ERP for IT Services. From SOW to utilisation: every billable hour tied to revenue.
An IT services firm sells capacity. Kinnow ties each SOW (statement of work) to its timesheets, milestones, support tickets and invoices, so utilisation, bench and margin come from one record instead of three tools. The UK edition opens in early 2027 and the industry setup is completed with early-access customers.
From early 2027How does Kinnow help an IT services firm in the UK? A SOW becomes an engagement with milestones, a rate card by role and approved timesheets. Hours and completed milestones become invoices without double billing, support tickets run against the service promise you gave the customer (SLA), and recognised and deferred revenue come from the contract. Kinnow checks VAT invoices and has the groundwork in place, completed before launch, to draft the nine-box VAT return for a person to file. Nothing is billed, filed or paid without a person.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell people. Your income is billable days on time-and-materials work, milestones on fixed-price work, and monthly support on retainers. Your cost is the same people, billable or not, so the gap between the two is the bench. SOW milestones sit in one tool and timesheets in another, invoices wait for someone to match them up, and a support ticket after go-live is rarely charged to the engagement it came from. Every invoice also has to be right for VAT, and contracts with several parts get their revenue rebuilt in a spreadsheet at every close.
Three things keep the delivery head awake: bench time hidden inside an average, a milestone that slips while a team stands idle waiting on someone else, and an incident fixed outside the agreed time that turns into a credit note.
How your month runs on Kinnow
Two ready-made routines come set up for you: SOW to utilisation and Incident to resolved.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Opportunity to SOW | Sales head | The sales pipeline in Sell takes an opportunity through requirement, SOW proposed, rates negotiated and signed. | A senior person approves signing the SOW. A deal above a value you set raises a warning. |
| 2. Create the engagement | Delivery head | You open the engagement in Build with milestones, a rate card by role and the people on it. | A contract above a value you set needs project sign-off. |
| 3. Deliver and report time | Consultants | People record their time against the engagement. A chaser lists missing and out-of-date timesheets. | The engagement lead approves, or sends back with a reason. |
| 4. Accept milestones | Delivery head | A deliverable goes to the client for acceptance and can be sent back; accepted work is what you bill from. Kinnow compares hours with the agreed effort to show scope creep. | Client acceptance is recorded. |
| 5. Invoice | Accounts | Approved hours are invoiced at the rate fixed on each timesheet; a completed milestone is invoiced once. The same time can never be billed twice. Each invoice is checked for the details a VAT invoice needs. | An invoice above a value you set needs approval; a wrong one is put right with a credit note, not re-issued. |
| 6. Support after go-live | Support lead | Each ticket has a response time and a fix time from its SLA plan. A ticket outside a plan is blocked. A defect can be passed to the engineering backlog, and the ticket waits on hold until it is fixed. | The client confirms the fix before closure. |
| 7. Recognise revenue | Finance controller | Kinnow splits a contract into its separate promises (performance obligations) by their selling price, builds the schedule of when revenue is earned, and a monthly run posts the entry. | A manager activates the contract. |
| 8. Collect | Accounts | The client sees the invoice in the customer portal and can raise a query on it; Collections drafts reminders by days overdue. | Escalated reminders go to a person. |
| 9. Close and prepare VAT | Accounts head | Twelve month-end checks, seven of which must pass. The groundwork to draft the nine-box VAT return for review is completed before launch; Kinnow does not send it to HMRC. | A person closes the books; a person signs off the VAT return and then files it. |
Bring one live SOW and we will show it from timesheet to invoice to recognised revenue, in sterling.
Utilisation, bench and what a ticket costs
Utilisation over capacity
Billable hours over each person's weekly capacity, never over hours worked, so a bench cannot hide. People fall into bands from bench to over-committed; anyone with no recorded capacity is shown as unknown, not 0%.
Capacity forecast
Who is booked on what, week by week, shows who is free next month.
Support cost against the engagement
The engagement's profit and loss includes support tickets. Work done and never billed raises a warning, since it quietly eats into margin until renewal.
Revenue by obligation
When one contract has several parts, the price is shared out by selling price and recognised as each part is delivered. Deferred revenue is a balance in your books, not a side sheet.
What the IT Services setup includes
| Safeguard | Setting | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery commitment (contract value) | Above a value you set | Project sign-off |
| Support ticket outside an SLA plan | Always | Blocked |
| Open deal value | Above a value you set | Warning |
| Milestone invoice | Above a value you set | Approval |
| Manual journal | Above a value you set | Approval |
| Return sign-off | Above a value you set | Approval |
| Support work never billed | Always | Warning |
| Client credit limit | Above a value you set | Warning |
We set the values with you when you start, in pounds, to what your firm wants reviewed.
Sixteen processes come switched on with four lists of who signs off, in order: engagement, journal, return and invoice. Fifteen starter questions for Ask Kinnow and ten reports come with the ready-made setup for your industry (we call it an industry pack), including the engagement list, milestone status, ticket status against the SLA, staff leaving, project cost and support cost by engagement.
