ERP for IT services & consulting. 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 utilization, bench and margin come from one record instead of three tools. The United States edition opens from early 2027.
From early 2027How does Kinnow help an IT services firm? A SOW becomes an engagement with milestones, a rate card by role and approved timesheets. T&M (time and materials) hours and completed milestones become invoices without billing the same work twice, support tickets run against the response times you promised the customer (SLA plans), and recognized and deferred revenue come from the contract. Nothing is billed, filed or paid until a person says so. Nothing is filed, paid or posted without a person.
Your firm, in one paragraph.
You sell people. Your income is billable days on T&M 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 that created it. 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 your team stands idle waiting on the client, and an incident resolved outside the agreed window that turns into a credit note.
How your month runs on Kinnow
The ready-made industry setup (we call it an industry pack) gives you two step-by-step routines: SOW to utilization and Incident to resolved.
| Step | Who | What Kinnow does | Where a person signs off |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Opportunity to SOW | Sales head | Your sales pipeline in Sell takes an opportunity through requirement, SOW proposed, rates negotiated and signed. | Signing the SOW needs a senior sign-off. Large open deals raise a warning. |
| 2. Create the engagement | Delivery head | You open the engagement in Build with milestones, a rate card by role and the people assigned. | Contracts above a value you set need a project sign-off. |
| 3. Deliver and report time | Consultants | Timesheets are filed against the engagement. A reminder agent lists missing and stale ones. | 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 your proof for billing. Hours are compared with the agreed effort to catch scope creep. | Client acceptance is recorded. |
| 5. Invoice | Accounts | Approved T&M hours are invoiced at the rate locked in on each timesheet; a completed milestone is invoiced once. The same time cannot be billed twice. | An invoice above your limit needs approval. |
| 6. Support after go-live | Support lead | Tickets run against the response and resolution times you promised the customer (SLA plans). A ticket outside a plan is blocked. A defect can be passed to your engineering backlog, and the ticket waits on hold until it is fixed. | The client confirms the fix before closure. |
| 7. Recognize revenue | Finance controller | Each part of a contract is valued at its standalone selling price, Kinnow builds a 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 dispute it; Collections drafts reminders based on how many days overdue it is. | A person approves each reminder. |
| 9. Close the month | Accounts head | The month-end close routine runs twelve checks, and seven must pass. Sales tax, where a service is taxable in a state, is added up by state for review. | People close the books and approve the returns. |
See your next SOW as an engagement with milestones, a rate card and a margin line.
Who is busy, who is free, and what a ticket costs
Utilization over capacity
Billable hours as a share of each person's weekly capacity, never of hours worked, so bench time cannot hide. Bands run from bench to over-committed; a person with no recorded capacity is shown as unknown, not 0%.
Capacity forecast
Week-by-week assignments show who is free next month.
Support cost against the engagement
The engagement's profit and loss counts support tickets. Work done and never billed raises a warning, since it quietly cuts margin until renewal.
Revenue part by part
When one contract has several parts, each is valued at its selling price and counted as revenue once it is delivered. Deferred revenue is a balance in your books, not a side spreadsheet.
What the ready-made setup covers
The ready-made setup for IT services (we call it an industry pack) brings eight limits, four sign-off routes, fifteen starter questions for Ask Kinnow and ten reports, among them the engagement list, milestone status, support-promise (SLA) status, attrition, project cost and support cost by engagement. The United States setup adds sales-tax and payroll sign-off. The figures are plain numbers, so we go through each starting figure with you in dollars before you begin.
| Limit | Effect | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery commitment (contract value) | Project approval | A large SOW commits named people for months |
| Support ticket outside an SLA plan | Blocked | No plan means no clock, so it could never be late |
| Open deal value | Warning | It changes the forecast the moment it is typed |
| Milestone invoice | Approval | Large bills are checked before they go out |
| Manual journal | Approval | Changes the books without a source document |
| Sales-tax return, net payable | Approval | Filing is irreversible |
| Support work never billed | Warning | Unbilled effort eats into margin without showing as a loss |
| Client credit limit | Warning | Giving credit is a decision, not data entry |
These are starting figures; set them to whatever your firm wants reviewed.
Agents for an IT services firm
Engagement Margin Watch
Compares revenue, delivery cost and support cost as the SOW runs, and flags a slide before the final bill. Shows unknown, not healthy, when it cannot work one out.
SLA Alert
Flags a ticket that is about to miss its response or resolution time.
Contract Renewal Watch
Looks at contracts nearing their end date so the renewal conversation is booked before a support retainer lapses.
Project Risk
Scores the risk of schedule slips and overspending 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.
Each agent is tested with each client before it touches their books, and everything it produces waits for a person.
Ask us to show SLA Alert on a week of your own tickets.
Tax and compliance for a US IT services firm
The first release has basic support, not a full US tax calendar. Alerts go out 15, 7 and 1 day before each recorded filing, and every date is one you or your tax adviser confirm.
| Filing | When it falls | What Kinnow prepares |
|---|---|---|
| State sales tax, where a service or product is taxable | Per state, as recorded for each registration (where no due day is set, Kinnow assumes the 20th of the following month) | State-by-state totals of taxable sales and tax collected, for a person to type into each state return. No input credit: tax on purchases is a cost |
| State sales-tax permit, annual report, foreign qualification | Each state's own schedule | Tracked registrations; a due date appears only once you enter the state's schedule. Kinnow does not decide nexus (whether you have enough sales or presence in a state to need a permit) |
| Payroll | Monthly run | Federal income tax withholding and FICA worked out in a payroll run that a second person approves. State income tax is not included and each payslip says so |
| Payroll deposits, quarterly payroll returns, W-2, 1099 | Not tracked | Not built in the first release |
What the owner sees
| Ask Kinnow | Answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Which engagements are behind on milestones? | Project milestone status |
| Which support tickets are close to breaching? | Support-promise (SLA) status |
| 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 |
| Where is attrition risk concentrated? | Attrition report |
| What has this engagement actually cost us so far? | Project cost report |
Each answer shows its source and cost before it runs. Veil, our privacy layer, hides bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for stand-in codes before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
Bring one current SOW and see its utilization, support cost and deferred revenue together.
Questions
Can Kinnow show utilization 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. Each part of a contract is valued at its standalone selling price, Kinnow builds a schedule of when each part is earned, and a monthly run posts the entry. A manager activates each contract.
Can I bill T&M 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 one set of books.
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 own developer tools.
How are SLA breaches handled?
Each ticket follows an SLA plan with response and resolution times. The industry setup blocks a ticket outside a plan, and an alert flags tickets about to miss their time.
Does Kinnow handle US payroll for a consulting bench?
Partly. The payroll run works out federal income tax withholding and FICA, and a second person approves the run. State income tax is not included, and W-2, 1099 and payroll deposits are not built, so payroll filings stay with your provider for now.
How long does set-up take, and when does the US edition open?
About two weeks to first results for one company. The United States edition is available from early 2027.
Show me Kinnow for IT services & consulting.
Answer three questions. Get the applications, the agents and a two-week plan for your business.