Bookkeeping was recovering 54p in the pound. Here is our full service-line table and all nineteen repricing decisions.
Firm-wide recovery looked like 76%, which we could live with. Broken down by service line it turned out the average was concealing both ends of the distribution.
Swikriti ThakuriSep 30, 2026Updated Sep 30, 2026
Intelligence at Crane & Partners — Service Performance Metrics, Proposal and Engagement Letter Insights, the Proposals Report Module, and an AI we use for narrower things than the word usually implies.
Firm-wide recovery looked like 76%, which we could live with. Broken down by service line it turned out the average was concealing both ends of the distribution.
We had suspected this for years. What we had were opinions. What we needed was a client name next to a number.
Why the number did not exist before
This is the mechanical part, and it matters more than any report.
Our old time system recorded against broad codes that corresponded to nothing a client had ever agreed to. FigsFlow posts time against the job created from the services on the engagement letter, and bills against the price snapshot frozen at acceptance. Because the scope, the recorded time and the fee are one record rather than three systems holding three opinions, recovery reads per client, per service line and per job without anyone reconciling anything.
The reporting did not become clever. The underlying data became comparable.
The table
Full year, all service lines, fee income against recorded time at standard charge-out rates.
| Service line | Fee income | Time at charge-out | Recovery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory (ad hoc) | £61,000 | £66,000 | 92% |
| Audit and assurance | £312,000 | £343,000 | 91% |
| Personal tax | £268,000 | £312,000 | 86% |
| Company secretarial | £84,000 | £108,000 | 78% |
| Annual accounts and corporation tax | £611,000 | £804,000 | 76% |
| Payroll | £197,000 | £277,000 | 71% |
| Bookkeeping — good records | £142,000 | £229,000 | 62% |
| Bookkeeping — poor records | £118,000 | £219,000 | 54% |
| Total | £1,793,000 | £2,358,000 | 76% |
Three things fell out of this that we had not expected.
- Advisory is the most profitable hour we sell. It had always looked like a small line because the fee income is small. On recovery it is the best work in the building, and we now scope it deliberately rather than giving it away inside compliance fees.
- Payroll at 71% was a surprise. We had assumed payroll was our most efficient service because it is the most systematised. It is the most systematised and the most underpriced.
- The bookkeeping split is the whole story. Same service, same staff, same software. The variable is the state of the client's records, and it is worth thirteen points of recovery.
All nineteen repricing decisions
Repriced at each client's normal renewal date, in conversation rather than by letter, with the reporting open on screen: here is the scope you agreed, here is the time recorded against it, here is the gap.
| Ref | Sector | Services | Old fee | New fee | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C-01 | Construction | Bookkeeping, VAT | £3,600 | £5,400 | Accepted |
| C-02 | Care home | Bookkeeping | £4,200 | £5,600 | Accepted |
| C-03 | Recruitment | Payroll, bookkeeping | £7,800 | £10,000 | Accepted |
| C-04 | Retail | Bookkeeping | £2,400 | £3,300 | Accepted |
| C-05 | Construction | CIS, bookkeeping | £5,100 | £6,700 | Accepted |
| C-06 | Hospitality | Bookkeeping, VAT | £3,900 | £5,200 | Accepted |
| C-07 | Property landlord | Accounts, tax | £1,800 | £2,400 | Accepted |
| C-08 | Care home group | Full service | £11,200 | £14,600 | Accepted |
| C-09 | Haulage | Payroll | £4,600 | £5,800 | Accepted |
| C-10 | Consultancy | Accounts, tax | £1,450 | £1,850 | Accepted |
| C-11 | Construction | Bookkeeping | £2,900 | £4,100 | Declined — left |
| C-12 | Personal services | Bookkeeping, payroll | £3,300 | £4,500 | Accepted |
| C-13 | Wholesale | Bookkeeping, VAT | £6,200 | £8,800 | Accepted |
| C-14 | Charity | Accounts, independent examination | £2,700 | £3,500 | Accepted |
| C-15 | Recruitment | Payroll, 140 temporary workers | £9,400 | £13,000 | Accepted |
| C-16 | Professional services | Accounts, tax, payroll | £5,500 | £6,900 | Accepted |
| C-17 | Care home | Payroll | £3,100 | £4,000 | Accepted |
| C-18 | Construction | Bookkeeping, VAT, CIS | £6,800 | £9,100 | Accepted |
| C-19 | Landlord portfolio | Accounts, self assessment | £2,200 | £3,000 | Accepted |
| Outcome | Result |
|---|---|
| Accepted | 18 of 19 |
| Left | 1 (C-11, £2,900) |
| Annualised fee uplift | £28,400 |
| Firm-wide recovery after | 84% |
| Write-offs | Roughly one third of the prior year |
| Debtor days | 54 to 39 |
| Client retention | Unchanged at 99% |
FigsFlow did not reprice anybody. It made possible a conversation we had been unable to have, because we had been asking clients to take our word for something we could not evidence.
The one client who left was the one whose records were worst and whose expectations were highest. On the numbers, that departure improved the practice.
Two reports we did not expect to use weekly
Proposal and Engagement Letter Insights
Which proposals convert, which stall, how long each sat unsigned. Ours showed something obvious the moment we looked: proposals issued within 48 hours of the meeting convert at more than double the rate of those issued after a week. We changed how the practice works off the back of one chart, and conversion on qualified enquiries went from 41% to 58%.
The Proposals Report Module
Pipeline value by stage, so the directors' Tuesday conversation is about a number rather than a feeling. This is the closest thing this practice has had to a forecast in its history.
What the AI actually does here
Considerably less than the word implies, and that is the right amount.
Inside the custom service builder, FigsFlow AI drafts the Service Description that appears in the proposal and the Service Schedule that goes into the letter of engagement, and refines both in the editor. Writing a defensible scope paragraph for a new service used to be an hour of a manager's time. It is now fifteen minutes of editing.
What it does not do, by design rather than by our restraint, is decide anything. Risk ratings and AML scope are produced from coded rules, deterministically. A risk rating inferred by a model is a risk rating you cannot explain the same way twice, and we could not defend it to our supervisor.
One caution for buyers: the broader AI assistant across the platform sits on its own licence and its own timetable. Treat it as something arriving rather than something you are buying today. The reporting is here now, and the reporting is the part that changed our economics.
Questions we are asked about this
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