What the UK country setup adds
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| VAT return sign-off | A named person signs the nine-box return before anyone files it |
| Large VAT invoice | Read by a second person before it is raised; a credit note puts it right, not a re-issue |
| Payroll run sign-off | A second person approves the run |
| Manual journal | A second person signs, and the link to digital records is kept |
| Write-off review | Checks the VAT bad-debt relief deadline; relief is repayable if the customer later pays |
Agents for an IT services firm
Engagement Margin Watch
Compares revenue, delivery cost and support cost as the SOW runs and warns you of any slide before the final bill. Shows unknown, not healthy, when it cannot price one.
SLA Alert
Flags a ticket that is about to miss its response or fix time.
Contract Renewal Watch
Checks contracts nearing their end date so the renewal conversation is booked before a support contract lapses.
Project Risk
Scores the risk of delay and of running through the budget, from the milestones on every engagement.
Lead Scorer
Scores each lead from 0 to 100 when it is created or imported, with the reasons and a suggested next step. A person decides who to call.
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.
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.
Ask us which of these agents we would switch on first for your delivery team.
Compliance calendar for a UK IT services firm
VAT comes first in the UK edition. Kinnow prepares and tracks; people file. Your adviser confirms each date, because dates and rules change.
| Obligation | When it falls | What Kinnow does |
|---|---|---|
| VAT return | One calendar month and seven days after the period ends. You set your HMRC stagger group (the quarter pattern HMRC gave the company: 1, 2 or 3) when you start; Kinnow does not guess it, and monthly filers are supported | Groundwork to build the nine-box VAT return and its file from the sales and purchase records, completed before launch. Boxes 2, 8 and 9 apply to Northern Ireland only, and the draft says so. Kinnow does not send it: a person files through recognised software or HMRC. Your adviser confirms each box before first use |
| VAT invoice | On every invoice | Checks the supplier VAT number, date, running number, customer name, VAT shown in sterling and tax point (the date the VAT is due). Standard 20%, reduced 5% and zero rates are supported, with the reverse charge on cross-border business supplies. VAT rates come from a starter list of items; the full HMRC list is not loaded |
| VAT number check | When a supplier or customer is added | Checks the format and the HMRC check digit, which catches swapped digits |
| Payroll | Monthly | PAYE income tax (tax taken from pay each month), employee and employer National Insurance, pension contributions and student loan plans, worked out in a payroll run a second person approves; Scottish income tax bands supported. Rates are kept for each tax year and checked against HMRC with your adviser before first use |
| Confirmation statement and annual accounts | Confirmation statement every year; accounts nine months after the accounting reference date for a private company | Tracked as jobs with reminders. Kinnow does not prepare or file them at Companies House |
| Corporation tax return | Return 12 months after the period ends; tax payable nine months and one day after | Tracked with reminders. Kinnow does not work out the tax or prepare the return |
| ICO data protection fee | Every year | Tracked with a reminder |
What the owner can ask
| Ask Kinnow | The answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Which engagements are behind on milestones? | Project milestone status |
| Which support tickets are close to breaching? | Ticket status against the SLA |
| Which engagements are losing money once support is counted? | Support cost by engagement |
| Which support work has been done but never billed? | Support cost by engagement |
| What has this engagement actually cost us so far? | Project cost report |
| What VAT did I charge this quarter? | VAT sales register |
| When is my next VAT return due? | Compliance calendar |
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.
See your own bench, margin and next VAT date on one screen.
Questions
Can Kinnow show utilisation and bench?
Yes. Billable hours are measured against each person's weekly capacity, with bands from bench to over-committed, and a week-by-week forecast of who is free.
Does it handle revenue recognition?
Yes. Kinnow splits a revenue contract into its separate promises by their selling price, builds the schedule of when each is earned, and a monthly run posts the entry. A manager activates each contract.
Can I bill time-and-materials and milestones on the same engagement?
Yes. Approved timesheets and completed milestones are separate sources, each invoiced once and never twice, and both sit in the same books.
Will Kinnow file our VAT return?
No. The groundwork to build the nine-box return and file from your sales and purchase records is completed before launch, and a named person signs it off. A person then files it through recognised software or HMRC. Your adviser confirms each box before first use.
Does Kinnow replace our issue tracker?
No. Issues, sprints and releases are there at a basic level, and tickets can be passed into them, but source code and your build-and-release tooling (CI/CD) stay in your DevOps tools.
What happens when an SLA is about to be missed?
Each ticket sits on an SLA plan with a response time and a fix time. Kinnow blocks a ticket that is outside a plan, and an alert flags tickets about to miss their time.
Can my team use it from a phone?
It works in the phone browser. There is no separate mobile app.
How long does set-up take?
About two weeks to first results for one company once the UK edition opens in early 2027: your client and account lists (Masters), rate cards and opening balances in the first week, agents switched on and a first close in the second.
Show me Kinnow for IT Services.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.