by role, and people are allocated against it. | Contracts over AED 2,000,000 go to the practice head. |
| 3. Master agreement | Partner | The agreement is drafted, signed by the client and tracked to renewal in Pact. | Signing and early termination need sign-off. |
| 4. Capture time and expense | Consultant | Timesheets are filed against the engagement. A chaser lists missing and stale timesheets and approvals waiting too long. | The engagement lead approves or sends back a timesheet, with the reason. |
| 5. Accept deliverables | Engagement lead | A deliverable is submitted for client acceptance and can be sent back. Accepted work is billing evidence. | Client acceptance is recorded. |
| 6. Bill from evidence | Accounts | Approved, unbilled hours are invoiced at the rate frozen on each timesheet, one line per timesheet; a completed milestone is invoiced once at its value. A write-down needs a reason. The batch key stops a second invoice for the same time. The tax invoice carries the TRN (tax registration number) and is checked against the Federal Tax Authority's (FTA) mandatory fields. | An invoice over AED 750,000 needs approval. |
| 7. Collect | Accounts | The client sees the invoice and can dispute it in the customer portal. Collections drafts reminders by days overdue. | Reminders above your limit go to a person. |
| 8. Review WIP and realisation | Managing partner | For each engagement: unbilled approved time, completed milestones not yet billed, invoiced amount and realisation (invoiced against standard). | The partner decides on write-offs and re-pricing. |
| 9. Close the month and prepare VAT | Accounts head, tax executive | Month-end checks run, and the groundwork to draft the VAT return for review is completed before launch. Your team files on the portal. | Books are closed and returns approved by people. |
See one of your engagements on Kinnow, from timesheet to tax invoice.
Utilisation, bench and the true margin
Rate card by role
Charge-out rate, cost rate and standard week for each role. The cost rate is frozen on each timesheet, so editing the rate card never moves a margin already reported.
Utilisation over capacity
Billable hours over the week's capacity, never over hours worked. Each person lands in a band: bench, under-utilised, healthy, stretched or over. Where nobody recorded a person's capacity, the view says so instead of showing 0%.
Capacity forecast
Resource allocations by week show who is free next month, so the answer to "can we take another engagement this quarter" comes from the plan.
Margin after support
Engagement P&L counts the support tickets the client raised after delivery. If any input is missing, the margin reads unknown, never healthy.
| Engagement | Billable hours | Invoiced (AED) | At standard (AED) | Realisation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail entry study, Dubai | 312 | 171,600 | 187,200 | 92% |
| Warehouse design review, Abu Dhabi | 140 | 63,000 | 63,000 | 100% |
| Policy rewrite, Sharjah | 96 | 31,200 | 40,320 | 77% |
Illustration · sample data. Realisation is invoiced against standard.
Ask us to load your rate card and show utilisation on last month's timesheets.
The ready-made setup for professional services
Sixteen processes come on, with four sign-off routes (who approves, in what order): engagement approval, journal, return filing and invoice. Nine reports come with it, among them the engagement register, milestone status, service-promise (SLA) status for tickets, headcount and project cost. The UAE country setup adds VAT reports and starter questions. Starting figures are in the company's own currency, read here as dirhams.
| Limit | Starting figure | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement (contract) value | Over AED 2,000,000 | Practice head approves |
| Client request outside a service-promise (SLA) plan | Always | Blocked, since it would be invisible to responsiveness reports |
| Retainer or milestone invoice | Over AED 750,000 | Approval |
| VAT return, net payable | Over AED 200,000 | Approval before filing |
| Manual journal | Over AED 500,000 | Approval |
| Payroll run | Over AED 5,000,000 | Approval before the salary file is generated |
| Office lease, base rent | Over AED 300,000 | Warning |
| Client credit limit | Over AED 1,000,000 | Warning |
Set them to what your firm would want reviewed.
Agents for a professional services firm
Engagement Margin Watch
Compares revenue, delivery cost and support cost as work progresses and flags an engagement drifting down before the final bill. Shows unknown, not healthy, when it cannot price one.
