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? Each engagement carries its own timesheets, deliverables, milestones, invoices and support cost. Approved time and completed milestones become 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.
Singapore edition, from December 2026. Nothing on this page is live in Singapore today. The ready-made setup for professional services (we call it an industry pack) is already built into the product. We apply it with you when the edition opens.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell expertise by the hour, the milestone or the retainer: 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 calls after delivery are rarely charged to the engagement they came from. Invoices carry GST at the standard rate, and a client based outside Singapore is a separate treatment your finance lead has to decide.
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 per cent.
How your month runs on Kinnow
The routine the setup follows is Engagement to realisation: opportunity, scope, proposal, terms, staffing, delivery, time and expense, deliverable accepted, bill against work in progress, collected, closed.
| 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 needs a senior person's 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. | A contract over your limit goes 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, 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. Kinnow stops a second invoice for the same time. GST is priced on each line and the invoice is checked as a tax invoice. | An invoice over your limit 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 work in progress 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 the quarter | Accounts head, tax lead | Twelve month-end checks run and seven must pass. The quarter's GST F5 (the quarterly GST return) is drafted for review once the groundwork is completed before launch and filed by your team. | Books are closed and the return approved by people. |
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 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 per cent.
Capacity forecast
Resource allocations by week show who is free next month.
Margin after support
Engagement profit and loss 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 puts in place
Four sign-off routes come with it (engagement approval, journal, return filing and invoice), with sixteen processes, twelve Ask Kinnow starters and nine reports, among them the engagement register, milestone status, ticket SLA (the service promise to the customer) status, headcount and project cost. Every limit is set in Singapore dollars with you in the first week.
| Limit | Effect | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Engagement (contract) value over your limit | Practice head approves | A large commitment is decided by the person who owns the capacity |
| Client request outside an SLA plan | Blocked | It would be invisible to responsiveness reports |
| Retainer or milestone invoice over your limit | Approval | Large invoices are checked before they go out |
| Return filing, net payable over your limit | Approval | A person signs what goes to the authority |
| Manual journal over your limit | Approval | It moves the books without a source document |
| Office or equipment lease; client credit limit | Warning | Both are decisions, not data entry |
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 it is exceeded. Sends and creates nothing.
Project Risk
Warns you when a project is running late, spending ahead of the work done, or billing ahead of it, measured against the baselined bill of quantities (BoQ).
Sell + AccountCollections
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.
Every agent is validated with each client before it works on 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 on the calendar. Kinnow prepares; a person confirms and files. Dates are confirmed with IRAS (Singapore's tax authority) and ACRA (the company registrar), not printed here.
| Obligation | What Kinnow prepares | What stays with you |
|---|---|---|
| GST F5 return (quarterly) | Boxes 1 to 8 of the F5 for the quarter, from the sales invoices, credit notes and purchase bills in your books; a credit note reverses its line. Kinnow prices each line at 9 per cent, zero-rates a customer outside Singapore and carries a short exempt list. The calendar puts each return one month after its quarter ends, from the accounting cycle IRAS gave you; it refuses to guess the cycle. | A person reviews every box and files through the IRAS portal with their own CorpPass (the government login for businesses) login. Kinnow does not submit it. A Singapore adviser checks the box layout against the current IRAS form before the first filing. |
| Tax invoices | The Singapore country setup holds the checks for a tax invoice: a valid GST registration number or UEN (company registration number), date, serial number, the GST amount, and the words Tax Invoice on a full tax invoice (a simplified invoice is allowed up to S$1,000 including GST). A reverse-charge supply that also charges GST is refused. | The finance lead decides which invoices are simplified and which supplies are reverse-charge. |
| InvoiceNow (e-invoicing) | An invoice to another business is marked to go through InvoiceNow, Singapore's national e-invoicing network. Kinnow builds the invoice file in the Peppol format that InvoiceNow uses, addressed by UEN (the company registration number), and refuses one with no supplier UEN. It runs against a test connection only: nothing reaches the network. | Connecting a certified access point (an approved sender on the InvoiceNow network) is a commercial step with a provider. Once delivered, an invoice cannot be cancelled; a credit note corrects it. |
| CPF and the Skills Development Levy (monthly) | Payroll works out CPF (the Central Provident Fund contributions) by age band, on the ordinary-wage ceiling, and the employer's Skills Development Levy, on each payslip. It needs a recorded date of birth and citizen or permanent-resident status, and lists anyone it had to skip. It withholds no income tax: Singapore has no PAYE for citizens and permanent residents. | Payment and submission to the CPF Board happen outside Kinnow. IR8A, IR8S, Appendix 8A (the yearly employee pay statements) and the monthly CPF submission are named in the Singapore setup as filings; Kinnow does not prepare or submit them. |
| ACRA annual return, AGM, estimated chargeable income, corporate tax return | Tracked as registrations on your company, each with the due date Kinnow works out and a lead time before it. The AGM and the annual return are two items, because they run on two clocks. | The company secretary and finance head confirm every date against ACRA and IRAS, and file. |
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.
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 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.
Does Kinnow file our GST return?
No. The groundwork to draft the quarter's F5 is completed before launch; your team reviews and files it through the IRAS portal. A Singapore adviser checks the box layout against the current IRAS form before the first filing.
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.
How long does set-up take?
About two weeks to first results for one company, counted from when your Singapore edition is switched on in December 2026: masters and opening balances in the first week, agents switched on and a first close in the second.
Does it work on a phone?
It works in the phone browser. There is no separate mobile app.
Show me Kinnow for professional services.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.