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.
Industry pack readyHow does Kinnow help a professional services firm? Each engagement keeps its own timesheets, deliverables, milestones, invoices and support cost together. Approved time and completed milestones become invoices without double billing, and you see work in progress and realisation engagement by engagement. Nothing is billed, filed or paid without a person.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell expertise by the hour, the milestone or the retainer: audit and advisory, legal, architecture, consulting, design. 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 go-live 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 this is Engagement to realisation: opportunity, scope, proposal, terms, staffing, delivery, time and expense, deliverable accepted, bill against WIP, collected, closed.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Opportunity to proposal | Partner | The sales pipeline in Sell follows the opportunity from the first scope discussion to the proposal; an agent can draft the proposal text. | A senior person approves before you take the engagement. |
| 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 ₹20,00,000 go to the practice head. |
| 3. Master agreement | Partner | The agreement is drafted, signed by the client and followed up 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 that have waited 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 fixed on each timesheet, one line per timesheet; a completed milestone is invoiced once at its value. A write-down needs a reason. Kinnow also stops the same time being invoiced a second time. | An invoice over ₹7,50,000 needs approval. |
| 7. Collect | Accounts | The client sees the invoice in the customer portal and can dispute it there. 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 file | Accounts head, tax executive | Twelve month-end checks run and seven must pass. GST and TDS returns are drafted for review and your team uploads them. | People close the books and approve the returns. |
See one of your live engagements on Kinnow, from timesheet to 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 fixed on each timesheet when it is filed, so editing the rate card never changes a margin you have 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
Who is allocated to what, week by week, shows 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.
What the Professional Services setup gives you
This is the ready-made setup for your industry (we call it an industry pack).
| Limit or rule | Starting figure | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement (contract) value | Over ₹20,00,000 | Practice head approves |
| Client request outside an SLA plan | Always | Blocked, since it would never show in your response-time reports |
| Retainer or milestone invoice | Over ₹7,50,000 | Approval |
| Return filing, net payable | Over ₹2,00,000 | Approval |
| Manual journal | Over ₹5,00,000 | Approval |
| Office or equipment lease, base rent | Over ₹3,00,000 | Warning |
| Client credit limit | Over ₹10,00,000 | Warning |
Starting figures; set them to what your firm would want reviewed.
Sixteen processes come switched on, with who signs off, in order, for four things: engagements, journals, return filings and invoices. Kinnow uses your own words from day one: engagement, client, WIP, realisation. Nine reports come with it, among them the engagement register, milestone status, ticket SLA status, headcount and project cost.
Ask us to load your rate card and show utilisation on last month's timesheets.
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 you go over. Sends and creates nothing.
Project Risk
Scores how far each engagement is slipping and how fast its billing is being used up, from its milestones.
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 touches their books, and every output waits for a person.
Statutory calendar for a services firm
Alerts go out 15, 7 and 1 day before each filing. GST is prepared and exported for upload; Kinnow does not file on the portal. Dates change by notification, so your tax executive checks the notified date.
| Obligation | When it falls | What Kinnow prepares |
|---|---|---|
| GSTR-1 | 11th of the next month; 13th for quarterly filers | File built from your sales book |
| GSTR-2B reconciliation, then GSTR-3B | 3B on the 20th | Purchase bills matched against the portal download, then a draft return and a file to upload |
| TDS deposit | 7th of the next month; 30 April for March | Challan drafts by month and section, from your deduction entries |
| TDS returns | 31 July, 31 October, 31 January, 31 May | Quarterly return drafts by form; Kinnow does not file them |
| Payroll | Monthly | PF, ESI, professional tax and salary TDS are calculated in a payroll run that a second person approves; PF, ESI and PT return figures prepared from the payslips with gaps listed, not filed |
| E-invoice | On each invoice where your turnover requires it | The e-invoice file, and the reason when the portal rejects one |
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 |
| Which follow-ups are due this week? | CRM follow-ups due |
Each answer shows its source and what it will 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. Sample figures on the screen at right are an illustration only.
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 fixed 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: with named people, a company in your group 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 how it got there. 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.
How long does set-up take?
About two weeks to first results for one firm: masters, rate cards and opening balances in the first week, agents and a first close in the second.
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.