Timesheet chaser
Lists missing, unfiled and stale timesheets and approvals waiting too long. Flags only; sends no reminder.
Scope drift watch
Compares hours logged with the agreed effort and drafts a change order when it is exceeded. Sends and creates nothing.
Project Risk
Scores schedule slip and billing burn from milestones on every engagement.
Collections
Drafts overdue reminders and steps them up according to how many days a payment is actually late. A person approves each reminder before it goes out.
Account / KnowCash-flow Forecaster
Builds a rolling cash forecast for the next 30, 60 and 90 days from post-dated cheques, bills due and how customers have paid in the past, with a range around each figure to show how sure it is.
Know + BuyContract Intelligence Planned
Compares contract terms with actual performance.
VaultAsk Kinnow
Answers questions from your documents and from the records of the applications you use, and only shows what the person asking is allowed to see.
Every agent is validated with each client before it works on their books, and every output waits for a person.
Tax and payroll calendar for a services firm
Dates move by notification, so your tax executive checks the date the authority has notified. Kinnow does not file on the portal.
| Obligation | When it falls | What Kinnow prepares |
|---|---|---|
| UAE VAT-201 | Quarterly; the calendar sets the due date 28 days after quarter-end | The groundwork for a draft return in the FTA box layout from the quarter's invoices and purchase bills, and a worksheet by month or quarter with exclusions named, completed before launch |
| UAE corporate tax return | Annual; 9 months after year-end | Tax calculated from the taxable income your accountant supplies: 0% up to AED 375,000, 9% above, with Small Business Relief (for small companies) and the Qualifying Free Zone Person path (for free-zone companies on qualifying income) |
| Salary file and gratuity | Monthly | A salary file for the Wage Protection System (WPS), the end-of-service gratuity owed to staff when they leave (set aside each month), pension contributions for nationals. A person approves the run |
| Tax invoice | On each invoice | Checked against the FTA mandatory fields; English and Arabic templates. E-invoicing has the groundwork only |
| Saudi VAT return | Monthly above SAR 40 million of annual taxable supplies, otherwise quarterly | The same worksheet, in riyals. ZATCA (the Saudi tax authority) e-invoicing is planned after launch |
What the owner sees
| Ask Kinnow | Answer built from |
|---|---|
| Which engagements have slipped? | Project milestone status |
| Show me every live engagement | The engagement register |
| Which client queries are breaching? | Ticket SLA status |
| Show me headcount by practice | Headcount report |
| Who is on the bench next month? | Capacity plan and allocations |
| What is my net VAT position this quarter? | The VAT sales register |
Each answer shows its source and cost before it runs. Veil, our privacy layer, holds back bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for placeholders before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
Ask us to run these questions on your numbers.
Questions
Do you bill on time and materials or fixed fee?
Both. Time and materials come from approved timesheets at the rate frozen on each one. Fixed fee follows completed milestones, each invoiced once. They share one ledger.
Who can see a client's documents?
Files a person uploads start private to them and are shared by choice: to named people, a company or the whole organisation. Viewing and downloading are separate permissions, and agents retrieve only what the person asking may open.
Will Kinnow tell me which engagements lose money?
Yes, when it can price them. It compares billed revenue with delivery cost from timesheets and the support cost from tickets, and shows its reasons. If one of those cannot be read, the engagement shows unknown rather than healthy.
Can we bill for approved time only?
Yes. Only approved, unbilled hours are invoiced, and a timesheet that is sent back with a reason is corrected and resubmitted before it counts.
Does Kinnow prepare VAT and corporate tax for the UAE?
The groundwork to draft the VAT-201 return and a worksheet is completed before launch, and corporate tax is calculated from the taxable income you supply. A person reviews and files on the portal.
Can the client see and dispute an invoice?
Yes. In the customer portal they sign in with a code, see their invoices and what is outstanding, and raise a dispute on one.
Show me Kinnow for professional services.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.